Urth Net
Urth Digest, Vol 56, Issue 34
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Weekly blog links
Well, there you go. I have never even heard of any of those but the Burroughs and the Heinlein (and Pinocchio). I don't know Ransom either, for that matter. I'll have to investigate.
I always think of Burroughs when I read Cerberus---all those grotesque multi-armed clones.
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Message: 7
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:05:12 -0500
From: "James Wynn" <crushtv at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Weekly blog links
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Message-ID: <59876BEFC0B944658A78321287763F32 at eMachinePC> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=response
David Stockhoff:
But another likely factor is that BotNS was written with dozens,
if not hundreds, of literary predecessors in mind, and fantasy
and satire are rarely far apart. Urth's society is recognizable;
the Whorl's is not, or at least not so readily. And the later books' antecedents seems to lie less in Chesterton and Vance than in older myth. IMHO.
Well, the older myths are certainly close to the surface in SS, as they are in LS. But for literary references, I recommend you read ER Burrough's "Mars" series and Lan Wright's "The Last Hope of Earth" (aka "The Creeping Shroud"). Also, Wright's "Pictures of Pavanne" has some rather obvious homages in LS/SS. I haven't read anything else by Wright, but it wouldn't surprise me. Also, Dan'l recently identified Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky" as an identifiable reference. "Pinocchio" is an important source. Yarboro's "Hyacinths" about about artists who dream stories for televised entertainment might have been on Wolfe's mind. Fleming's "Brazilian Adventure" is a source for LS. I haven't re-read it since reading SS, but it wouldn't be unlikely since it is about a boat ride up the Amazon river.
There are almost certainly more. SS has an aroma of many secret flavorings which I cannot identify.
J.
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