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Index · 24 messages · 15 voices · 12 Dec 2002 – 09 Aug 2003

Digest from urth@urth.net

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jismulkstis12 Dec 2002, 12:31originalas archived
Digest from urth@urth.net
↰ answers Michael Andre-Driussi · by quotation
Sorry, "Muskrat" has already been taken. Granted, I don't write often, but I've posted twice using "Muskrat". I know this seems petty, but muskrats are special to me. However, if "ArchD'Ikon Zibethicus" is really your name, "Muskrat" is yours without any argument.
406 quoted lines · 1–3 deep
Message-Id: <v03130300ba1c0610fdae@[209.179.218.51]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 17:46:24 -0800 To: urth at urth.net From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com> Subject: (urth) FLF: the four and who/what they are Reply-To: urth at urth.net Catharine Margaret Garth, aka Candy, is the massive (250+ pound) pale prostitute who wears white (a virginal color) which is sometimes (e.g., as she is singing at the bar in the Consort hotel) mistaken for blue (blue and white being the colors of Mary, mother of Jesus, iirc). To escape from Belmont, the mental hospital, she has to put on the uniform of a black nurse (note the contrast); after which, since people assume she is a nurse, she begins to act like one, and becomes a healer. The witch in black (opposite to Candy's white), known as Madame Serpentina and Marie, uses her own strip-show seduction to manipulate Ozzie Barnes
early on in the novel, but despite all that she seems to be a virgin (the gypsy Pete says that King would kill her if she had a non-gypsy boyfriend, if I read the passage right, and this seems like a real threat rather than an exagerration). She is also dark skinned, as the black nurse points out. Osgood Myles Barnes. (Why do three of the four have hidden names beginning with "M"? I heard that question 16 years ago and now I ask it myself. Does it have to do with the fact that "M" is at the middle of the alphabet?) He talks about being Popeye, but it isn't until after Phil Reeder, the crazy drunken sailor changes clothes with him at Belmont (and loses the glass eye) that he really becomes Popeye, complete with towering Olive Oyl (Robin Valor), Sweet Pea (Little Ozzie), and Bluto (Phil Reeder). In addition to this, he is the magician Oz and a satyr. James Stubb. Ozzie says his original name, "Stubbe," means "room." Which does not ring any bells for me, unless it points to "Free as the
House/Country of Oz" thread. Three of the characters have something about their eyes. Three of the characters have Freudian fixations which are psychological explanations of their vices/character imbalances (Candy's gluttony; Ozzy's lust; Stubb's inability to feel). EYES FIXATION OZ CHARACTER Candy na Oral Dorothy? Witch contact lenses na Ozma? Ozzy glass eye Genital Wizard Oz Stubb glasses Anal Tin Woodman? I wonder if Candy is "normal girl of Earth" Dorothy to the Witch's Ozma "sorcerer-princess of Oz"? I make the tentative link between Stubb and Tin Woodman mainly because I think Stubb's "hard boiled" persona shows his inability to feel (the Tin man's problem) as well as the slighter details: Stubb vaguely suggests to me something cut (like the stump of a felled tree); Stubb is the one who retrieves the axe after the accident in front of Free's house. =City of Oz under seige=
To fend off the demolition, each of the four does what he/she can. The witch summons up a chthonic entity that stops the police from going around the house to the back door (unless this is done by Free himself?), and so confuses them that they break into the neighbor's house (Mrs. Baker's). Candy throws water, which first chases the cops away and then freezes on the porch, turning it into a slippery trap; later she slicks herself up with baby oil to inhibit their attempts to remove her from the house. Stubb tries calling all the politicians he knows, and this brings the tv news. Barnes is the one who calls in all the business men who mob Sergeant Proudy, including: Mick Malloy (ex-cop, life insurance salesman); Steve Marshal (life insurance); Nate Glasser with P, E, G & D (investment counselors); and Sim Sheppard (Florida real estate). Nathanial Glasser is the one who wears blue-tinted spectacles (naturally). This seems to be a clear pointer to the Emerald City of Oz, where everyone
wears green spectacles. More specifically, it suggests the first man who is seen wearing these curious glasses: the Guardian of the Gates of Oz. And Nate Glasser is, in fact, a guardian of the portal of Free's house (pointing to "Free as the House/City of Oz"). In the first Oz book, the Army of Oz is a single soldier (wearing green spectacles). In the second book, iirc, Oz is overrun by an invading army, a coalition of militants from each of the four member-states of Oz, and after the Ozma restoration a more modern army of many generals and one private is established in Oz. The fact that of the 100 or so businessmen there are four named suggests comparison to the coalition army, and the fact that the Florida real estate salesman has to wear beachcomber attire in winter shows that he represents "the South," much as the coalition army is made up of members from North, South, East, and West, with the differences marked by a bit of color in their uniforms.
The fire axe which is used against the door of the house and later beans Sergeant Proudy in the head, while it looks to be a normal axe, in the landscape of Oz it can only belong to one figure: Nick Chopper, the Tin Woodman. (Not that Officer Williams, who was using the axe, is to be associated with the Oz hero: as noted above, I begin to wonder if Jim Stubb is a version of Nick Chopper.) So in FLF, the Oz elements emerge in such a way as to reinforce the notion that Free's house is the land of Oz, or at least the Emerald City: only this time the beseigers (cops and wrecking crew) are set apon by a coalition army from four points of the compass (whereas in the second Oz book the coalition army is laying seige to the city). Again, I'm not an expert on Oz or Freud, so I stand by ready for corrections on matters relating to either one or anything else. =mantis= --
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 21:54:39 -0500 From: William Ansley <wansley at warwick.net> Subject: Re: (urth) Nicknames? To: urth at urth.net Message-id: <a05100300ba1c5456b0a3@[10.0.1.31]> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Reply-To: urth at urth.net "ArchD'Ikon Zibethicus" <zibethicus at hotmail.com> wrote:
Ummm...I just joined...are we supposed to be using Vironseque nicknames? Will my existing name do - it is that of an animal... Is there a digest available? I forgot to ask...
First, welcome. I certainly do not speak in any official capacity for the list, but there is no requirement to use a "Vironesque" nickname unless you want to; I have never used one. Your existing name is perfect, actually. Ondatra zibethicus or the Common Muskrat - you fit right in with Nutria and alga. There is a archive of the list available at <http://www.urth.net/urth/>.
If you want to subscribe to a digest version of the mailing list, send an email to urth-request at urth.net with the text: digest true as the only text in the body of the message. Ranjit Bhatnagar, the very generous fellow who is responsible for the existence of this list in the first place has prepared a summary of all you should need to know to participate in the Urth mailing list here: http://www.urth.net/urth/join.txt This should be the same info you get via email when you join the list. I am looking forward to hearing what you have to say. You can't be any crazier than the last few people who have joined the discussion. <G> -- William Ansley --
Message-ID: <040301c2a0c1$eafac330$a6c56596@ABTOSHIBA> From: "Andrew Bollen" <abollen at internode.on.net> To: <urth at urth.net> Subject: (urth) OT: Nigerian scams Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 14:03:41 +1100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net Not a Wolfean take on Nigerian "4-1-9" scams, but very damn funny nonetheless: Check out http://www.quatloos.com/brad-c/directory01.htm. Record of a guy's counter-scamming of the scammers. "The Porcine Princess Chronicles" and "The Senator's Beach Pledge" both highly recommended. Quatloos is a magnificent site devoted to chronicling and exposing all the various low-life scams going around - very useful if you have relatives or friends about to quaff on some kind of snake oil. Slightly more Wolfean perhaps is http://www.quatloos.com/cm-omega/cm-omega.htm. Visions of the land of milk & honey, millianarian yearnings, fundamentalism & dumb greed combined in one
of the most pathetic displays of human stupidity ever. - AB --
From: "ArchD'Ikon Zibethicus" <zibethicus at hotmail.com> To: urth at urth.net Subject: Re: (urth) Nicknames? Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 04:15:32 +0000 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: <F22kewXtsLVNzfcBcnt000113af at hotmail.com> Reply-To: urth at urth.net
First, welcome.
Thank you.
Your existing name is perfect, actually. Ondatra zibethicus or the Common Muskrat - you fit right > in with Nutria and alga.
That's the one! In honour of Deacon Mushrat from `Pogo'...
If you want to subscribe to a digest version of the mailing list, <snip> This should be the same info you get via email when you join the list.
Yes, thanks; I have now (hopefully) attended to this. I either didn't get or didn't notice the E-mail in question when I posted the preceeding message. I will try to poke around in the archives, time permitting.
I am looking forward to hearing what you have to say. You can't be any
crazier than the last few people who have joined the discussion.
Many would disagree! (However, I suppose that's my cue for a tedious brief introduction...) I can tell a hawk from a handsaw well enough when the wind is in some quadrants, but only on some days... I am an ageing, irritable recluse in increasingly poor health, living in poverty with my young family in the Blue Mountains of Australia (which very nearly got burned a couple of days ago in bushfires). I was introducted to `Shadow' in the mid-1980s by a friend who mistook me for an intellectual, and I immediately realised that I had encountered a uniquely significant fantasy author. I read `Shadow', I believe, in a single weekend session, and then immediately sought out the rest of the series. The rest, as they say is history. What more is there to say? Oh, yes - I have kept in touch with the development of the Long Sun and Short Sun series, of course, as well as gathered everything else I can find.
I hope that they never attempt to film the Book of the New Sun, but I can see in my mind's eye a deluxe anniversary hardback edition sumptuously and strikingly illustrated by Barry Moser's beautiful woodcuts... Other authors whom I particularly enjoy include (off the top of my head) Ambrose Bierce, James Branch Cabell, J. G. Ballard, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Amit Chaudhuri, R. A. Lafferty, Alasdair Gray and Jonathan Carroll. Look forward to talking, ->Zx<- _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus --
Message-ID: <002f01c2a0cf$216b9bd0$d5456c42@akt> From: "Alice K. Turner" <aturner6 at nyc.rr.com> To: <urth at urth.net> Subject: Re: (urth) Nicknames? Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 23:38:19 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net You can use any name you like, but if you're going to be posting a lot that unwieldy sig is going to cause some annoyance. -alga
Ummm...I just joined...are we supposed to be using Vironseque nicknames? Will my existing name do - it is that of an animal... Is there a digest available? I forgot to ask... ->Zx<- ____________________________________________________________ The proliferation of children who can reach the heights of computer creation brings to light a basic feature of the computer itself - it is infantile...[t]he microcomputer is above all a game and is infantile. But it is also very dangerous. We need to know whether it does not also
'infantalize'. -Jacques Ellul, `The Technological Bluff' ________________________________________________ The disciple Hui-K'e asked Bodhidharma, "Please help me to quiet my mind." Bodhidharma said, "Bring me your mind so that I can quiet it." After a moment Hui-K'e said, "But I can't find my mind." "There," said Bodhidharma, "I have now quieted your mind." -Charles Luk ________________________________________________ Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion. -Democritos _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail --
--
Message-ID: <000a01c2a0e1$1c610000$f53cc6d8 at rclackey.stic.net> From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net> To: "urth" <urth at urth.net> Subject: Re: (urth) FLF: the four and who/what they are Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 00:46:50 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net mantis wrote:
Catharine Margaret Garth, aka Candy, is the massive (250+ pound) pale prostitute who wears white (a virginal color) which is sometimes (e.g., as she is singing at the bar in the Consort hotel) mistaken for blue (blue and white being the colors of Mary, mother of Jesus, iirc). To escape from Belmont, the mental hospital, she has to put on the uniform of a black nurse (note the contrast); after which, since people assume she is a nurse, she begins to act like one, and becomes a healer.
