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CommonShore posted:I used a Gene Wolf quotation for introducing a concept when teaching Judo tonight Was it about the kitten and ball or the two apricots
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Feb 7, 2022 21:57
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hobbez posted:So BOTNS was brought up in the PS5 thread as “the dark souls of books” and I was IMMEDIATELY intrigued. after reading a bit about it online I’ve ordered the first half and I’m excited to dig in on Wednesday. I’ve heard it’s a bit obtuse and difficult but I usually skew towards weighty tomes by the likes of Joyce or Pynchon so I think I’ll be able to handle it alright Nice, enjoy!
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Feb 7, 2022 22:04
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Milo and POTUS posted:Was it about the kitten and ball or the two apricots I'm hoping it's when Severian punched the person in the face so hard it killed them.
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Feb 8, 2022 10:44
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i bet it was hin flying off of tzadkiel's ship in the beginning of urth
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Feb 8, 2022 10:59
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Atlas Hugged posted:I'm hoping it's when Severian punched the person in the face so hard it killed them. Oh god when was this. I missed a lot more than I realized. I did figure out jonas beforehand though
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Feb 8, 2022 18:35
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I just read through BotNS after adding it to my reading list from this thread and forgetting why. I haven't read fantasy in over a decade because it's usually bad, but the sci-fi combo was interesting and added a bit of freshness. I will say that Wolfe's prose is absolutely incredible. Like legitimately the style is stunning, with an unforced quality that is almost muffling and lulling. It never feels effortful and you're just sort of cradled through the pages without noticing. Absolutely the highlight of the series. As for the world, it's nice with Wolfe's deliberate allusions rather than expository world-building adding to a sense of vastness and mystery, and the little folk tales interspersed throughout I found delightful. You get an incredible sense of the weight of time and vast forces. However, Severian is a weird unfocused character, unreliable but not really in a motivated way. And the horniness and misogyny detract a lot from the novel's interest. Severian's adventures shrink Wolfe's world as he gets easily mixed up with the Autarch and Vodalus so that the politics are so slight in this grand mystery Wolfe has constructed. Wolfe also gets in his own way and it's hard to tell how many of his references are just, hmm this seems cool, and lead off to a dead tangent. Also the Ascians being uncomfortably awful stereotypes of communist states left a bad feeling. But overall I can definitely say the style and the world and ideas will really stick with me, despite the actual plot and characters being sort of a mess.
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Feb 8, 2022 18:44
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You should probably read Urth. The criticism that his allusions aren't purposeful isnt very convincing once you get a bigger picture of the setting. Even the smaller ones exist to prod you into reading into the text a little deeper. Or in a different mode.
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Feb 8, 2022 19:08
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Milo and POTUS posted:Was it about the kitten and ball or the two apricots timing "is not an important thing; it's the only thing."
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Feb 8, 2022 19:34
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I would consider the perspective of the character: a teenaged torturer raised exclusively by corrupt men with little to no contact with the outside world, whose first encounter with a woman was arranged and paid for by his conservative mentor / father figures in a brothel, who, according to his boastful and most charatible version of events, has every woman he meets instantly wanting to jump into bed with him
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Feb 8, 2022 19:42
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Milo and POTUS posted:Oh god when was this. I missed a lot more than I realized. I did figure out jonas beforehand though towards the end of Sword of the Lictor, Severian punches Piation's nose bone into his brain, killing Piation and Typhon at the same time. Love that Typhon only thought to protect himself, didn't think of Piation for a second.
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Feb 9, 2022 07:08
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Gaius Marius posted:You should probably read Urth. The criticism that his allusions aren't purposeful isnt very convincing once you get a bigger picture of the setting. Even the smaller ones exist to prod you into reading into the text a little deeper. Or in a different mode. Urth is incredible. Idk how common an opinion this is but it was the best book for me out of all of New/Long/Short Sun.
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Feb 9, 2022 08:17
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Yeah Urth rules, it's oddly one of the more easy-to-follow Wolfe books and while there are plenty of "woah wtf is happening" moments it feels like it takes a lot less work to decipher them which is nice. Makes a boy feel smart. I've reread New Sun with and without including Urth and including it is definitely the right move.
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Feb 9, 2022 13:18
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Segue posted:Also the Ascians being uncomfortably awful stereotypes of communist states left a bad feeling. I'm pretty left wing, but the Ascians amused me a lot because the Maoist I've known pretty talks like them.
