recent Wolfe stuff

Recently visited my local sf shop, found a couple of Wolfe things. "Counting Cats in Zanzibar" and "Try and Kill It" are two short stories published in Asimov's last year. Another, published in F & SF, I haven't succeeded in tracking down yet. Both of these stories allude to "God's finger's." Anybody want to take a stab at what these are supposed to represent? Does anybody know of any other stories involving supernatural digits? Does anybody know of any more recently published Wolfe things? I think that URTH is an appropriate place to post Wolfe-related news items. For example, the May issue of Interzone contains an (extremely superficial) interview with the man. bee FWIW my initial guess re. God's fingers is that they create the artifice responsible for turning ordinary fiction into speculative fiction. PPS My previous post (several weeks ago, to WHORL) about A Solar Labyrinth seems to have vanished without a trace, but it's noteworthy that, according to said interview, GW claims that it is one of his favorites. (The others were, Westwind, The Eyeflash Miracles & THERE ARE DOORS.) I had said that I thought this story was the archetypical GW story. IMO Wolfe writes specifically for the audience who will have the perception and imagination to discover and become fascinated, if not entrapped, in the literary mazes (puzzles, really) he builds.

Reply: Item #5191086 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00# bee, The F&SF (Oct/Nov '96) story is "The Man in the Pepper Mill," which IMHO harkens back to "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories." Or maybe you are thinking of the F&SF (Jan '97) story "No Planets Strike," which features talking animals in an interstellar clown show. The anthology SPACE OPERA, edited by McCaffrery and Scarborough, has "Bluesberry Jam," a dystopian near future (or perhaps "dark future" captures the sense better?) story. My favorite of the 1996 shorts. (Me, I finally got and read "The Sailor Who Sailed After the Sun," in the anthology GRAILS: QUESTS OF THE DAWN. While it isn't even remotely Urthian, seeing as how it is set in a "City of Lost Children" sort of world, it is possible to read it as an overview of the Urth Cycle. Which is disturbing in some ways; since, if you look at it this way, the first Severian is a nice boy and his successor, the Severian of the narrative, is literally a very clever monkey. "Revenge of the Tanist?" I'm wondering. All from my soon-to-be patented school of over-reading, "Uberlesen!") =mantis=