Agia's Weapons

Lee Berman · 21 Dec 2011, 17:05 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:05:00 -0500
Subject: (urth) Agia's Weapons
Message-ID: <SNT123-W35BE19DD4EF9B14B607451CFA50 at phx.gbl>

>Dan'l Danehy-Oakes: The problem here is that you're trying to solve a puzzle in tBotNS
>with information that only became available in tUotNS. Wolfe is a deeply puzzling writer, 
>but he deploys his clues fairly, and when he wrote tBotNS he had no intention of writing 
>tUotNS - it was not yet a gleam in David Hartwell's eye. Thus, there would be no way for a
>reader to make this analogy; the _Book_ proper has no such transformations in it (that I recall).
>I don't buy it.

I respect your opinion Dan'l. As with David, I'll defend my position though not with the intent
of changing yours.

The grand finale of UotNS gives us a Flood. Are you thinking Wolfe did not have this flood in mind 
when he was writing the first four books? There are some clues, very slim but present once you know 
to look for them. I take this as evidence that Wolfe overestimates the puzzle solving ability of his
readers (and he didn't even know the internet and "group-mind" venues such as this might arise).

I find a lot more evidence for multi-character shape shifters in the first four books than I find
evidence for a flood. The most obvious, of course is Foila's story. But we find it also in Melito's
story (it is an angel, of all creatures, which possesses shape-changing ability). Perhaps in the 
Mother Pyrexia story and the Naviscaput story also (surely Abaia or Erebus wasn't born with a ship
for a head). Any reference at all to Greek gods carries an implication of shape (and size) changing
and there are more than one of those in BotNS. 

The multiple appearances of Father Inire didn't start with me. It was Borski. I don't share his 
interpretation of those appearances but I'm not the only person who grudgingly admits that there
are some suspiciously similar characters to Inire darting in and out of the story.

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