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Feb 9, 2022 15:23
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i can't help but read the ascians as Very Patriotic Americans tbh
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Feb 9, 2022 16:57
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I mean they are literally North Americans
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Feb 9, 2022 17:21
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Your Gay Uncle posted:towards the end of Sword of the Lictor, Severian punches Piation's nose bone into his brain, killing Piation and Typhon at the same time. Love that Typhon only thought to protect himself, didn't think of Piation for a second. Yeah that was very cleverly told. I thought you meant he just brute forced someone. typhon was a huge dick
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Feb 10, 2022 00:36
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moonmazed posted:i can't help but read the ascians as Very Patriotic Americans tbh This has been my impression as well. Like my knee jerk reaction the first time reading BoTNS was "drat this Korean war vet is really showing his rear end here" but I don't think that's what Wolfe is doing, especially when you factor in that most of what we see takes place in South America
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Feb 10, 2022 04:08
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a lot is made of how reactionary wolfe is, but it's hard to read a lot of his most despicable characters as anything but ravenous capitalists and objectivists
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Feb 10, 2022 09:08
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I've definitely met communists who talked like they were in the first stages of Ascian brain worms.
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Feb 10, 2022 09:35
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I was actually thinking of: Most humans do not know it, but it is difficult to learn to strike another human being with all one's force; some ancient instinct makes even the most brutal soften the blow. Among the torturers I had been taught not to do so. I struck her, the heel of my hand against her chin, as hard as I have ever struck anyone in my life, and she crumpled like a doll.
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Feb 10, 2022 15:06
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SEX HAVER 40000 posted:a lot is made of how reactionary wolfe is, but it's hard to read a lot of his most despicable characters as anything but ravenous capitalists and objectivists It's a super lovely world of course it seems pretty obvious people are going to be back asswards Atlas Hugged posted:I was actually thinking of: Now when was this? I know he hits agia in the jail and on the blood fields and threatens her for belittling dorcas but I can't remember him hitting someone and killing them Milo and POTUS fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Feb 11, 2022 |
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Feb 10, 2022 21:24
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Urth of the New Sun
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Feb 11, 2022 01:42
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Woops, end tagged it in bold and not spoiler. Sorry if I ruined anything but I don't think there were any truly terrible spoilers.Facehammer posted:Urth of the New Sun Ah, haven't read that one.
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Feb 11, 2022 03:27
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Currently sippin an IPA called batsquatch chillin with the boys in the necropolis
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Feb 11, 2022 04:51
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collecting simples from the gravedirt as a cover story for me and the boys midnight fuckery just matachin things
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Feb 13, 2022 06:05
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Gaius Marius posted:Anyways. I finally started digging into Borges. Read the Garden of Forking paths, and Funes, his memory. Y'know I'm starting to see why people say he was a inspiration to Wolfe I finally got around to picking up a Borges collection at my library and this is literally the second paragraph of the first page I turn to Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius posted:Bioy Casares had come to dinner at my house that evening, and we had lost all track of time in a vast debate over the way one might go about composing a first-person novel whose narrator would omit or distort things and engage in all sorts of contradictions, so that a few of the book's readers--a very few--might divine the horrifying or banal truth.
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Feb 13, 2022 06:44
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SEX HAVER 40000 posted:a lot is made of how reactionary wolfe is, but it's hard to read a lot of his most despicable characters as anything but ravenous capitalists and objectivists Wolfe was a reactionary Catholic. A type of reactionary only sometimes favourable to capitalists and objectivists.
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Feb 13, 2022 21:00
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Segue posted:Severian's adventures shrink Wolfe's world as he gets easily mixed up with the Autarch and Vodalus so that the politics are so slight in this grand mystery Wolfe has constructed.
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Feb 14, 2022 08:30
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Sailor Viy posted:Just coming back to this, I'd say this is one of the things I like about the series. It may be a little implausible, or it may not be... I have a theory on that but I'll hold off on it until I get around to reading Urth. But even just as an aesthetic choice, I really like the way Severian Forrest Gumps his way around the world and coincidentally-not-coincidentally happens to run into all the major players. I mean near the end of Citadel eidolons created by godlike aliens from above the stage descend in a spaceship and say "we are aliens from above the stage who have been guiding you", the whole story is a play and everyone is following a script. Or from the first Severian angle, the Hieros looked through time and found this torturer kid and said "yeah he'll do" and then guided narrator Severian's life to fulfill his destiny as the New Sun. The world seems smaller because it is.
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Feb 14, 2022 19:09
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Whether that makes the story smaller or larger is purely a matter of perspective.
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Feb 14, 2022 19:11
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my bony fealty posted:I mean near the end of Citadel eidolons created by godlike aliens from above the stage descend in a spaceship and say "we are aliens from above the stage who have been guiding you", the whole story is a play and everyone is following a script. I thought that was sword?
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Feb 14, 2022 20:15
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Milo and POTUS posted:I thought that was sword? naw Sword has the hierodules at Baldander's Castle meeting Severian for the first time (from his perspective) and bowing to him as the savior of Urth, pissing off Baldanders and setting the stage for their big fight. In Citadel the eidolons of Malrubius and Triskele come out of a flying saucer on the beach and tell Severian there's a deus ex machine watching out for him. Gaius Marius posted:Whether that makes the story smaller or larger is purely a matter of perspective. I am reminded of a reddit post I read about a certain interpretation of Short Sun (big Short Sun spoilers ahead) where Green is Urth, the Whorl has gone in a circle, and how the poster thought that was so disappointing because it made the story "small" compared to the mentions in New Sun of galactic empires and hieros surviving universal deaths and such. I disagree very much, that reading adds thematic closure to the whole cycle and enhances all the cosmic bits - on Yesod every island is for a planet, but this isn't their stories, this is Urth's story. It's much richer for the tighter focus and unnecessary world building for its own sake.
