Who's Right?

Lee Berman · 02 Dec 2010, 22:41 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2010 17:41:31 -0500
Subject: (urth) Who's Right?
Message-ID: <SNT123-w32A52053A84738117D330DCF270 at phx.gbl>

>Gerry Quinn- It is not so much the implausibility of the theories that bothers me, as the 
>global implications.  If somebody believes that Agia is a robot, for example - well, I don't 
>believe it but it affects very little anyway.

Thanks Gerry. That is the most realistic explanation for the excessive rancor and venom my always
politely expressed ideas seem to cause. I think I was gonna go off the deep end if I heard one more
whiny cavil about how *"I just don't like your delivery"*.;- ). 

Someone recently posted something like,"hey, haven't we trimmed the branches enough? Let's get to the 
forest!" That's a clarion call for me.  I am not a particularly detail-oriented person. Any branch-trimming 
I do is always with the goal of forest in mind. So any idea I come up with is likely to be global in impact. 
And I can see why it might be upsetting if someone thought I was trying to uproot the forest.

In my view I am not attempting to uproot anything. It is the same story, same characters, same forest.
I am just interested in looking at it from a different mountain top than others. I like seeing something
from various perspectives but I know not everybody does (I think I've seen Niagra Falls from 10 different
perspectives, each one added something- if you do visit do NOT miss the Maid of the Mist).

It is my feeling that Wolfe's work cannot be understood from just one perspective. It is necessary to perceive
and maintain awareness at several interactive levels, SF, mythological, Christian at the least. I still fail 
to see why one of the perspectives I see is so especially controversial. 

Gene Wolfe is an author deeply immersed in mythology. In Severian we have a character who resembles Greek and 
other mythological heroes in at least a dozen ways. Why is the additional attribute of a hidden, partially godly 
genealogy, as was true for Hercules, Theseus, Perseus etc. such a fantastically absurd idea as to qualify it 
as worst ever? (the stuff about hair color sounds like Borski. I think it is interesting and generally fits 
but is more branch-trimming than tree or forest).

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