Wolfe's Attitude toward his Readers

Gerry Quinn · 14 Aug 2010, 12:10 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2010 13:10:33 +0100
Subject: (urth) Wolfe's Attitude toward his Readers
References: <SNT123-W55FB1AAAD34DB1F72B1CF7CF990 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <8959133DA9D14EF292EB71B361BAF439@jill>

From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>

> My current favorite glaring example is the grouped sequence of numbers on 
> the Seal
> of Pas in the Long Sun story. In 16 years I am not aware that anyone has 
> made progress
> on solving the significance of it. But the intentionally unique grouping 
> and
> organization of these numbers within the text suggest they do have a 
> solution. I will
> admit that if I somehow learned (impossible unless Gene Wolfe tells us, of 
> course)
> that there is no solution to this puzzle, I might be forced to consider 
> that he
> has some disdain even for his multiple-reading fans.

I posted on this before: I suggested that the apparent low entropy of the 
numbers may be in order to add verisimilitude without inplying any specific 
meaning assigned in the text.  Indeed this seems the most likely thing to 
me.  I don't see that it involves disdain for readers, even if it does 
permit some readers to chase nonexistent hares.  It's not as if he hints 
that there's some secret significance to the reader in them.

I think the numbers are supposed to indicate something about the contents of 
the vault to those with an appropriate key, but there is no hint that the 
key exists.

"Ora faltig teru dres, ent oru klen rebalen tafru."  That looks like a 
sentence in a foreign language (either originating in or transcribed into 
the Latin alphabet).  It is not entirely random: I made it to seem 
pronouncable.and have a plausible distribution of word lengths etc., even an 
echo between 'ora' and 'oru'.  But it means nothing!  I wrote it and I 
didn't intend it to mean anything, or have any idea of what it might mean. 
But I intended it to look plausibly like a meaningful sentence in a real but 
unknown language.  If I had occasion to write a story in which the narrator 
hears a snatch of alien speech, I could use it or a similar sentence.

- Gerry Quinn

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