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Feb 14, 2022 21:44
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I would have seen it as Blue is Urth and Green is the moon.
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Feb 15, 2022 00:17
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That was the convention for a time, but someone, probably aramini layed out a very convincing argument for the other.
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Feb 15, 2022 00:21
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I'm just cracking open citadel of the autarch, but had a question about the prior book. Isn't it pretty obvious that Typhon was resurrected by syphoning little Severian's life? Despite what Severian thinks, and Typhon claims to him in the chapter.
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Feb 15, 2022 02:13
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no, severian himself accidentally resurrected typhon, little sev getting zapped was a red herring
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Feb 15, 2022 02:17
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Regarding Hyacinth: I think it's never adequately explained, even in Short Sun, because it's an aspect of Silk that Horn just doesn't get. He never liked Hyacinth, he doesn't understand what Silk saw in her, and so Long Sun goes out of its way to try to come up with some kind of vague excuse or explanation that "fits" Horn's image of Silk and reconciles why he'd basically throw away everything for her despite her seeming to not warrant it. In part we can say that Horn and Nettle's treatment of her isn't entirely fair, but on the other hand I think it might be going too far in the other direction to try to find the "real" reason Silk loved her so much, so quickly. As someone mentioned, sometimes people just have a weird attraction, and though the Pas/Kypris thing might be part of it, it might not explain it fully. I think that's important in humanizing Silk, in proving that there is a real Silk who doesn't just exist "in the book my mother and father wrote" (as Hoof puts it to Gyrfalcon), who was never fully accessible to Horn. And yeah I get the irony of that when what happens in Short Sun happens, but even there some weirdness is going on with the narrator either periodically forgetting about Hyacinth or confounding her with Seawrack. Basically, we never "get" Silk's attraction to Hyacinth, and that shows that Silk isn't solely motivated by goodness and the higher purpose of the Outsider and can just be in love with someone because something about her clicks with him, and that's all we'll ever be able to pull from it.
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Feb 17, 2022 07:45
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Nakar posted:Regarding Hyacinth: I think it's never adequately explained, even in Short Sun, because it's an aspect of Silk that Horn just doesn't get. He never liked Hyacinth, he doesn't understand what Silk saw in her, and so Long Sun goes out of its way to try to come up with some kind of vague excuse or explanation that "fits" Horn's image of Silk and reconciles why he'd basically throw away everything for her despite her seeming to not warrant it. In part we can say that Horn and Nettle's treatment of her isn't entirely fair, but on the other hand I think it might be going too far in the other direction to try to find the "real" reason Silk loved her so much, so quickly. At the same time it is pretty clear it is the kypris element that so captivated him, as when he is walking with hyacinth he keeps thinking his mom is around and even has dreams of being with her. Kypris as his instant champion, him the clockwork tool of Pas’s plan makes pretty clear she knows her role. His dreams are about his mom on auk’s big grey donkey (chenille) and then his own small donkey biting his ankle (hyacinth and the ankle imagery he hurt falling out her window) being lost in the yellow house make it clear they are both ridden, and the preprogrammed mom stuff is kind of all the explanation we need; he and sand were both to be sacrificed to bring back Pas.
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Feb 17, 2022 11:25
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my bony fealty posted:naw Sword has the hierodules at Baldander's Castle meeting Severian for the first time (from his perspective) and bowing to him as the savior of Urth, pissing off Baldanders and setting the stage for their big fight. In Citadel the eidolons of Malrubius and Triskele come out of a flying saucer on the beach and tell Severian there's a deus ex machine watching out for him. Yes that reading explains so much and gives closure to the fate of Urth, too with the city of the inhumi clearly Nessus, the story of the man in with the black sword and light who cuts up bodies to free the cataract and cause flooding a passion play for Severian, and the tower horn dies in being the matachin tower, fixed off screen by auk, whose ghost shows up in dorp on Blue, returning to the stars at last at the end when Silk leaves in a lander that happened to be around there. And the vanished people are on the way to being hieros.
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Feb 17, 2022 11:30
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A friend that I turned on to the Shadow of the Torturer series is just starting the Long Sun series of books and had a question that I really had no answer for. He asked me if Gene Wolfe wrote the Short Sun series knowing in advance that it was actually being written by Horn after the the Whorl got to Blue and Green. I have no idea. I think I might just email Marc Aramini, seems like something he'd know.
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Feb 19, 2022 20:00
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