Elementary

Because they've all been checked out and are being read by avid (or should that be rabid?) fans! Dan

Or because that library has none, maybe?

Not to be snippy, that was what I was asking: if his 'father' has written a whole roomful of books like the lady said, and we are correct in identifying the original as Gene Wolfe, where are the books? Gene Wolfe is popular. Two possibilities: A) this whole question is an anacrhonism; Wolfe had no way of knowing he would be a success and go on to write many fairly popular books; B) we are wrong in our premise that the "masion du chien" = Wolfe ~Maru

Does this take that much agonizing? The fact that Gene Wolfe is popular now is irrelevant, unless you're claiming that somehow Wolfe somehow should have known back then that he would be as popular an author as Vinge. Even if you assume he made that presumption, when you think about it it would be a relative miracle for a book by Vinge or Wolfe to have survived and made its way into a library on a planet circling another star. Maru said:

Maru D. writes:

Almost certainly any books written by Maitre would be in the non-fiction sections of the stacks--something the very young Number Five may not yet have conceptualized. (Hmmm, wonder if they use the Dewey Decimal System way out there on Saint Croix?) But perhaps more importantly, two of the books #5 does find are Monday or Tuesday by Virginia Woolf and The Great Prince Died by Bernard Wolfe. Surely, you can see the pattern, no matter how much they jibe against your chien = wolf animadversion? msg

As I recall, one of the other books he finds is The Mile-long Spaceship by Kate Wilhelm, which he (mistakenly) believes has been misshelved from the astronautics section, so he clearly knows the difference between fiction and non-fiction. -- Dave Lebling, aka vizcacha

Thta is what my edition reads as as well. I've never heard of "The Great Prince Dies". ~Maru

Maru writes:

It's the "book about the assassination of Trotsky" that Number Five finds next to Virginia Woolf's Monday or Tuesday and was written by Bernard Wolfe, who, besides having been a bodyguard for Trotsky in Mexico, also wrote in various genres and was a frequent contributer to Playboy. His only sf novel is Limbo (once hailed by JG Ballard as the best American sf novel), but when Gene Wolfe first began to make a name for himself, he may have been frequently asked if he was related to this other Wolfe (let alone Tom and Thomas). For more info see either Clute's Encyclopedia or Harlan Ellison's intro to B. Wolfe's stories in Again, Dangerous Visions . Also, while I have your attention: the Linnaean binomial for wolf is "Canis lupus," and it's a well-established fact that wolves and dogs can interbreed. Biologically, it can even be argued they are the same species, and while "chien" and "loup" are not perfect synonyms like "car" and "auto," the difference is more an artificial distinction than an actual one. C5H9NO4 (he, he)

Actually, the section Number Five is looking in seems to be the "science fiction authors" section; that is, any authors who have written science fiction. The library seems to organize its books the way I do rather than according to the DDS. Apparently, the original or one of his clones had written SF or had written something (like his life story) that was believed to be SF. J

Or maybe, with typical family tunnel vision, 5 continues going up to the section he's already familiar with from younger desires for more story books. Besides, it's up some rickety stairs at the top of the dome, where Mister Million can't follow and his voice would be hardest to hear.

It's a BIG library as described, and the locals could not hope to have produced enough writings of note in their debased state of civilizational devolution. Given the political history also described, wholesale re-printing of English-language books from Earth could be a conscious culture war stratagem. The authorities depicted as never throwing anything written away, though they are fairly indifferent about keeping it up. Some or all of the above may be a reflection of GW's experiences with his alma mater, complete with autocratic unformed authoritarians, neoclassical buildings plopped down in the middle of the wilderness to establish Anglophone civilization where former continental colonies had been, libraries crammed with books but relatively little care given them, even the lengthy evening sunlight during the play is to be found there. Oh, and the vivisection as well, lest we forget.

... ... What? Civet

Texas A&M has a prominent veterinary school, it occupies several buildings on campus, some decorated with sculpted animal skulls. Part of the curriculum involves practicing surgical procedures on live animals. Now that I think about it, the university is a fair microcosm of Urthian architechture and geography, compressed in time as well as space. It has sprawled noticeably between my leaving 17 years ago and my latest visit this spring, but even during GW's matriculation it apparently had occupational segregation, hidden nooks and forgotten alcoves, disparate parts connected via tunnel, technical wonders alongside agrarian commonality, ritual fire of cannon far older and longer at peace than their operators were old. There's even a bronze fasces forming the base of the flagpole at the old center of campus! I'll have to seriously think about compiling a LEXICON TEXAS with some of these factoids some day.