HOME FIRES finished thoughts (spoilers)

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 21 Aug 2013, 00:53 · from 2013-August.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 17:53:10 -0700
Subject: (urth) HOME FIRES finished thoughts (spoilers)
In-Reply-To: <CA+uiXAJy+OV+d5=1VNG5yoNteBApTK8QUA=wn7eVmFRx+Kw2xQ at mail.gmail.com>
References: <CA+uiXAKdVM5O7weRB8WgJr8hbNrLb1cyHwZPa96qEKTOwBH0YA at mail.gmail.com>
	<CA+uiXAJy+OV+d5=1VNG5yoNteBApTK8QUA=wn7eVmFRx+Kw2xQ at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAJ8=rti5+0LawMUT7ooGO5z6Wx89rMuuX9iNdJaTTWaFkVKGBQ at mail.gmail.com>

Or maybe the fragility of tenacity?


On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 5:09 PM, Brian Doherty <brianmdoherty at gmail.com>wrote:

> Couple of other HOME FIRES questions: I gather from end that Chelle
> fragged a commander, but I don't see how this relates to what happens to
> her---you merely get discharged for that? Or was she killed for it before
> the Sims meld? Is this even the "original" Chelle's body? I mean, reaction
> of her old school friend and Skip indicate it is....
>
> Also, are we supposed to guess/does it matter what secret Sims had that
> the spies wanted from Chelle? Pure Macguffin or significant?
>
> What would people say the theme/point of the novel is? The tenacity of
> love? The fragility of identity? Or the tenacity of identity?
>
> Brian Doherty
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 2:51 PM, Brian Doherty <brianmdoherty at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> In the end, I'm more convinced that this was (deliberately or not) his
>> take on a late-Heinlein feel novel. Skip and Chelle just seem like late
>> Heinlein types, Chelle perhaps more vulgar-tough than the vulgar-sweet RAH
>> would go far. The dialog style, the heroism, the lawyerly machinations, all
>> felt Heinlein. Skip, the aging noble man successful and choosing an
>> ultimate sacrifice for both personal love and humanity....(presuming which
>> I'm not sure I should that there IS something good for humanity about
>> fighting the Os.)
>>
>> Also in the end, I found myself liking it more than I expected i would
>> from first 2/3. Not that the conclusion was anything bang up or that it
>> raveled anything together in any WOW way, but just....I was really feeling
>> the emotions of everything from the final diner scene when Skip showed up
>> on.
>>
>> Still, what a PECULIAR book. So much felt, like, what? why? Particularly
>> the cinnamon toast scene at end. Loved it, but didn't...get the point. And
>> as always with WOlfe, you feel dumb because you don't. Maybe it was simply
>> to show how tough Chelle was but seemed late in narrative to take time for
>> mere character-building.
>>
>> Some points I picked up I think mostly from this list:
>> 1) I believe it is either known or believed by some that Charles Blue is
>> an Os. i missed even a hint at this. What's the clue/giveaway?
>> 2) Wolfean Q---given that we know SOME characters are brain scans in
>> bodies other than ones born with, this makes me assume that some/many
>> OTHERS are too. Do others agree, and who are top candidates?
>> 3) "so that he can keep running into "Charles Blue" and keep forgetting
>> about it, and to show how nobody knows anything about anybody else -
>> identification has been lost in that world."---I did not pick up on this at
>> all when relating to Blue, but saw a reminder of it in the "lost
>> women"/Chelle diner scene. Is that because, again, MOST people in this
>> world end up in diff bodies they were born with/are way older because of
>> relativistic space effect?
>>
>> This seems to me to be a Wolfe novel that's received the least detailed
>> discussion of mysteries/meaning. If someone can guide me to source for
>> same, would appreciate it.
>>
>> Brian Doherty
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>



-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20130820/2e26fc92/attachment.htm>

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net