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From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net <mailto:jbjordan at gnt.net> >

[even more off topic, but briefly] I sometimes think that Michael Moorcock's "The War Hound and The World's Pain" is a kind of "anti-Name-of-the-Rose". There are (to my perhaps peculiar way of thinking) plot similarities in that both describe the not-completely-witting attempts of "philosopher" protagonists to end the Age of Unreason (a topic much more explicit in Moorcock's book). As a result, at the end of both books the world has "changed" in a subtle(ish) way. But, in keeping with Moorcock's status as the "anti-Wolfe"(), von Bek is a semi-sociopathic atheist warrior who falls in with angels and demons, whereas Baskerville is a monk who falls in with matters of the material world. (Hmmm... I'm almost beginning to convince myself here). Anyway, I would recommend "Warhound" as a light contrast to Wolfe (with the caveat that Moorcock writes it with such lucidity that some of my friends have dismissed it as a "juvenile"), and the sequel "The City and the Autumn Stars", which is much more intricate and baroque. Both were recently (ish: 1995/7) republished in the UK in collected form as "Von Bek". newt () Moorcock is erudite, heavily-influenced, and writes often elliptical/baffling books about philosophical/theological topics. But... he's a proselytising atheist who writes in a lucid way about complex topics - the Anti-Wolfe!