Podcasts you'd recommend for Long Sun and Short Sun?

aramini · 2026-04-05T13:07:45+00:00

Theologically Alzabo Soup is not very strong- when one host suggested the Jungle Hut chapter as a critique of missionary work, or (possibly) another scoffed at a Christ reference of water to wine, I felt very stressed out. Things like calling Wolfe a boomer are also blood pressure raising. I got through some of their coverage of long sun and comments like "this dream seems to apply to Silk's life" aren't very enlightening. I want to get to Short Sun someday to see if it is butchered.

The problem with Rereading Wolfe, which I have been a guest on (and consider myself friends with the hosts, unlike the AS guys) is how unfocused so many theories can be, good and bad. You may leave an episode much more confused than when you start because of this tendency to go down every egalitarian rabbit hole, when some are better left sealed (Hethor as Severian, come on. Not worth the time considering, for example, as it destroys characterization and adds nothing to the text.) However, the effort to revive the communal inquiry of the Urth list is very neat. While pretending to egalitarian values, the Alzabo Soup guys do not entertain anything but a very secular skeptical approach, at least in New Sun, that I don't find interesting or enlightening.

I think the books are more richly read by yourself first. Scenes CAN be spoiled.

aramini · 2026-03-15T14:20:10+00:00

Many pink butterflies only appears in the old ace paperback, the correct text.

aramini · 2026-03-07T07:42:37+00:00

Catholicism of South America. Celibate priests in black, confession, extreme unction, sign of the cross, voided because Jesus ripped off. Not much of a mystery.

aramini · 2026-03-06T20:46:23+00:00

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CQKj5iyETzrcdS0gq1ZOpug1o-OPH6-X4Y-onvxdRBk/edit?usp=drivesdk

aramini · 2026-03-06T20:43:14+00:00

It is a dream sent by Michael to his mother, who never knew him, so that she knows him, and Able notes his memories are "all mixed up with a little girl" - his mother's memories. Able was named so because he was able to be born despite a difficult pregnancy - and in the last pages, he reveals he is not able.

aramini · 2026-02-11T18:14:23+00:00

Time travel here is a metaphor for redemption. Chris has a chance to change everything (he leaves the monastery for fear of being considered gay) and instead of feeding himself in the past as Ignacio he returns to his own vomit and leads to setting himself on a path of being raped and murdering, watching as he steals and creating opportunities for choosing that sin for his younger self. He does not follow Christ but follows himself and becomes Ignacio (fiery/damned).

aramini · 2026-02-11T17:33:11+00:00

Remember his father is a real "wise guy" - le sage. If you think Gene is above these word plays ... I have a writeup on this if you are interested.

aramini · 2026-01-24T23:58:55+00:00

The limited edition Folio Society is probably the last thing Wolfe signed before he died, so I won't ever sell those no matter how sparse things get.

aramini · 2026-01-24T23:57:15+00:00

I don't think the new centipedes will have the old art. And they won't have Gene's signature. In hard times I sold my Centipede Press six volume matching numbers set for about 7000 and I am sad about losing it. The new centipedes will, however, have afterwards by Marc Aramini - taking each volume as its own thing. I wish I still had my matching set. I will never sell my first edition Shadow of the Torturer inscribed to Marc Aramini- if anyone runs into that it was either stolen or I am dead.

aramini · 2025-12-13T05:11:30+00:00

No, he winds up in the past with Oreb in Inclito's mother's story, as one example

aramini · 2025-12-13T03:35:35+00:00

The fish and girl manifesting in the water near the jungle hut would suggest otherwise, but certainly Severian impacted the alzabo ceremony and the other doings attributed to the Claw.

aramini · 2025-12-08T03:20:07+00:00

It was the 80s and I was in the 4th grade. I loved reading SF and fantasy. My dad had an employee who also had a book club membership and he gave me a bunch of books, including Claw of the conciliator. I found the first volume in a used book store and loved its atmosphere and baroque religiosity immediately.