I can't address the OZ stuff, so just a few notations. Pink is often
mentioned in connection with Candy, especially her hands. She was wearing a garish pink robe in the morning before she took Free to breakfast. She changed into a pink sweater and black skirt. Her open-toed sandals were also pink. FWIW.
I wonder if Candy is "normal girl of Earth" Dorothy to the Witch's Ozma "sorcerer-princess of Oz"? I make the tentative link between Stubb and Tin Woodman mainly because I think Stubb's "hard boiled" persona shows his inability to feel (the Tin man's problem) as well as the slighter details: Stubb vaguely suggests to me something cut (like the stump of a felled tree); Stubb is the one who retrieves the axe after the accident in front of Free's house.
I took his name to be related to his height. As in stubby. The "hard boiled" persona is straight out of old books/movies. IIRC, at one point Stubb even recalls one such movie role played by Robert Mitchum. I don't see Stubb as hard boiled; he just doesn't wear his emotions on his sleeve. He is often
sympathetic to people, especially Candy. As for assigning OZ roles: there is one point, near the end of chapter 14, when Candy and Barnes are together in the hotel lobby, before they have ever gone up to Serpentina's room. She had just spoken to Stubb on the house phone. She said **to** Barnes: "Seventh floor, room seventy-seven, Ozzie. We're off to see the wizard." So how can Barnes be the wizard? Only the witch and Stubb were up in the room. -Roy --
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 08:22:13 -0600 Subject: (urth) OT: Leviathan 3 From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net> To: <urth at urth.net> Message-ID: <BA1CA633.3C7FB%adamsteph at earthlink.net> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net I'm putting in a plug for this recent anthology, which is one of the best original fantasy-sf anthologies I've read. (Most of the stories are original; the few that aren't originally appeared in obscure places.) There are a number of well-known contributors: Moorcock, Stableford and Emshmiller on the sf side and Remy de Goncourt, Theophile Gautier, and Rikki Ducournet on the "mainstream" side. There are also some good pieces by less well-known writers, including a twisted take on Oz by Stepan Chapman (author of The Troika). It's co-edited by Jeff VanderMeer (though he's not a contributor), and published by the Ministry of Whimsy (www.ministryofwhimsy.com), which
published the above-mentioned The Troika. My excuse for discussing Leviathan 3 on this list is that many of the stories, though not all, revolve around books or libraries, and there is a sequence of Borges-inspired short stories running through the anthology (though these latter are actually among the weaker contributions). --Adam --
Message-Id: <v03130300ba1cfe7bb45f@[209.179.252.144]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 09:28:32 -0800 To: urth at urth.net From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com> Subject: Re: (urth) FLF: the four and who/what they are Reply-To: urth at urth.net Roy wrote:
I can't address the OZ stuff, so just a few notations. Pink is often mentioned in connection with Candy, especially her hands. She was wearing a garish pink robe in the morning before she took Free to breakfast. She changed into a pink sweater and black skirt. Her open-toed sandals were also pink. FWIW.
Good points. I took the pinkness of her fingers as pointers to her pale skin color. Her pink and black clothes were worn, iirc, when she was "off duty." In any event, I believe there are strong connections between Candy and the color white, just as there are links between the witch and black. Re Stubb, Roy wrote:
I took his name to be related to his height. As in stubby.
Sure, that's there. I didn't mean to exclude it.
The "hard boiled" persona is straight out of old books/movies. IIRC, at one point Stubb even recalls one such movie role played by Robert Mitchum.
Odd thing about that movie: I couldn't find it using the very useful Internet Movie Database. Sure, Robert Mitchum shows up, but there is no movie listed with him and "Linda Loring," in fact, iirc, there is no listing for a "Linda Loring" at all. From the notes in FLF, one might think that "Hellcats of the Navy" is about Naval pilots. It is about a submarine. I will agree that my accuracy was off in writing that Stubb has an inability to feel: after all, I previously wrote that he was choleric! To ammend it, I would say that Stubb wants to have a "heart," that is, he should have feelings of a more positive, sanguinary nature; and this wanting to have a heart is a tenuous link to the Tin Man (who wants to have all feelings).
As for assigning OZ roles: there is one point, near the end of chapter 14, when Candy and Barnes are together in the hotel lobby, before they have ever gone up to Serpentina's room. She had just spoken to Stubb on the house phone. She said **to** Barnes: "Seventh floor, room seventy-seven, Ozzie. We're off to see the wizard." So how can Barnes be the wizard? Only the witch and Stubb were up in the room.
There are several references to the movies (including that one reference to "The Wiz"). In the case you cite, I think the points are: the witch is a magic user; they are going to see her. (If the musical had contained a song about visiting Glinda, a trip which happens in the book, iirc, maybe they would have used that song.) The same song is used again, when they have escaped from Belmont, Little Ozzie sings it to the group (Little Ozzie, Big Ozzie, Nimo, Stubb, and Candy) and I don't think they are really going to see a wizard at that point, at all. (But I do wonder at how this
group might map to Dorothy and her four companions, because Nimo seems to paint himself as the Scarecrow with his parody of the Scarecrow's song "If I Only Had a Brain." Dorothy: Candy Scarecrow: Nimo the Clown Tin Man: ? Cowardly Lion: Toto: ? ) As for Ozzie being the Wizard Oz (aside from the name, which is as obvious as stub = short). In the land of Oz there are two clear classes of magic: there is real magic (practiced by the witches, Ozma, and others) and there is stage magic, i.e., fakery (practiced by Wizard Oz). While Ozzie's novelties for sale are mainly pornographic items or toy puzzles, he does have some of those "practical joke" tricks, like the sneezing powder that goes off when Proudy grabs him (which causes him to sneeze and contributes to the accident with the axe: the axe-ident). This use of simple dime-store trickery is very much like Wizard Oz in DOROTHY AND THE WIZARD IN OZ. Re Ozma and Dorothy, I should point out the details of their hair: Ozma's
hair is, I believe, dark and long (down her back); Dorothy's hair, contrary to the movie, is blonde and shoulder-length (true, it is in long braids for the first book, but once Ozma is introduced [book 2], Dorothy's hair is as I reported above, afaik). A nice physical match for the crowning glories of the witch and Candy. A word about Sgt. Proudy: he is villainous not because he serves the eviction notice but because he is a corrupt cop -- he bullies money out of Candy and hits her. There seems to be more corruption in the 13th Precinct: that other cop is getting money out of Barney the loan shark. =mantis= --
From: "James Wynn" <crushtv at HotPOP.com> To: <urth at urth.net> Subject: RE: (urth) Nicknames? Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 11:33:06 -0600 Message-ID: <PLEFLJEIBGPANKPDCAMPEELDCHAA.crushtv at HotPOP.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net
"ArchD'Ikon Zibethicus" <zibethicus at hotmail.com> wrote: Ummm...I just joined...are we supposed to be using Vironseque nicknames? Will my existing name do - it is that of an animal...
William Ansley [mailto:wansley at warwick.net] wrote: I certainly do not speak in any official capacity for the list, but there is no requirement to use a "Vironesque" nickname unless you want to; I have never used one. Your existing name is perfect, actually. Ondatra zibethicus or the Common Muskrat - you fit right in with Nutria and alga.
I am looking forward to hearing what you have to say. You can't be any crazier than the last few people who have joined the discussion.
<G>
Crush offers: I second William's optimism and if you want a Vironese nickname I can also suggest that you merely shorten your last name to Zibeth or even Zibet which are other names for the civit cat. Heck you could even use "Musk" in that case which is also synonymous with "civit" (as president of the crazies, I felt obliged to offer that one ;-D). -- Crush --
Message-ID: <20021211190237.31521.qmail at web14401.mail.yahoo.com> Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 11:02:37 -0800 (PST) From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com> Subject: (urth) Two FLF details To: urth at urth.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Reply-To: urth at urth.net I carelessly deleted a post that mentioned Linda Loring. She's a character in at least two of Raymond Chandler's novels--Philip Marlowe is in love with her. Robert Mitchum played Marlowe in The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely, but Linda Loring isn't in those movies. The IMDB appears to search only for real people, not characters. Also, Unnamed City has a TV station called WROM (in Stubbs' questioning of Mrs. Baker). The only TV station by that name that I could find is or more likely was in Rome, Georgia--which can't be the setting of FLF, at least in our universe. Maybe a reference to a Rome that's more important to Wolfe? -- Jerry Friedman
__________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com --
From: "James Wynn" <crushtv at HotPOP.com> To: <urth at urth.net> Subject: RE: (urth) Two FLF details Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 13:48:01 -0600 Message-ID: <PLEFLJEIBGPANKPDCAMPCELFCHAA.crushtv at HotPOP.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net Actually IMDB **will** search for characters (just enter Philip Marlowe and you'll see it is true). It appears no movie (listed there) used the character or at least the name "Linda Loring". -- Crush -----Original Message----- From: Jerry Friedman [mailto:jerry_friedman at yahoo.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2002 1:03 PM To: urth at urth.net Subject: (urth) Two FLF details I carelessly deleted a post that mentioned Linda Loring. She's a character in at least two of Raymond Chandler's novels--Philip Marlowe is in love with her. Robert Mitchum played Marlowe in The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely, but Linda Loring isn't in those movies.
