The Sorcerer's House Questions (Major Spoilers)

Roy C. Lackey · 19 Apr 2010, 05:27 · from 2010-April.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:27:04 -0500
Subject: (urth) The Sorcerer's House Questions (*Major Spoilers*)
References: <l2x1bf4dd41004181309z93dfb4afwa01f99b4ee391d80 at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <006201cadf80$f6110940$90cd4a0c@rclackey>

Dave Tallman wrote:
> Everyone who doubts Bax has to reckon with all the independent
> corroborations in the story:
> 1) The second letter of Doris, particularly the postscript confirms: the
> werewolf attack, the strange basement, the rapist dwarf, and locking up
the
> vampire. Not to mention the appearance of ghost Ted in the main body of
the
> letter.
> 2) The challenge note from George, confirming the existence of Faerie.
> 3) The letter from the psychic confirming and charging for the vampire
> lock-up incident.
> 4) Evidence found by the Collator that Bax had an ancient samurai sword.
> 5) The fact that a ex-con swindler somehow obtained valuable real estate
in
> Medicine Man.
>
> The more I hear that all of this was forged by Bax somehow, and he was the
> Collator so he could change all the letters as much as he wished, the
weaker
> the case appears to me. There has to be a core of events that "actually
> happened" that is confirmed by independent evidence.

What Dave said, and James, too.

The beauty of doubting all that is supernatural and having Bax as the
compiler is that anything the doubter cannot explain can be written off as a
lie. That is very convienient for the doubter, but a line has to be drawn
somewhere. If some or all of the letters are lies or forgeries perpetrated
by Bax, what are we left with? What, if anything, really happened?

Adding to Dave's list: Did the house of the book's title even exist? If so,
did it in fact grow from nine rooms to more than forty? If not, how could
people keep getting lost in it? If there were no supernatural characters,
who were Lupine, Winker, Nicholas, Emlyn, Ieuan, old Nick and a
telephone-using dog named Toby? Who raped Cathy? If a boy from Faerie didn't
beat the hell out of Bax, who did?

Where did a failed con less than six months out of prison really get all
that money he was spending all over town? Where did he get ancient gold
coins? Who or what killed and dismembered at least three people?

-Roy

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