more thoughts on Red Star

Thanks for the response, Nigel. Another big part of the novel Red Star involves a problem with putting aside individualism. The least individualistic earthman (Leonov) the martians can find to show their society to cannot adapt to it and goes slightly crazy, behaving homicidally, possessively, and jealously. Perhaps the clone has too much individuality, like Leonov when he is faced with a culture in which everyone is the same. CJ Cherryh's novel sounds like a much nicer fit to the story itself. (I haven't read anything by her even though I have a copy of Kutath and Chanur's Legacy lying around somewhere. Is she worth reading? If so, is there a good place to start?) As an aside, I have always wondered about that part in The Book of the New Sun (but right now I can't remember whether it is at the end of Claw or the beginning of Sword) in which Severian meets this old woman (man?) in a hut and she talks to her son about the tall stranger who came through with a staff when he was just a boy. Does anyone know what I'm talking about, and if we are to assume that the tall stranger was someone in the text like Palaemon? (the description does sound like Horn, but that is reading too much into a slight detail.) Sorry this is so sketchy, just one of those unsolved mysteries. I'll look for the exact place later. Marc Aramini

You might think you are being sketchy, but we know exactly what you are talking about. (Here, it is in III, ch. 7.) Yes, some of us sometimes think that the silent man is Palaemon-in-exile. Check the archive for some of the detailed arguments for and against. =mantis= Sirius Fiction Catalog and errata sheet at http://www.sirius.com/~mantis/