The IMDB appears to search only for real people, not characters. Also, Unnamed City has a TV station called WROM (in Stubbs' questioning of Mrs. Baker). The only TV station by that name that I could find is or more likely was in Rome, Georgia--which can't be the setting of FLF, at least in our universe. Maybe a reference to a Rome that's more important to Wolfe? -- Jerry Friedman __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com -- --
MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: RE: (urth) Nicknames? Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 13:34:12 -0700 Message-ID: <11CFA5F21C19884E882246F39DBE4B1A0D744A at SDCEXMB01.corp.siebel.com> From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com> To: urth at urth.net Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Reply-To: urth at urth.net
Your existing name is perfect, actually. Ondatra zibethicus or the Common Muskrat - you fit right > in with Nutria and alga.
=20 That's the one! In honour of Deacon Mushrat from `Pogo'...
Ah, bravo! Another appreciator of the great American humorists --=20 mine own nom du Viron coming indirectly from Don Marquis, I salute you, sah. --Blattid --
Message-ID: <000e01c2a15c$1d770e00$093ec6d8 at rclackey.stic.net> From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net> To: "urth" <urth at urth.net> Subject: (urth) FLF: The planes Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 15:27:25 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net There are some problems with both the High Country and the B-17 that I can't resolve. At the end of the book Free tells the four boarders that there are two ways to leave the High Country, either the gizmo or the B-17. Use of the gizmo entails time-travel; the B-17 doesn't. There is no doubt that when the four were put aboard the B-17 it was January 1983. Free also makes reference to the fact that the year on board the High Country is the same as the year on the ground, or 1983. There is also no doubt that the B-17 came from the W.W. II era, as did the crew. The crew's lack of contemporary knowledge, their clothing, and their artifacts (guns,
cigarettes) all point to the 1940s. Okay, but the problem is, how did the B-17 get from 1942 to 1982? Judging from the backdoor of Free's house, use of a gizmo involves passage through some sort of field in order for the person/object to be transported through time. In other words, when the gizmo on High Country was used, neither the plane itself nor the other persons/objects on it were transported. The High Country got to 1982 the hard way, by flying continuously for forty years. When the B-17 appeared in November 1982, how did it get there? Improbable as it may seem, the duffel-coated Whitten in 1982 seems to be totally ignorant of the fact that the High Country, in that year, is completely abandoned and has been for many years. In fact, judging from the dates on papers the four found, and the globe which still showed many former colonies as still being colonies, and the natural decay of fabrics and other items, the plane seems to have been abandoned since the war years. After
all, once the first use of the gizmo to travel to 1952 was successful, the original purpose for building the High Country no longer mattered. All the future history books showed that the government powers were not and never had been threatened. There was no reason for the powerful men to stay on the plane, so they didn't. The only purpose the plane then had was as a future staging platform for the gizmo. The OSS wanted to go into the future to get a jump on future gadgetry that might be useful to them in their operations. 1982 was the year they chose to travel to and set up a base of operations, which is when and why Whitten bought the Flying Carpet. The orders that Whitten thought came from 'on high' didn't come from the plane, they were planted by his future self, after he deserted. At least, that's how I see it. But I can't explain the B-17. -Roy --
Message-Id: <v03130300ba1d6600985d@[209.179.217.250]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 15:01:09 -0800 To: urth at urth.net From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com> Subject: Re: (urth) FLF: The planes Reply-To: urth at urth.net Roy wrote:
There are some problems with both the High Country and the B-17 that I can't resolve. At the end of the book Free tells the four boarders that there are two ways to leave the High Country, either the gizmo or the B-17. Use of the gizmo entails time-travel; the B-17 doesn't. There is no doubt that when the four were put aboard the B-17 it was January 1983. Free also makes reference to the fact that the year on board the High Country is the same as the year on the ground, or 1983. There is also no doubt that the B-17 came from the W.W. II era, as did the crew. The crew's lack of contemporary knowledge, their clothing, and their artifacts (guns,
cigarettes) all point to the 1940s. Okay, but the problem is, how did the B-17 get from 1942 to 1982? Judging from the backdoor of Free's house, use of a gizmo involves passage through some sort of field in order for the person/object to be transported through time. In other words, when the gizmo on High Country was used, neither the plane itself nor the other persons/objects on it were transported. The High Country got to 1982 the hard way, by flying continuously for forty years. When the B-17 appeared in November 1982, how did it get there?
When Buck Whitten brought his team from August 20, 1942 to November 5, 1982, they came in the B-17. Presumably the gizmo on High Country can be set to project outside of the High Country as well as in a doorway (in the High Country or in Free's house). The B-17 then flies through the sky-door and into 1982. "On the other hand, if High Country or some successor . . . was still
flying and we wanted to take something big home [to 1942], we could do that in the plane" (ch. 59, 392). Thus the HC gizmo can make a plane-size door, the little gizmo can make a man-size door. I hope this resolves your initial problem so we can move onto the next: what is the perspective from the flight-crew of the B-17? That is, those two guys (one Army, one Navy) seem to have had some experience in flying through time, and yet they have not lived in the 1980s, or if they have they have not known it. If they are the original crew who flew in with Buck, then maybe they flew back to 1942 . . . otherwise they have been living in 1982 for a couple of months (November 5 to January 22), under wraps by Buck & Co. (so they would not know they were in the 80s), but during which time they would use up their Camel cigarettes and matches. That is (and maybe this is just a refinement of your original problem): the B-17 seems to have come directly from 1942 specifically for this one
mission, and to have gone back to 1942 right after. But this is not a problem if the 1982 High Country gizmo is set to "outdoor" sky-door mode and the target year of 1942. The reason this one plane and crew must be used for =all= traffic to and from High Country is plain. I note that the plane left after it dropped off the four. It might have gone back to 1942 (lessen the chance of time-contamination) or it might have landed back in 1982 for simple refueling prior to going up again to get Ozzie Barnes, the one of the four who did not go through the indoor gizmo portal. Also note: the three who went through the gizmo on High Country did not teleport to Free's house--instead they would have found themselves in the abandoned High Country of whatever year the gizmo is set to, and have to be ferried down to the surface via B-17. =mantis= --
James Wynn12 Dec 2002, 15:51originalas archived
↳ follows jismulkstis · by subject
Personally, I always preferred the original Amerind name, "musquash". -----Original Message----- From: jismulkstis at att.net [mailto:jismulkstis at att.net] Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 6:32 AM To: urth at urth.net Subject: (urth) Re: Digest from urth at urth.net Sorry, "Muskrat" has already been taken. Granted, I don't write often, but I've posted twice using "Muskrat". I know this seems petty, but muskrats are special to me. However, if "ArchD'Ikon Zibethicus" is really your name, "Muskrat" is yours without any argument.
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Message-Id: <v03130300ba1c0610fdae@[209.179.218.51]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 17:46:24 -0800 To: urth at urth.net From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com> Subject: (urth) FLF: the four and who/what they are Reply-To: urth at urth.net Catharine Margaret Garth, aka Candy, is the massive (250+ pound) pale prostitute who wears white (a virginal color) which is sometimes (e.g., as she is singing at the bar in the Consort hotel) mistaken for blue (blue and white being the colors of Mary, mother of Jesus, iirc). To escape from Belmont, the mental hospital, she has to put on the uniform of a black nurse (note the contrast); after which, since people assume she is a nurse, she begins to act like one, and becomes a healer. The witch in black (opposite to Candy's white), known as Madame Serpentina and Marie, uses her own strip-show seduction to manipulate Ozzie Barnes
early on in the novel, but despite all that she seems to be a virgin (the gypsy Pete says that King would kill her if she had a non-gypsy boyfriend, if I read the passage right, and this seems like a real threat rather than an exagerration). She is also dark skinned, as the black nurse points out. Osgood Myles Barnes. (Why do three of the four have hidden names beginning with "M"? I heard that question 16 years ago and now I ask it myself. Does it have to do with the fact that "M" is at the middle of the alphabet?) He talks about being Popeye, but it isn't until after Phil Reeder, the crazy drunken sailor changes clothes with him at Belmont (and loses the glass eye) that he really becomes Popeye, complete with towering Olive Oyl (Robin Valor), Sweet Pea (Little Ozzie), and Bluto (Phil Reeder). In addition to this, he is the magician Oz and a satyr. James Stubb. Ozzie says his original name, "Stubbe," means "room." Which does not ring any bells for me, unless it points to "Free as the
House/Country of Oz" thread. Three of the characters have something about their eyes. Three of the characters have Freudian fixations which are psychological explanations of their vices/character imbalances (Candy's gluttony; Ozzy's lust; Stubb's inability to feel). EYES FIXATION OZ CHARACTER Candy na Oral Dorothy? Witch contact lenses na Ozma? Ozzy glass eye Genital Wizard Oz Stubb glasses Anal Tin Woodman? I wonder if Candy is "normal girl of Earth" Dorothy to the Witch's Ozma "sorcerer-princess of Oz"? I make the tentative link between Stubb and Tin Woodman mainly because I think Stubb's "hard boiled" persona shows his inability to feel (the Tin man's problem) as well as the slighter details: Stubb vaguely suggests to me something cut (like the stump of a felled tree); Stubb is the one who retrieves the axe after the accident in front of Free's house. =City of Oz under seige=
To fend off the demolition, each of the four does what he/she can. The witch summons up a chthonic entity that stops the police from going around the house to the back door (unless this is done by Free himself?), and so confuses them that they break into the neighbor's house (Mrs. Baker's). Candy throws water, which first chases the cops away and then freezes on the porch, turning it into a slippery trap; later she slicks herself up with baby oil to inhibit their attempts to remove her from the house.
Stubb
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tries calling all the politicians he knows, and this brings the tv news. Barnes is the one who calls in all the business men who mob Sergeant Proudy, including: Mick Malloy (ex-cop, life insurance salesman); Steve Marshal (life insurance); Nate Glasser with P, E, G & D (investment counselors); and Sim Sheppard (Florida real estate). Nathanial Glasser is the one who wears blue-tinted spectacles (naturally). This seems to be a clear pointer to the Emerald City of Oz, where everyone
wears green spectacles. More specifically, it suggests the first man who is seen wearing these curious glasses: the Guardian of the Gates of Oz. And Nate Glasser is, in fact, a guardian of the portal of Free's house (pointing to "Free as the House/City of Oz"). In the first Oz book, the Army of Oz is a single soldier (wearing green spectacles). In the second book, iirc, Oz is overrun by an invading army, a coalition of militants from each of the four member-states of Oz, and after the Ozma restoration a more modern army of many generals and one private is established in Oz. The fact that of the 100 or so businessmen there are four named suggests comparison to the coalition army, and the fact that the Florida real estate salesman has to wear beachcomber attire in winter shows that he represents "the South," much as the coalition army is made up of members from North, South, East, and West, with the differences marked by a bit of color in their uniforms.
