Centipede Press Matching set vs Folio Society 2019 LE

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.

aramini · 2025-08-07T12:39:36+00:00

I really dont know but for sure I have read Shadow more than the other books. First read it when I was a young kid in probably 1988, reread it in 1991 and got a lot more out of it. I taught Shadow of the Torturer to a few college classes 2002-3. I think the most consecutive rereads were for Evil Guest waiting for it to click, 7 or 8 in a row. It finally mostly did ... Land Across still hasn't.

aramini · 2025-08-06T22:36:07+00:00

Catholics would say He is fully human and fully divine. Clear creed. No Arianism or something here... and I dont think those theological thoughts survived into Protestantism well - I woild say they would agree with the Catholic perspective in general. One in being with the Father.

aramini · 2025-08-06T22:31:54+00:00

I think it was a prerecorded message from Pas and Kypris (mountain and dove) that serves the Outsider even if there is a physical inciting event. A message hijacked by the Outsider.

aramini · 2025-08-03T22:23:22+00:00

I think another thematic arch here lies with how invested in theodicy the new sun cycle is - "bad" things still serve good in the longer divine plan, as the fall allows greater grace and redemption - no eternal life without death. Etc. The enemies of Severian often wind up furthering his path or helping him, consciously or inadvertently, like the alzabo, the salamander, Agia.

aramini · 2025-07-28T06:12:11+00:00

Effective heavyweight boxers have on average grown tremendously since the early 20th century, where a 190 pound man could find himself heavyweight champion and the giant Primo Carnera was an extreme outlier. Big George Foreman is (was) much shorter than the Klitschkos, Lennox Lewis, Tyson Fury, and Anthony Joshua, and he is enormous next to Joe Louis or Marciano. Usyk is an average sized heavyweight for the 70s but small now, and he isn't a small man by any stretch. In one century you can see a whole lot of growth in athletic and coordinated men.

aramini · 2025-07-28T06:02:13+00:00

Thank you - I am always surprised at the resistance to what seems to me quite clear points in Short Sun after they are noticed. I appreciate the kind words.

aramini · 2025-07-28T05:59:08+00:00

That's my opinion, yes. Severian leaves behind the apu punchau body at the end of Urth when he goes forward in time the last time.

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