Three new articles in Ultan's Library

I am pleased to announce that we've recently published (or, in one case, are at this very moment publishing!) three new articles at Ultan's Library, the online resource for the study of Gene Wolfe. The first is actually a re-publication, as we're delighted to be able to make available again the two issues of Jeremy Crampton's Gene Wolfe fanzine "The Book of Gold". These contain lots of fascinating articles and information, especially on Wolfe's Soldier series and the ancient world in which it is set. The second article, "The Lupine Scholar", takes the form of an interview between Urth List contributor Scott Wowra and lexicographer, Wolfe scholar and science fiction writer Michael Andre-Driussi. Scott has been helping Michael with one of his current projects and you can read about that and much more right here. The third article is by Michael Andre-Driussi himself and is so hot off the virtual press that it isn't even quite published as of this moment...but should be in just a few hours' time! Entitled "Japanese Lexicon for The Book of the New Sun", the article is both a personal memoir and an insight into how such a lexically complex work as "The Book of the New Sun" was translated into Japanese. It also throws up one or two interesting interpretational issues... You'll find all these articles and more at Ultan Library at http://www.ultan.org.uk/ Nigel Price Co-Editor Ultan's Library

Just to confirm that Michael Andre-Driussi's new article is now published in Ultan's Library. Nigel Co-Editor Ultan's Library http://www.ultan.org.uk/

***This contains very minor spoilers that you probably no about unless you have avoided all the trailers*** I saw Terminator Salvation this weekend and I liked it with the exception of about 3 minutes of political commentary that was about as subtle as "America! F*** Yeah!" (except this was "GWB! F*** You!"). However, I was dissatisfied with what little opportunity the writers/director made of the human/terminator hybrid. If Wolfe had told this story, rather than having a merely "human-good/robot-bad" split personality, the merger between the human-mind and the Skynet programming would have become a new unforeseeable creature. Similarly, if Michael Crichton had written this story, he would have had a morality tale about attempting to use software to "ride herd" over a nearly chaotic system like the human mind without the software being compromised. On the other hand, if William Gibson had written this story, he would have had the hybrid become a new glorious evolutionary step for humanity. I suppose that level of nuance is a lot to hope for from Terminator IV, but after 25 years of thinking about "What does it mean to be human?", it would have been nice for someone to actually think about that. (Funniest line from the Terminator franchise was Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator II: <soft tender voice>"Why do you cry?")