The fire axe which is used against the door of the house and later beans Sergeant Proudy in the head, while it looks to be a normal axe, in the landscape of Oz it can only belong to one figure: Nick Chopper, the Tin Woodman. (Not that Officer Williams, who was using the axe, is to be associated with the Oz hero: as noted above, I begin to wonder if Jim Stubb is a version of Nick Chopper.) So in FLF, the Oz elements emerge in such a way as to reinforce the notion that Free's house is the land of Oz, or at least the Emerald City: only this time the beseigers (cops and wrecking crew) are set apon by a coalition army from four points of the compass (whereas in the second Oz book the coalition army is laying seige to the city). Again, I'm not an expert on Oz or Freud, so I stand by ready for corrections on matters relating to either one or anything else. =mantis= --
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 21:54:39 -0500 From: William Ansley <wansley at warwick.net> Subject: Re: (urth) Nicknames? To: urth at urth.net Message-id: <a05100300ba1c5456b0a3@[10.0.1.31]> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Reply-To: urth at urth.net "ArchD'Ikon Zibethicus" <zibethicus at hotmail.com> wrote:
Ummm...I just joined...are we supposed to be using Vironseque nicknames? Will my existing name do - it is that of an animal... Is there a digest available? I forgot to ask...
First, welcome. I certainly do not speak in any official capacity for the list, but there is no requirement to use a "Vironesque" nickname unless you want to; I have never used one. Your existing name is perfect, actually. Ondatra zibethicus or the Common Muskrat - you fit right in with Nutria and alga. There is a archive of the list available at <http://www.urth.net/urth/>.
If you want to subscribe to a digest version of the mailing list, send an email to urth-request at urth.net with the text: digest true as the only text in the body of the message. Ranjit Bhatnagar, the very generous fellow who is responsible for the existence of this list in the first place has prepared a summary of all you should need to know to participate in the Urth mailing list here: http://www.urth.net/urth/join.txt This should be the same info you get via email when you join the list. I am looking forward to hearing what you have to say. You can't be any crazier than the last few people who have joined the discussion. <G> -- William Ansley --
Message-ID: <040301c2a0c1$eafac330$a6c56596@ABTOSHIBA> From: "Andrew Bollen" <abollen at internode.on.net> To: <urth at urth.net> Subject: (urth) OT: Nigerian scams Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 14:03:41 +1100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net Not a Wolfean take on Nigerian "4-1-9" scams, but very damn funny nonetheless: Check out http://www.quatloos.com/brad-c/directory01.htm. Record of a guy's counter-scamming of the scammers. "The Porcine Princess Chronicles" and "The Senator's Beach Pledge" both highly recommended. Quatloos is a magnificent site devoted to chronicling and exposing all the various low-life scams going around - very useful if you have relatives or friends about to quaff on some kind of snake oil. Slightly more Wolfean perhaps is http://www.quatloos.com/cm-omega/cm-omega.htm. Visions of the land of milk & honey, millianarian yearnings, fundamentalism & dumb greed combined in one
of the most pathetic displays of human stupidity ever. - AB --
From: "ArchD'Ikon Zibethicus" <zibethicus at hotmail.com> To: urth at urth.net Subject: Re: (urth) Nicknames? Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 04:15:32 +0000 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: <F22kewXtsLVNzfcBcnt000113af at hotmail.com> Reply-To: urth at urth.net
First, welcome.
Thank you.
Your existing name is perfect, actually. Ondatra zibethicus or the Common Muskrat - you fit right > in with Nutria and alga.
That's the one! In honour of Deacon Mushrat from `Pogo'...
If you want to subscribe to a digest version of the mailing list, <snip> This should be the same info you get via email when you join the list.
Yes, thanks; I have now (hopefully) attended to this. I either didn't get or didn't notice the E-mail in question when I posted the preceeding message. I will try to poke around in the archives, time permitting.
I am looking forward to hearing what you have to say. You can't be any
crazier than the last few people who have joined the discussion.
Many would disagree! (However, I suppose that's my cue for a tedious brief introduction...) I can tell a hawk from a handsaw well enough when the wind is in some quadrants, but only on some days... I am an ageing, irritable recluse in increasingly poor health, living in poverty with my young family in the Blue Mountains of Australia (which very nearly got burned a couple of days ago in bushfires). I was introducted to `Shadow' in the mid-1980s by a friend who mistook me for an intellectual, and I immediately realised that I had encountered a uniquely significant fantasy author. I read `Shadow', I believe, in a single weekend session, and then immediately sought out the rest of the series. The rest, as they say is history. What more is there to say? Oh, yes - I have kept in touch with the development of the Long Sun and Short Sun series, of course, as well as gathered everything else I can find.
I hope that they never attempt to film the Book of the New Sun, but I can see in my mind's eye a deluxe anniversary hardback edition sumptuously and strikingly illustrated by Barry Moser's beautiful woodcuts... Other authors whom I particularly enjoy include (off the top of my head) Ambrose Bierce, James Branch Cabell, J. G. Ballard, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Amit Chaudhuri, R. A. Lafferty, Alasdair Gray and Jonathan Carroll. Look forward to talking, ->Zx<- _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus --
Message-ID: <002f01c2a0cf$216b9bd0$d5456c42@akt> From: "Alice K. Turner" <aturner6 at nyc.rr.com> To: <urth at urth.net> Subject: Re: (urth) Nicknames? Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 23:38:19 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net You can use any name you like, but if you're going to be posting a lot that unwieldy sig is going to cause some annoyance. -alga
Ummm...I just joined...are we supposed to be using Vironseque nicknames? Will my existing name do - it is that of an animal... Is there a digest available? I forgot to ask... ->Zx<- ____________________________________________________________ The proliferation of children who can reach the heights of computer creation brings to light a basic feature of the computer itself - it is infantile...[t]he microcomputer is above all a game and is infantile.
But
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it is also very dangerous. We need to know whether it does not also
'infantalize'. -Jacques Ellul, `The Technological Bluff' ________________________________________________ The disciple Hui-K'e asked Bodhidharma, "Please help me to quiet my mind." Bodhidharma said, "Bring me your mind so that I can quiet it." After a moment Hui-K'e said, "But I can't find my mind." "There," said Bodhidharma, "I have now quieted your mind." -Charles Luk ________________________________________________ Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion. -Democritos _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail --
--
Message-ID: <000a01c2a0e1$1c610000$f53cc6d8 at rclackey.stic.net> From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net> To: "urth" <urth at urth.net> Subject: Re: (urth) FLF: the four and who/what they are Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 00:46:50 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net mantis wrote:
Catharine Margaret Garth, aka Candy, is the massive (250+ pound) pale prostitute who wears white (a virginal color) which is sometimes (e.g., as she is singing at the bar in the Consort hotel) mistaken for blue (blue and white being the colors of Mary, mother of Jesus, iirc). To escape from Belmont, the mental hospital, she has to put on the uniform of a black nurse (note the contrast); after which, since people assume she is a nurse, she begins to act like one, and becomes a healer.
I can't address the OZ stuff, so just a few notations. Pink is often
mentioned in connection with Candy, especially her hands. She was wearing a garish pink robe in the morning before she took Free to breakfast. She changed into a pink sweater and black skirt. Her open-toed sandals were also pink. FWIW.
I wonder if Candy is "normal girl of Earth" Dorothy to the Witch's Ozma "sorcerer-princess of Oz"? I make the tentative link between Stubb and Tin Woodman mainly because I think Stubb's "hard boiled" persona shows his inability to feel (the Tin man's problem) as well as the slighter details: Stubb vaguely suggests to me something cut (like the stump of a felled tree); Stubb is the one who retrieves the axe after the accident in front of Free's house.
I took his name to be related to his height. As in stubby. The "hard boiled" persona is straight out of old books/movies. IIRC, at one point Stubb even recalls one such movie role played by Robert Mitchum. I don't see Stubb as hard boiled; he just doesn't wear his emotions on his sleeve. He is often
sympathetic to people, especially Candy. As for assigning OZ roles: there is one point, near the end of chapter 14, when Candy and Barnes are together in the hotel lobby, before they have ever gone up to Serpentina's room. She had just spoken to Stubb on the house phone. She said **to** Barnes: "Seventh floor, room seventy-seven, Ozzie. We're off to see the wizard." So how can Barnes be the wizard? Only the witch and Stubb were up in the room. -Roy --
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 08:22:13 -0600 Subject: (urth) OT: Leviathan 3 From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net> To: <urth at urth.net> Message-ID: <BA1CA633.3C7FB%adamsteph at earthlink.net> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net I'm putting in a plug for this recent anthology, which is one of the best original fantasy-sf anthologies I've read. (Most of the stories are original; the few that aren't originally appeared in obscure places.)
There
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are a number of well-known contributors: Moorcock, Stableford and Emshmiller on the sf side and Remy de Goncourt, Theophile Gautier, and Rikki Ducournet on the "mainstream" side. There are also some good pieces by less well-known writers, including a twisted take on Oz by Stepan Chapman (author of The Troika). It's co-edited by Jeff VanderMeer (though he's not a contributor), and published by the Ministry of Whimsy (www.ministryofwhimsy.com), which
published the above-mentioned The Troika. My excuse for discussing Leviathan 3 on this list is that many of the stories, though not all, revolve around books or libraries, and there is a sequence of Borges-inspired short stories running through the anthology (though these latter are actually among the weaker contributions). --Adam --
Message-Id: <v03130300ba1cfe7bb45f@[209.179.252.144]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 09:28:32 -0800 To: urth at urth.net From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com> Subject: Re: (urth) FLF: the four and who/what they are Reply-To: urth at urth.net Roy wrote:
I can't address the OZ stuff, so just a few notations. Pink is often mentioned in connection with Candy, especially her hands. She was wearing a garish pink robe in the morning before she took Free to breakfast. She changed into a pink sweater and black skirt. Her open-toed sandals were also pink. FWIW.
Good points. I took the pinkness of her fingers as pointers to her pale skin color. Her pink and black clothes were worn, iirc, when she was "off duty." In any event, I believe there are strong connections between Candy and the color white, just as there are links between the witch and black. Re Stubb, Roy wrote:
I took his name to be related to his height. As in stubby.
Sure, that's there. I didn't mean to exclude it.
The "hard boiled" persona is straight out of old books/movies. IIRC, at one point Stubb even recalls one such movie role played by Robert Mitchum.