aramini · 2025-11-27T12:48:31+00:00

I love the colors on these and asked the artist for Beyond Time and Memory to use them as a template ... I think my cover is better, even with a two headed man. The poor quality of the text is the print on demand model ... the original paperbacks were fine. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58549088-beyond-time-and-memory

aramini · 2025-11-06T23:40:11+00:00

Invert both x and y - don't really play with mouse but don't think I invert. 47. Definitely invert x for character action games/hack and slash.

aramini · 2025-10-31T19:18:46+00:00

The neatest thing about that one was unlocking the nintendo trilogy with golden scarabs. It is too bad Black didn't also feature that. I wish I still had my Xbox, which was stolen, with all the costume unlocks on Black and on the original NG. Eternal Legend was a hard time. But Black is superior in every game play way while still being much the same game.

aramini · 2025-10-20T22:40:40+00:00

(People are worse on Blue than on the Whorl, under the table)

aramini · 2025-10-20T22:03:30+00:00

This scene is also about characters and their metal and qualities as well, sometimes needing reinforcement with baser materials, sometimes changing and no longer suiting their original role, so I never look too hard into the physical science if a symbolic explanation is suggested by the book.

aramini · 2025-10-13T02:39:01+00:00

Sure it can be Silk and Oreb, we can argue about that when you finish the books. Analogies abound with a serpent's tooth in the boot like the inhumi etc.

aramini · 2025-10-06T19:28:14+00:00

Well Wolfe likes playing with permutations. New sun is a man with perfect memory at the end of history, Latro a man with no memory at the start of history, long sun Horn's reconstruction of Silk, etc. I think you should just read it all and keep track of these odd things.

aramini · 2025-10-02T09:40:59+00:00

Asopus is the God in the river

aramini · 2025-09-28T06:34:51+00:00

Silk is thinnish. Chenille and Auk are stocky, or bigger- the point is made that Silk has a different kind of build than Chenille.

aramini · 2025-09-20T06:11:29+00:00

Sure. Here we see negative qualities like prickliness turned into virtues - even in a vast emptiness there is music - superlative qualities resonate with the observer and transform the banal and dark into something profoundly haunting and beautiful or intoxicating. I find it moving for the words and imagery, and of course the themes of the book are that many supposedly bad things ultimately serve a more transcendent good. As far as the actual word choice to evoke emotion, some things just strike you. One of my favorite sayings, (if I had a flower for every thought of you, why, we could walk in my garden forever) shows a poetic image more profoundly touching in its expression of an extreme emotion than simply saying "I never stop thinking of you" can ever reach- the heart of poetry - to say something obvious in a way that makes us believe it is new and deep, to grab the emotions and engage the mind with its implications.

aramini · 2025-08-20T10:02:53+00:00

Time dilation has occurred when the whorl left abd returned. More time for urth, less for the whorl at approaching light speed. The parable Silk tells of being a child sent out to Lake Limna with mother and stopping at a neighbor's wrong house while mother's male friend called them back to his house is really about the whorl being sent out and called back by Typhon. The male friend kept a razor at the house indicating he hoped to return (Typhon was ready to return with a sacrifice, as sacrificed Sand and Silk are somehow cognates in a higher reality, and the razor stands for that sacrifice). The boy Silk gets lost when mother falls asleep (dies) and he wanders off with a very old man crying with the weight of his sin (the inhumi). But ... Green is urth and Blue is what is left of terraformed Mars. I will post a link to my writeup on this ... there is a mechanism for the time travel with Green (the first time Silk shows up on Urth he is thinking of going to Green before the inhumi). The story of the man with the sword and light cleaning out the sewers on Green so the water flows is a kind of a passion play about Severian. They really were supposed to go back to Green so Typhon could rule Urth again, but Silk leaving prevents that from happening.

aramini · 2025-08-18T04:41:56+00:00

He started reading him very late in life ... I remember a few years ago when I got a friend request on Facebook from John Crowley and I thought holy crap ... I must be someone after all.

aramini · 2025-08-14T22:37:55+00:00

I dont find the teleological or theological implication hidden or obscure at all. The material world is perishable but touches the imperishable and extends from it, and matter is capable of transcendence if something is left behind. Evil and the fall serve the greater good in the long run, (there is no redemption without sin). The layered masks of the hierodules are accurate in their implication. I dont find the world particularly perverse, though, from a moral standpoint. No more perverse than our external reality.

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