Mystery of Ascia

Lee Berman · 21 Jan 2011, 13:01 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:01:07 -0500
Subject: (urth) Mystery of Ascia
Message-ID: <SNT123-W37CE0EF6969EE60B4F4F83CFF80 at phx.gbl>

>Son of Witz: > Why would Wolfe, who does A LOT of intentional linking of 
>phonetically similar names, use the word Ascian for what are essentially a 
>communist metaphor?

Actually, Witz, I think you are on the right track with this. I went through
much of the same thought processes you have, though a sticking point was always
that I had an intuition from the text that Ascians looked caucasian.

Somewhere I read a Gene Wolfe interview question on this topic and I'm really
sorry to report that I can't find it again, despite a concerted effort. But
in answering the question, Wolfe said that he meant to set the Ascian nation
in what is now the United States because he knew that even this bastion of
anti-communist Cold War sentiment could be nudged into socialism under the 
right conditions. Libertarian even back in the 70's.  Sort of a warning, 
"look this could happen to us if we aren't careful".

It wasn't in the interview, but since reading that, I have guessed that
Wolfe chose the name "Ascian" because it is an amalgam of "American" and
"Asian" adding the mistake about the equator/no shadow origin later to 
justify that name.

(p.s. in my searches for the interview I chanced upon a video interview of
Gene Wolfe in regard to Wizard/Knight. Am I just hopelessly out of the loop
to not have known of this? Amazing, for the first time in my life, to hear
him speak. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_mEpLK8cWE)

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