Odd thing about that movie: I couldn't find it using the very useful Internet Movie Database. Sure, Robert Mitchum shows up, but there is no movie listed with him and "Linda Loring," in fact, iirc, there is no listing for a "Linda Loring" at all. From the notes in FLF, one might think that "Hellcats of the Navy" is about Naval pilots. It is about a submarine. I will agree that my accuracy was off in writing that Stubb has an inability to feel: after all, I previously wrote that he was choleric! To ammend it, I would say that Stubb wants to have a "heart," that is, he should have feelings of a more positive, sanguinary nature; and this wanting to have a heart is a tenuous link to the Tin Man (who wants to have all feelings).
As for assigning OZ roles: there is one point, near the end of chapter 14, when Candy and Barnes are together in the hotel lobby, before they have ever gone up to Serpentina's room. She had just spoken to Stubb on the house phone. She said **to** Barnes: "Seventh floor, room seventy-seven, Ozzie. We're off to see the wizard." So how can Barnes be the wizard? Only the witch and Stubb were up in the room.
There are several references to the movies (including that one reference to "The Wiz"). In the case you cite, I think the points are: the witch is a magic user; they are going to see her. (If the musical had contained a song about visiting Glinda, a trip which happens in the book, iirc, maybe they would have used that song.) The same song is used again, when they have escaped from Belmont, Little Ozzie sings it to the group (Little Ozzie, Big Ozzie, Nimo, Stubb, and Candy) and I don't think they are really going to see a wizard at that point, at all. (But I do wonder at how this
group might map to Dorothy and her four companions, because Nimo seems to paint himself as the Scarecrow with his parody of the Scarecrow's song "If I Only Had a Brain." Dorothy: Candy Scarecrow: Nimo the Clown Tin Man: ? Cowardly Lion: Toto: ? ) As for Ozzie being the Wizard Oz (aside from the name, which is as obvious as stub = short). In the land of Oz there are two clear classes of magic: there is real magic (practiced by the witches, Ozma, and others) and there is stage magic, i.e., fakery (practiced by Wizard Oz). While Ozzie's novelties for sale are mainly pornographic items or toy puzzles, he does have some of those "practical joke" tricks, like the sneezing powder that goes off when Proudy grabs him (which causes him to sneeze and contributes to the accident with the axe: the axe-ident). This use of simple dime-store trickery is very much like Wizard Oz in DOROTHY AND THE WIZARD IN OZ. Re Ozma and Dorothy, I should point out the details of their hair: Ozma's
hair is, I believe, dark and long (down her back); Dorothy's hair, contrary to the movie, is blonde and shoulder-length (true, it is in long braids for the first book, but once Ozma is introduced [book 2], Dorothy's hair is as I reported above, afaik). A nice physical match for the crowning glories of the witch and Candy. A word about Sgt. Proudy: he is villainous not because he serves the eviction notice but because he is a corrupt cop -- he bullies money out of Candy and hits her. There seems to be more corruption in the 13th Precinct: that other cop is getting money out of Barney the loan shark. =mantis= --
From: "James Wynn" <crushtv at HotPOP.com> To: <urth at urth.net> Subject: RE: (urth) Nicknames? Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 11:33:06 -0600 Message-ID: <PLEFLJEIBGPANKPDCAMPEELDCHAA.crushtv at HotPOP.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net
"ArchD'Ikon Zibethicus" <zibethicus at hotmail.com> wrote: Ummm...I just joined...are we supposed to be using Vironseque nicknames? Will my existing name do - it is that of an animal...
William Ansley [mailto:wansley at warwick.net] wrote: I certainly do not speak in any official capacity for the list, but there is no requirement to use a "Vironesque" nickname unless you want to; I have never used one. Your existing name is perfect, actually. Ondatra zibethicus or the Common Muskrat - you fit right in with Nutria and alga.
I am looking forward to hearing what you have to say. You can't be any crazier than the last few people who have joined the discussion.
<G>
Crush offers: I second William's optimism and if you want a Vironese nickname I can also suggest that you merely shorten your last name to Zibeth or even Zibet which are other names for the civit cat. Heck you could even use "Musk" in that case which is also synonymous with "civit" (as president of the crazies, I felt obliged to offer that one ;-D). -- Crush --
Message-ID: <20021211190237.31521.qmail at web14401.mail.yahoo.com> Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 11:02:37 -0800 (PST) From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com> Subject: (urth) Two FLF details To: urth at urth.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Reply-To: urth at urth.net I carelessly deleted a post that mentioned Linda Loring. She's a character in at least two of Raymond Chandler's novels--Philip Marlowe is in love with her. Robert Mitchum played Marlowe in The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely, but Linda Loring isn't in those movies. The IMDB appears to search only for real people, not characters. Also, Unnamed City has a TV station called WROM (in Stubbs' questioning of Mrs. Baker). The only TV station by that name that I could find is or more likely was in Rome, Georgia--which can't be the setting of FLF, at least in our universe. Maybe a reference to a Rome that's more important to Wolfe? -- Jerry Friedman
__________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com --
From: "James Wynn" <crushtv at HotPOP.com> To: <urth at urth.net> Subject: RE: (urth) Two FLF details Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 13:48:01 -0600 Message-ID: <PLEFLJEIBGPANKPDCAMPCELFCHAA.crushtv at HotPOP.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net Actually IMDB **will** search for characters (just enter Philip Marlowe and you'll see it is true). It appears no movie (listed there) used the character or at least the name "Linda Loring". -- Crush -----Original Message----- From: Jerry Friedman [mailto:jerry_friedman at yahoo.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2002 1:03 PM To: urth at urth.net Subject: (urth) Two FLF details I carelessly deleted a post that mentioned Linda Loring. She's a character in at least two of Raymond Chandler's novels--Philip Marlowe is in love with her. Robert Mitchum played Marlowe in The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely, but Linda Loring isn't in those movies.
The IMDB appears to search only for real people, not characters. Also, Unnamed City has a TV station called WROM (in Stubbs' questioning of Mrs. Baker). The only TV station by that name that I could find is or more likely was in Rome, Georgia--which can't be the setting of FLF, at least in our universe. Maybe a reference to a Rome that's more important to Wolfe? -- Jerry Friedman __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com -- --
MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: RE: (urth) Nicknames? Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 13:34:12 -0700 Message-ID:
<11CFA5F21C19884E882246F39DBE4B1A0D744A at SDCEXMB01.corp.siebel.com>
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From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com> To: urth at urth.net Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Reply-To: urth at urth.net
Your existing name is perfect, actually. Ondatra zibethicus or the Common Muskrat - you fit right > in with Nutria and alga.
=20 That's the one! In honour of Deacon Mushrat from `Pogo'...
Ah, bravo! Another appreciator of the great American humorists --=20 mine own nom du Viron coming indirectly from Don Marquis, I salute you, sah. --Blattid --
Message-ID: <000e01c2a15c$1d770e00$093ec6d8 at rclackey.stic.net> From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net> To: "urth" <urth at urth.net> Subject: (urth) FLF: The planes Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 15:27:25 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net There are some problems with both the High Country and the B-17 that I can't resolve. At the end of the book Free tells the four boarders that there are two ways to leave the High Country, either the gizmo or the B-17. Use of the gizmo entails time-travel; the B-17 doesn't. There is no doubt that when the four were put aboard the B-17 it was January 1983.
Free
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also makes reference to the fact that the year on board the High Country is the same as the year on the ground, or 1983. There is also no doubt that the B-17 came from the W.W. II era, as did the crew. The crew's lack of contemporary knowledge, their clothing, and their artifacts (guns,
cigarettes) all point to the 1940s. Okay, but the problem is, how did the B-17 get from 1942 to 1982? Judging from the backdoor of Free's house, use of a gizmo involves passage through some sort of field in order for the person/object to be transported through time. In other words, when the gizmo on High Country was used, neither the plane itself nor the other persons/objects on it were transported. The High Country got to 1982 the hard way, by flying continuously for forty years. When the B-17 appeared in November 1982, how did it get there? Improbable as it may seem, the duffel-coated Whitten in 1982 seems to be totally ignorant of the fact that the High Country, in that year, is completely abandoned and has been for many years. In fact, judging from the dates on papers the four found, and the globe which still showed many former colonies as still being colonies, and the natural decay of fabrics and other items, the plane seems to have been abandoned since the war years. After
all, once the first use of the gizmo to travel to 1952 was successful, the original purpose for building the High Country no longer mattered. All the future history books showed that the government powers were not and never had been threatened. There was no reason for the powerful men to stay on the plane, so they didn't. The only purpose the plane then had was as a future staging platform for the gizmo. The OSS wanted to go into the future to get a jump on future gadgetry that might be useful to them in their operations. 1982 was the year they chose to travel to and set up a base of operations, which is when and why Whitten bought the Flying Carpet. The orders that Whitten thought came from 'on high' didn't come from the plane, they were planted by his future self, after he deserted. At least, that's how I see it. But I can't explain the B-17. -Roy --
Message-Id: <v03130300ba1d6600985d@[209.179.217.250]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 15:01:09 -0800 To: urth at urth.net From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com> Subject: Re: (urth) FLF: The planes Reply-To: urth at urth.net Roy wrote:
There are some problems with both the High Country and the B-17 that I can't resolve. At the end of the book Free tells the four boarders that there are two ways to leave the High Country, either the gizmo or the B-17. Use of the gizmo entails time-travel; the B-17 doesn't. There is no doubt that when the four were put aboard the B-17 it was January 1983.
Free
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also makes reference to the fact that the year on board the High Country is the same as the year on the ground, or 1983. There is also no doubt that the B-17 came from the W.W. II era, as did the crew. The crew's lack of contemporary knowledge, their clothing, and their artifacts (guns,
cigarettes) all point to the 1940s. Okay, but the problem is, how did the B-17 get from 1942 to 1982? Judging from the backdoor of Free's house, use of a gizmo involves passage through some sort of field in order for the person/object to be transported through time. In other words, when the gizmo on High Country was used, neither the plane itself nor the other persons/objects on it were transported. The High Country got to 1982 the hard way, by flying continuously for forty years. When the B-17 appeared in November 1982, how did it get there?
