a personal tangent in praise of Gene

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 09 Jan 2002, 17:22 · from whorl-v0013.mbox · original

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From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Subject: RE: (whorl) a personal tangent in praise of Gene
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 09:22:18 -0800
Message-ID: <whorl-v0013-whorl.v012.n187.2 at digest.urth.net>
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Marc,

I agree completely with you about Wolfe and about the SS books: when the
list went through the immediate post-RttW spasm of discussion, I recall
commenting that the books were far too complex to dismiss, the way some
seemed to, without living and wrestling with them for at least a year or
two. I stand by that.

> ... remember how dead this list was until I started throwing out
> outrageous theories=20

Well, it has been quiet lately, yes.

> I just don't think you can apply Occam's razor to a tricky dude like Gene
> Wolfe=20

Well, here I agree and disagree. You can apply it _where appropriate_. The
real problem with the Principle of Parsimony is that it's misunderstood and
misused. It does _not_ state, as often misquoted, that the simplest=20
explanation is the likeliest; it suggests that one's solutions should not
needlessly hypothesize "entities" not obviously present in the problem. I
think that principle _does_ apply - that is, our solutions to the problems=20
GW's works present should not introduce any persons, planets, etc., not
clearly present in the works.

> He should have won a Hugo. Why did Harry Potter IV win? What the heck?!=20

Frankly, I doubt GW will ever win a novel Hugo; the fan base that votes the=20
award is demographically pretty broad and GW's fan base is, demographically,
pretty narrow. The time when "intellectual" novels could realistically win
the Hugo was pretty much over by the mid-'70s.

> I think  that it really bears very little in common with The Book of
> the Long Sun -> which was comparitively open and honest even though
> they were trapped inside the whorl.  Outside the whorl, in the vastness
> of space, there is no openness: even the narrator does't realize who he
> is, Hoof doesn't recognize his own father in Babbie even though he
> treats him so obviously like a son, and we  cannot recognize our own
> home because we have forgotten science. =20

I like this. I don't think I can go with Blue/Green =3D=3D Urth/Lune, but
your point about the relative openness/closedness of the two Books is
very well put.

--Blattid

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