When Buck Whitten brought his team from August 20, 1942 to November 5, 1982, they came in the B-17. Presumably the gizmo on High Country can be set to project outside of the High Country as well as in a doorway (in the High Country or in Free's house). The B-17 then flies through the sky-door and into 1982. "On the other hand, if High Country or some successor . . . was still
flying and we wanted to take something big home [to 1942], we could do that in the plane" (ch. 59, 392). Thus the HC gizmo can make a plane-size door, the little gizmo can make a man-size door. I hope this resolves your initial problem so we can move onto the next: what is the perspective from the flight-crew of the B-17? That is, those two guys (one Army, one Navy) seem to have had some experience in flying through time, and yet they have not lived in the 1980s, or if they have they have not known it. If they are the original crew who flew in with Buck, then maybe they flew back to 1942 . . . otherwise they have been living in 1982 for a couple of months (November 5 to January 22), under wraps by Buck & Co. (so they would not know they were in the 80s), but during which time they would use up their Camel cigarettes and matches. That is (and maybe this is just a refinement of your original problem):
the
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B-17 seems to have come directly from 1942 specifically for this one
mission, and to have gone back to 1942 right after. But this is not a problem if the 1982 High Country gizmo is set to "outdoor" sky-door mode and the target year of 1942. The reason this one plane and crew must be used for =all= traffic to and from High Country is plain. I note that the plane left after it dropped off the four. It might have gone back to 1942 (lessen the chance of time-contamination) or it might have landed back in 1982 for simple refueling prior to going up again to get Ozzie Barnes, the one of the four who did not go through the indoor gizmo portal. Also note: the three who went through the gizmo on High Country did not teleport to Free's house--instead they would have found themselves in the abandoned High Country of whatever year the gizmo is set to, and have to be ferried down to the surface via B-17. =mantis= --
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Dan'l Danehy-Oakes12 Dec 2002, 20:35originalas archived
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Sorry, "Muskrat" has already been taken. =20 Granted, I don't write often, but I've posted twice using "Muskrat".
I don't see any reason we can't have a "Muskrat" and a "Zibethicus."=20
jismulkstis13 Dec 2002, 12:15originalas archived
↳ follows Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · by subject
I see I included the original post with yesterday's message, causing a hassle for everyone. My sincere apologies to all and it won't happen again.
Nigel Price17 Dec 2002, 23:57originalas archived
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(Nigel, delurking for a second time in a day in response to some of the hurtful comments that have been made about Marc in recent postings.) Oh come on, chaps! As for what GW would think of anyone sharing what he wrote, well, who knows? But he strikes me as a tough old bird, a wise and wily mid-westerner, well versed in the ways of the world. An engineer who has worked for a multi-national company, an author who has been in business for several decades, a family man who has brought up children....No, if he's been and done all that and not only survived but prospered, I can't see that he's going to be upset by anything Marc or anyone else does or says here. And when have any of the interviews that GW has given over the years destroyed our debate or given privileged status to the interviewees? Never! A thousand questions remain, and we continue to read and wonder, post to the list and ponder. I love these discussions, even when I've nothing to contribute, or no time to say what I might, but let's not make it personal! Nigel (about to step back into the Corridors of Time and disappear again for a while)
David Duffy20 Jan 2003, 02:09originalas archived
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Roy wrote: Another datapoint is Laura Nomos (nomos means "a lawed one," i.e., a lawyer!) and her fur coat in storage for 26 months (169). This suggests 790 (days) / 8.25 (O-time multiple) = 96 days (3 months). (I don't know, but wouldn't storage be usually for longer than that? Maybe not: maybe storage is only for Summer?)
Not having read TAD, are we perhaps talking lunar months here?
| David Duffy (MBBS PhD) ,-_|\ | email: davidD at qimr.edu.au ph: INT+61+7+3362-0217 fax: -0101 / * | Epidemiology Unit, Queensland Institute of Medical Research \,-./ | 300 Herston Rd, Brisbane, Queensland 4029, Australia GPG 4D0B994A v --
David Duffy21 Jan 2003, 03:01originalas archived
↳ follows David Duffy · by subject
Three points: instead of CMF, how about TSF (theological speculative fiction) WRT the end of TAD, Horn in OBW muses that if he returned to life with Nettle on The Lizard, one night he might walk out and go out to sea to never return, and later that dying on the rocks trying to approach a siren might be the culmination of his life (is it misogynist to have a female character who leads men to their deaths and then eats them?). And are there Greek demigods who had so much dealing with demons? I am strongly reminded of Chinese folk stories (and Monkey...and Lord of Light). Arete -- I like fishspine, but I thought we (:)) had decided it pretty clearly refers to the classical (ie pre-Christian) virtues. David Duffy.
James Wynn21 Jan 2003, 14:52originalas archived
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David Duffy reminds us: Arete -- I like fishspine, but I thought we (:)) had decided it pretty clearly refers to the classical (ie pre-Christian) virtues. Crush opines: I presumed both titles had double meanings: Mist = Fog = Memory/History Arete = Mountains = the virtues of a soldier
David Duffy22 Jan 2003, 01:14originalas archived
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Fernando Q. Gouvea wrote: What is "Malicapata"? An Otherworld disease, or something else?
Hmmm... a "capon" is a castrated male chicken, from a Latin root that means "to cut", I think. So "badly cut"?
Of course, he could have just meant a headache ;) or depression. Googling gave: http://www.angelfire.com/ri/tucker/gender/eunuchs/terms.html The method of striking or crushing is apparent in such words as the Latin capo, 'capon,' from the Greek kopto, 'strike,' and the Greek thlasiae, thlibiae, 'eunuch,' from thlao, 'crush,' and the Sanskrit vadhri, 'eunuch,' from vadh, 'strike.' Cutting is shown in the Latin castro, 'castrate,' from root kes, in the Sanskrit sas, In classical times the varieties of eunuchs were as follows: (1) Castrati, clean-cut--both penis and testicles. (2) Spadones, whose testicles only are removed by a process of dragging. (3) Thlibiae, whose testicles are bruised and crushed, the seminal glands being thus permanently injured--chiefly applied in the case of the very young. [Priests of Cybele are 2 IIRC] and rather resonantly, Kuefler, Mathew The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity. "The question of masculinity formed a key part of the intellectual life of late antiquity and was crucial to the development of Christian society. This idea is at the heart of Mathew Kuefler's new book, which revisits the Roman Empire during the third and fifth centuries of the common era. Kuefler argues that the collapse of the Roman army, an increasingly autocratic government, and growing restrictions on the traditional rights of men within marriage and sexuality all led to an endemic crisis in masculinity: men of Roman aristocracy, who had always felt themselves to be soldiers, statesmen, and the heads of households, became, by their own definition, unmanly. "The cultural and demographic success of Christianity during this epoch lay in the ability of its leaders to recognize and respond to this crisis. Drawing on the tradition of gender ambiguity in early Christian teachings, which included Jesus's exhortation that his followers "make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven," Christian writers and thinkers crafted a new masculine ideal, one that took advantage of the changing social realities in Rome, inverted the Roman model of manliness, and helped solidify Christian ideology by reinstating the masculinity of its adherents." while Nutria declaimed:
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I, Nutria, will tell you. It's the scene at the end of the book, which hints that the helots were massacred by their Spartan owners, immediately after the Spartans freed them for helping fight in the battle. Which they were. But it's far from clear in the book what is going on. There are even missing pages! Bet I'm right. Anyway, that's the one that stumped me the most.
I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you (a smiley is probably in order). Does anyone feel like comparing and contrasting Latro with the hero Leonard of the movie Memento? One might be the latter's interest in emotional (via Pavlovian conditioning) unconscious memory (FWIW the story idea is said to come from One Hundred Years of Solitude) David Duffy.
Timothy Reilly10 Apr 2003, 23:12originalas archived
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Re favourite quotes, mine is from Shadow (I think) - the sea being "as fetid and fecund as a woman's groin". Wolfe must have liked it too, because it gets a repeat in Urth (again, IIRC). Tim
Steve Case13 Apr 2003, 06:28originalas archived
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Hey guys, I need some help. I won a poetry contest and got a $50 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble. I bought Chapterhouse: Dune and ordered a Radiohead CD. (That information was irrelevant.) The point is that I still have $30 to spend on books, and I can't decide on what to buy. I want to find another author like Gene Wolfe; I want to buy a book no one's ever heard of that is incredibly good. So I'm coming to you. I know lots of Wolfe-like authors have been discussed on the list before. Tell me what book I should buy. (And by something like Wolfe I mean something well-written, thought-provoking, brilliant, and relatively clean.) If anyone can steer me in the right direction, it's you. Thanks, -Steve
Malco14 Apr 2003, 10:22originalas archived
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Lanark by Alasdair Gray --- Steve Case <scase at olivet.edu> skrev: > Hey guys, I need some help. I
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want to find another author like Gene Wolfe; I want to buy a book no one's ever heard of that is incredibly good. So I'm coming to you. I know lots of Wolfe-like authors have been discussed on the list before. Tell me what book I should buy. (And by something like Wolfe I mean something well-written, thought-provoking, brilliant, and relatively clean.) If anyone can steer me in the right direction, it's you. Thanks, -Steve
Yahoo! Mail (http://dk.mail.yahoo.com) - Gratis: 6 MB lagerplads, spamfilter og virusscan
Timothy Reilly16 Apr 2003, 23:51originalas archived
↳ follows Malco · by subject
Re Nabokov, I also greatly regret that I do not enjoy his prose as much as I'd like, given he is so admired by Wolfe, Martin Amis and other writers I greatly admire. Lolita I finished, but have had false starts on others (I may try again with Pale Fire now). The problem for me with Nabokov is that the personality revealed by the prose always sounds like such a wanker, if you'll all pardon the phrase. A natural aristocrat so proud of his verbal skills and convinced of his unquestionable superiority that any genuine human feeling seems buried. Kingsley and Martin Amis had an argument along these lines about Lolita (recounted in the latter's autobiographical Experience), with the former essentially saying that Humbert's ultimate passage of regret near the end of the novel was just a smokescreen to make it appear Nabokov really cares, when he doesn't. I confess I agree. Tim
Jonathan Laidlow20 Apr 2003, 20:21originalas archived
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While currently in my "I have no brain and I must scream" phase I would just like level the charges at Price: folky and hippy! How can we let him continue in this list? Alright alright, we contain multitudes and all that, I'll go back to the (for shame!) Star Wars novel I'm currently reading, and we'll forget I ever edited a GW website.... Do I get expelled for enjoying reading pulp fiction? Jonathan www.ultan.co.uk
jismulkstis21 Apr 2003, 14:06originalas archived
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In reply to my mail, Dave Rolsky <autarch at urth.org> recommends Feersum Endjinn for those who wish to try Iain M. Banks. A word of warning: about a quarter of that book is written phonetically (Feerum Endjinn = Fearsome Engine). I found that this interfered with my enjoyment, just as having to decode Pig's dialog in Return to the Whorl did. There's a stylistic similarity for you. I recommend Excession or Look to Windward for an intro to Banks. Use of Weapons is also very solid, but I thought the ending came somewhat out of the blue. Excession is thoughtful space opera with the best twist on the Climactic Space Battle I've ever seen. Look to Windward is about, among other things, why one should bother staying alive. I can illustrate one stylistic difference between Banks and Wolfe by noting that I doubt Mr. Wolfe would ever have one of his characters refer to another as a "tentacled scumbag fuckwit". Muskrat
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Message-ID: <006401c305c5$ff6a0420$d5456c42@akt> From: "Alice K. Turner" <aturner6 at nyc.rr.com> To: <urth at urth.net> Subject: Re: (urth) Moorcock Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 12:17:24 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net From Dan'l. quoting somebody:
(As an aside, did anyone ever write worse about sex than Heinlein.
Yep. Asimov. But not much worse.
My wife still won't believe that anyone could call nipples "those twin spiggots of desire" or claim that one woman's "nipples went spung").
These are classic, aren't they ... Up there with "five minutes of squelching noise."
Wrong. No one ever, ever, including hack porn writers, EVER, EVER wrote worse sex than Heinlein. With possibly the momentary exception of a long-forgotten 9-day wonder of the 60s or 70s called -The Harrad Experiment-. And I am something of an expert here. I should probably say,
for members of this group, that IMO Sturgeon wrote bad sex too, though not, by leagues, in the same abysmal class. -alga --
From: "ArchD'Ikon Zibethicus" <zibethicus at hotmail.com> To: urth at urth.net Subject: (urth) Gray, Wolfe, Heinlein Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 02:12:34 +0000 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: <BAY1-F173cxe64CuBZh0007ab42 at hotmail.com> Reply-To: urth at urth.net Malco:
But the text does give the impression that an alternative was at least possible and that it depended largely on Lanarks actions.
But Nastler intended Lanark to fail...you might recall that Nastler described the sort of success which Lanark fantasised about when he accepted the gig - people listen to him at the council, his speech sets profound reforms in place, he returns in triumph to a saved Unthank and is reunited with a chastened and finally appreciative Rima...and then says that he is not going to provide Lanark with anything of the sort, because "[i]f I give you an ending like that I will be like ten thousand other cheap
illusionists! I would be as bad as the late H. G. Wells! I would be worse than Goethe. Nobody who knows a thing about life or politics will believe me for a minute." (p. 492)
All of these things echo with Severians story
That's right...and it clarifies one of the commonalities I would point out between the fictions of Mr. Gray and Mr. Wolfe; their 'heros' fail, blunder, are confused and fail to understand important things. Perhaps this humanity is a part of their attraction...
And you are spot on about Sludden/Blair… g
...glad I'm not the only one who sees it that way...we just call him Sludden in my family... Allan:
I can think of few who are further from Gene Wolfe's view of the world than Alasdair Gray, brilliant though he is;
I wonder...is it actually possible to ascribe a world-view to either author when both have produced such diverse works? If you mean politico-religious outlooks, well certainly they're different,
but not necessarily as vastly as some might think.
All of these writers produce intelligent complex fictions but if there >is a difference between them and Wolfe, I would say that they all >write books which are character driven, whereas Wolfe's books possibly >use the characters to promote or act out his ideas.
Jonathan Carroll? I wonder...I have the greatest admiration for Mr. Carroll's work, but if we are to draw a dichotomy between character and idea I'd have to say that I've always thought of him as a novelist of ideas rather than character.
This could be why I have lost some of my admiration for Wolfe's recent work, and I would agree with Alga about his more recent short stories, some of which seem lacking in content and obscure for the sake of obscurity. I still have enormous admiration for the man, but sometimes it makes more sense if you just say what you mean.
I can't judge the recent short stories, but ever since reading someone's
statement on this list that Mr. Wolfe is not at his best in the short story format, I've been winding up to take mild exception, mostly on the strength of 'Forlesen', which I personally think is one of the most memorable 'SF' short stories I've read...it's actually one of the few that I do remember at all. I don't think that Mr. Wolfe obfuscates for the mere love of mystery, or at least right up to the Short Sun series, which is the last I've read. And I believe that some of the enjoyment of reading him comes from the mysteries and ambiguities...which are a decided incentive to re-reading...and speculation...and, as the discussions on this list show, the mysteries seem to have a purpose, and sometimes even admit of explanation... Blattid:
It's entirely possible, and I suspect even likely, that Isangoma, Robert, and Marie are actually citizens of the Commonwealth who wandered in and were caught in this way.
Actually, I've suddenly entirely re-visioned the Botanic Gardens in my mind ... In other words, Father Inire has built (for whose amusement?) a theme park, a sort of posthistorical Walt Disney World with living audioanimatrons.
...precisely...caught and reprogrammed according to the best information available at the time, which was the movies and/or the books of the 20th Century...of which perhaps a handful survived in the Library...they took the people from one source, and the fauna from another...millions of years have passed since then, even the continents have changed...how are they gonna know what went where?
(The horror! The horror!)
Well...the autarchy plays pretty rough as it is...and one presumes that the exhibits have their meals supplied regularly...which doesn't always happen in Nessus proper...
Like every SF/F writer from the 1950s on, Moorcock uses (consciously or not) rhetorical techniques and moves invented or improved by Heinlein to
establish the nature of his discursive pseudo-realities.
Every SF/F writer? Ballard? LeGuin? Burroughs? etc.
My wife still won't believe that anyone could call nipples "those twin spiggots of desire" or claim that one woman's "nipples went spung").
These are classic, aren't they ... Up there with "five minutes of squelching noise."
..not to mention having one of his supposedly 'sexually liberated' characters declare, in 'Stranger in a Strange Land', "[n]ine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it's partly her fault." (p. 281, NEL pbk, 1976) I was trying to read the book with all due sympathy after quarreling severely with my mother-in-law, who takes the work as gospel, but it fell from my hands at this point, never to rise again... ...presumably Mr. Heinlein has never been raped himself...I daresay he would feel quite differently about the matter if so...but at least I now
understand why Charles Manson adapted the book as his bible...he even called his son Michael Valentine Manson... (ducks to avoid return fire from water-brethren...) Chris:
something that I find a little disturbing in Wolfe's novels- the >frequency of rape committed by his protagonists or major characters.
...see above...perhaps it (sometimes) takes a female writer to present rape as a disgusting and humiliating experience with no symbolic or redemptive value...Le Guin does it rather well... * What a gloomy note to end on...how about this, instead: Happy Easter to those who believe! ->Zx<- _________________________________________________________________ MSN Instant Messenger now available on Australian mobile phones. Go to http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/hotmail_messenger.asp --
Message-ID: <001801c30628$d732e040$2f3ec6d8 at rclackey.stic.net> From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net> To: "urth" <urth at urth.net> Subject: Re: (urth) Moorcock Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 23:04:49 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net Dan'l quoted and wrote:
Mike would be deeply insulted to be compared in any way to Heinlein,
That's a pity, because to refuse such comparison is essentially to insist on situating himself outside the SF/F genre entirely; RAH is, so to speak, the elephant in the room. Like every SF/F writer from the 1950s on, Moorcock uses (consciously or not) rhetorical techniques and moves invented or improved by Heinlein to establish the nature of his discursive pseudo-realities.
Amen! I don't think I've ever been so entirely in agreement with Dan'l about anything so much as his eloquent defense of a man who shouldn't need defending.
Perhaps the most conspicuous instance of Heinlein in Wolfe is "The Last Thrilling Wonder Story". From my first reading of it to today, I have always thought that Wolfe was making some sort of dig at Heinlein -- putting him down in some way -- that I've never been comfortable with. Maybe it's just me. -Roy --
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 02:56:51 -0500 (CDT) From: Dave Rolsky <autarch at urth.org> To: urth at urth.net Subject: Re: (urth) Recommended authors Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.53.0304190253270.21644 at urth.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Reply-To: urth at urth.net On Sun, 2 Mar 2003 jismulkstis at att.net wrote:
I strongly recommend Iain M. Banks Culture novels:
[snip]
While stylistically unlike Gene Wolfe, Iain M. Banks writes novels about the moral ambiguity that comes with wielding
Ok, this thread is ancient but the general topic is still being discussed so ... Actually, I do think Iain Banks and Wolfe have some stylistic similarities, primarily in that both seem to enjoy setting complicated, elaborate sets of clues while playing with your head. Banks seems to do this more through formal structures, as in Feersum Endjinn (probably my favorite Banks novel), where he rigidly alternates chapters in cycles of
four, one for each narrating character, each of whom has a distinct voice. The trick in the book is figuring out the timeline of each character, because it's not purely sequential. He also does some fun timeline tricks in Use of Weapons. -dave /*===========> House Absolute Consulting www.houseabsolute.com ============*/ --
Message-ID: <002701c3065f$d98c0d80$0d866f83 at emma.cam.ac.uk> From: "Ed Cooke" <edbucks at cantab.net> To: <urth at urth.net> Subject: Re: (urth) Other authors Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 11:38:40 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net Good to see Goethe and Iain M. Banks cropping up in this thread. To complete the triangle, I've always assumed Banks took the title of 'Against A Dark Background' from the following passage of Goethe: "Spring had come in all its glory. An untimely storm that had been looming all day thundered down from the mountains, rain swept across the landscape, the sun returned and a rainbow shone forth from the greyness. Wilhelm rode towards it and was deeply moved. "Oh!" he said to himself. "Do life's most beautiful colours only make themselves clear to us against a dark background? Must raindrops fall for our delight? A clear day is no different
from a cloudy one, if we look at it unmoved, and what can move us but the silent hope that our hearts' natural inclination will not go unrequited? We are moved by the account of a good deed, the contemplation of an aesthetic object; they make us feel as though we are not complete strangers here, and give us intimations of a homeland towards which our highest and innermost feelings impatiently strive." --'Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre', Bk VII Ch I TBotNS is the best Bildungsroman I've ever read, mainly because it ends satisfactorily. Wieland spent thirty years rewriting his 'Agathon', eventually resorting to a further argument between the eponymous hero and the Sophist Hippias in the afterlife, and Goethe churned out a sequel in his dotage that loaded the characters with so much symbolism that no-one could really care about them anymore; but Wolfe ties up enough loose ends for a sense of closure but not so many as to preclude another two novel cycles. Bravo! --
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 08:42:47 -0500 Subject: Re: (urth) Re Other Authors From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net> To: <urth at urth.net> Message-ID: <BAC6BC84.42A28%adamsteph at earthlink.net> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net on 4/17/03 12:33 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes at katbarx at hotmail.com wrote:
"How the Whip Came Back"
Yuck; this may be my least favorite Wolfe story, with its combination of misogyny and heavy-handed satire. I do like the bit about "her Louis XIV secretary, Sal," though.
One thing I look for in fiction, and which Wolfe provides in abundance, is a sense that the problems it wrestles with are problems relevant to the world that is the case, while the problems in Moorcock's fiction seem to be relevant only to Moorcock's imagined worlds -- a problem he shares with, for example, some of Heinlein's lesser work.
I've never been able to get into Moorcock, apart from "Flux," but my impulse would be to disagree with this. My impression is that Moorcock uses deliberately unreal characters to comment on real problems. I've only read a little Ian Watson, and didn't like him, but there is a superficial similarity between him and Wolfe. They're both "cerebral" and "literary" authors, though my memory of Watson is that his stuff really is empty of emotion. Incidentally, I once read an article by Watson criticizing SotT because the protagonist was a torturer; something about making it seem that torturers weren't really so bad, iirc (but don't quote me). --Adam --
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 08:51:46 -0500 Subject: Re: (urth) Short Story collections From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net> To: <urth at urth.net> Message-ID: <BAC6BE9D.42A28%adamsteph at earthlink.net> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Reply-To: urth at urth.net Going back to Terry's original question, on 4/14/03 8:43 AM, Terry Lago at tlago at chass.utoronto.ca wrote:
Can any of you enlighten me about the various short story collections of Wolfe? How would you rank them and which ones have overlap in content? I was looking for Castle of Days recently and stumbled upon Endangered Species, and I imagine I should have just picked it up, but didn't know what would be inside (of course that's part of the pleasure of a Wolfe book I guess, right?) Can any of you enlighten me? (I guess the reason I'm wary is because I generally don't like short
stories. I usually prefer novels and there are only a handful of authors whose short fiction I enjoy...though I would be surprised if Wolfe didn't also turn out to be one of these. Still...I always hum and ha before picking up a short story collection.)
Confining myself to the five major-publisher collections, which are The Island of Dr. Death..., Castle of Days, Endangered Species, Storeys from the Old Hotel, and Strange Travellers (Gene Wolfe's Book of Days is completely reprinted in Castle), I'd say the first of these has several essential stories, the second has one essential story ("Forlesen") and a great deal of filler, and the others don't have any essential stories, though there's certainly a lot of enjoyment to be gained from them. I'd definitely start with Island, which every Wolfe fan should have read (it's the material collected here, along with 5HC, that originally brought Wolfe to prominence). After that it doesn't much matter, although _Strange
Travellers_ is probably the most solid of the remaining collections, in the sense of having the fewest throwaway stories. And none of these five overlap at all, iirc. Several small-press collections have appeared, though I don't know if any are still in print. The only one of these I've seen is Bibliomania, which is fun, but lightweight, and should definitely come after the five collections above. Hope this helps, Adam --
From: Richard Horton <rrhorton at prodigy.net> To: urth at urth.net Subject: Re: (urth) Re Other Authors Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 13:14:58 -0500 Message-ID: <1f43avche006hvfnoaq2s81o04pvbgeqlv at 4ax.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Reply-To: urth at urth.net On Fri, 18 Apr 2003 08:06:59 +0100, you wrote:
No, that was me bought that. Liege and Leaf FAIRPORT CONVENTION are a bunch of '70s Electric Folkies. Some overlap > with The Strawbs, but "music for hippies" doesn't cut it.
And their guitarist was Richard Thompson, very possibly the finest guitarist (in the rock/pop idiom) of our time. Definitely not "music for hippies". Fine stuff, actually. -- Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard.horton at sff.net Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online > (http://www.tangentonline.com) --
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 14:24:44 -0400 Message-Id: <200304191824.OAA005.07 at localhost.colby.edu> From: "Fernando Q. Gouvea" <fqgouvea at colby.edu> To: urth at urth.net Subject: Re: (urth) Short Story collections Reply-To: urth at urth.net I've been following this discussion with some interest, because I do like many of Wolfe's short stories. They are a very diverse bunch of stories, of course, with the novellas at one end of the spectrum and stories that are little more than jeux d'esprit at the other. Still, here's my take on the various collections: The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories includes several essential stories and several others that are fun but light. The best, I think are the title story, "The Death of Doctor Island", "The Eyeflash Miracles", "Tracking Song", and "Seven American Nights". In addition, I have a soft spot for "La Befana". Finally, there's "The Toy Theater", which I think is just brilliant, an elegantly cut gem that ends
up making a significant point about whether it's worthwhile to sacrifice one's life for one's craft. Castle of Days includes the short stories that originally appeared in Gene Wolfe's Book of Days. As several people have pointed out, "Forlesen" is an amazing story. I also like "Beautyland" (which has since lost some of its power because it was too correct), "How I Lost the Second World War and Helped Turn Back the German Invasion" (this one seems not to get much respect, but I still think it's great fun), and "The War Beneath the Tree". Castle of Days also includes "The Castle of the Otter", a collection of secondary pieces about the Book of the New Sun, of which the best, I think, is "These Are the Jokes" (which is brilliant). Endangered Species includes several stories that stand out for me, including "The Cabin on the Coast", "In the House of Gingerbread", "When I Was Ming the Merciless", and "The Detective of Dreams". Several others are
at least interesting: "The Last Thrilling Wonder Story", and the two "The Woman Who Loved" stories. Pound for pound, this is probably the weakest of the collections. Storeys From the Old Hotel, though meant as a kind of collection of less significant stories, actually contains several that I think are among his best: "Westwind", "Parkroads", "A Solar Labyrinth", "Cherry Jubilee", and (I'm sure choosing this one will annoy people) "In Looking-Glass Castle". In Strange Travelers, there are several strange stories that I haven't completely processed yet. Still, "No Planets Strike" seems very fine to me, "And When They Appear" is disturbing but well done, "Ziggurat" is again disturbing but packs a punch, and "Counting Cats on Zanzibar" is very good. "Bed and Breakfast" is fun but minor. Some of the others I'm not sure what to do with yet. That's quite a good bunch of stories, I think, of many different types and styles. Perhaps not as good as the very best sf short story writers, but
pretty close. Fernando -- Fernando Q. Gouvea Department of Mathematics Editor, FOCUS and MAA Online Colby College Mathematical Association of America Waterville, ME 04901 http://www.maa.org fqgouvea at colby.edu ============================= Genua had once controlled the river mouth and taxed its traffic in a way that couldn't be called piracy because it was done by the city government. -- Local-body politics explained Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad --
jismulkstis21 Apr 2003, 16:53originalas archived
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I just saw that my earlier reply included all of the original message. Please accept my apologies. Again. Muskrat
matthew.malthouse22 Apr 2003, 07:29originalas archived
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On 20/04/2003 21:21:31 ?iso-8859-1?q?Jonathan=20Laidlow?= wrote: Alright alright, we contain multitudes and all that, I'll go back to the (for shame!) Star Wars novel I'm currently reading, and we'll forget I ever edited a GW website.... Do I get expelled for enjoying reading pulp fiction?
No. But you'd be safer characterizing it as the painful burden of scholarly research... Matthew
matthew.malthouse22 Apr 2003, 07:40originalas archived
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On 21/04/2003 15:06:37 jismulkstis wrote: I recommend Excession or Look to Windward for an intro to Banks. Use of Weapons is also very solid, but I thought the ending came somewhat out of the blue. Excession is thoughtful space opera with the best twist on the Climactic Space Battle I've ever seen. Look to Windward is about, among other things, why one should bother staying alive.
My own opinion is that Banks would be better read in publication order, certainly the Culture books. For example "Look to Windward" stands well enough alone but does better for having read "Consider Phlebus" first. Matthew
Thomas Bitterman25 Apr 2003, 23:25originalas archived
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On 21/04/2003 15:06:37 jismulkstis wrote: I recommend Excession or Look to Windward for an intro to Banks. Use of Weapons is also very solid, but I thought the ending came somewhat out of the blue.
An interesting comparison could be made between Severian and Zakalwe. They're both men who've done terrible things in their past and are journeying toward some form of redemption. The major difference, and this goes to a major difference between the authors, is the agency of the characters. Spoilers ahead. Severian is constantly buffeted by events: he's kicked out of the guildhouse, Agia pushes him around, he gets caught up in the war, backs into being the Autarch, and so on. His main decisions are moral: how to react, what to fight for and against. He's neither a pilgrim nor a penitent - personal action is ineffective as a moral instrument. Zakalwe is a man of action. Action, in the form of what he understands as good works, meant for self-atonement and to earn the forgiveness of others. The Culture is a world where human action is efficacious - although Zakalwe is not forgiven (at the time the novel depicts) his attempt to earn forgiveness is not portrayed negatively, nor is it implied that he is laboring in vain. Tom
PMorris3327 Apr 2003, 06:54originalas archived
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When will "Soldier Of Sidon" be released? Pippen
PMorris3321 Jul 2003, 05:07originalas archived
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I apologize to the other readers if this question seems off topic. What are the publication dates for Wolfe's forthcoming work? I depend on Amazon for my information. I'm particularly interested in the next volume of the Latro series
Joel Priddy27 Jul 2003, 16:25originalas archived
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If the Bay Area workshop is a success, I'd love to participate in a Chicago or East Coast version. relurking, cephalothorax
Ron Crown07 Aug 2003, 14:32originalas archived
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Subject: Re: (urth) Cybele, with bluebonnets From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <katbarx at hotmail.com> Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2003 08:51:25 -0700 To: urth at urth.net H'mmm. I'll have to look for this. Harness's THE ROSE is, imio, one of the absolutely indispensible books of the stfnal heritage.
And far superior to Harness' much-touted Paradox Men (aka Flight into Yesterday) which to my mind, is too "Van Vogtian" (not ir-rational but non-rational). Ron Crown
Richard Horton09 Aug 2003, 02:30originalas archived
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On Thu, 07 Aug 2003 09:32:30 -0500, you wrote: And far superior to Harness' much-touted Paradox Men (aka Flight into Yesterday) which to my mind, is too "Van Vogtian" (not ir-rational but non-rational).
The Rose is wonderful, but it's at least as irrational or non-rational as The Paradox Men.
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard.horton at sff.net Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com) --

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