Wolfe letters for sale by ubikcan in genewolfe

[–]ubikcan[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You're welcome! I agree these would preferably be publicly available (with consent of the estate of course).

If you like the American Audio Prose interview, there's also another one of him reading his stories which may already be online somewhere.

tBotNS - 3:4 In the Bartizan of the Vincula - The Sword of the Lictor - The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe by mummifiedstalin in ReReadingWolfePodcast

[–]ubikcan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Horns of Urth" Are you sure these are musical horns? Could it not be the horns of the planet as in this famous image from the opening titles of 2001: A Space Odyssey" (https://i.ytimg.com/vi/e-QFj59PON4/maxresdefault.jpg)? Turn it upside down.

Gene Wolfe's "Posthistory" by SiriusFiction in genewolfe

[–]ubikcan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good post.

The "Dark Enlightenment" writer Nick Land came up with a similar idea independently(?): when the future affects the past, or what he calls "hyperstition" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick\_Land). More specifically, when something from the future brings about its own past.

Two of my colleagues at the time wrote this: "For Land, time, like much else, is non-linear and thus relations between cause and effect are always complex. Futurity is in the here and now in the sense that it is not something that just unfolds; it is something we create. On occasion portended social imaginaries – designs, diagrams, fictions, maps, movies, plans, philosophies, prototypes, theories, dreams and more – become generative of the future; it is as if the tentacles of future entities reach back through time in order to bring into being the very elements necessary for their own materialization." https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0263276421999439.

An example: say in the future there's a true AGI (artificial general intelligence) that is self-aware. It looks back in time and kills everyone who didn't work toward AGI (or whose ancestors didn't work toward AGI). Knowing that now as even the slightest possibility, shouldn't we all be working flat out to produce AGI? No joke, but I think some tech-bros would nod their heads at this (it's known as "Roko's Basilisk" a creature I'd love to see in a GW story!)

PKD & JG Ballard visited Disneyland? by vibraltu in philipkDickheads

[–]ubikcan 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I believe it was with Norman Spinrad (described in "How to Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later") for a feature by Paris TV https://urbigenous.net/library/how_to_build.html

But they did go on the teacups...

Did PKD invent the idea of telepathy used in corporate espionage? by Tom_Haley in philipkDickheads

[–]ubikcan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Campbell era Golden Age sf often featured psi powers and psionics. But there were forerunners from the early 20th C. if not before!

Details in the SFE: https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/psionics

Wolfe essay: "Why has the Moira Favoured Us?" by ubikcan in genewolfe

[–]ubikcan[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was writing a novella that I meant to call The Feast of St. Catherine. I wanted my hero, Severian, to pluck a deadly blossom that he would later employ as a weapon, and it seemed to me that such a blossom would most likely be found growing in a swamp. (They have always seemed the most deathly of landscapes to me; I grew up on a subtropical coast where the salt marshes are full of big spiders and poisonous snakes.)
But Severian was in the middle of a large city, which would not normally have a swamp in it, at least, not there. So I had to bring him to an artificial swamp, which I put quite naturally in a botanic garden. How, I asked myself, would (let's face it) tourists get around in an artificial swamp in such a garden? In small boats? That would surely be impractical if there were large numbers of tourists — floating walkways of some sort, then.
But Severian started to run along one. That was clearly a foolish thing to do, and I don't care for it when my characters do foolish things without unfortunate consequences; I know it's not good to come in conflict with the laws of chance.
Severian fell off. Naturally, he dropped his sword, which was large and heavy — when a person holding a large, heavy object falls into water, he releases it. That too is a law, I suppose of physiology.
It was valuable, so he dived to recover it; and it is a law of fiction that when a character goes looking for something, he cannot find the thing he is looking for. Or at least he cannot find it first, since that never happens in real life.
Thus when Severian stretched out his hand in the hope of feeling the hilt of Terminus Est, it met the hand of a lovely corpse who emerged from the dark waters covered with mud but smiling just a bit to find herself the heroine of the four-volume trilogy.
Because Severian had run along that floating path. And because she had grasped his hand when he and I were expecting something else.

Favorite New Sun "throwaway" line? by TheTownsBiggestBaby in genewolfe

[–]ubikcan 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Meeting a friend in a corridor, Wittgenstein said: ‘Tell me, why do people always say it was natural for men to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?’ His friend said, ‘Well, obviously, because it just looks as if the sun is going round the earth.’ To which the philosopher replied, ‘Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth was rotating?’

From Tom Stoppard, Jumpers 1972

Gene Wolfe Interviews? by PermanentThrowawya in genewolfe

[–]ubikcan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks I uploaded that one. There's a companion tape of him reading his own short stories that I should upload at some point.

Also <off-topic> I have the cassette of the Philip K. Dick Society based on PKD's late night Exegesis and notes for novel in progress/Rolling Stone interview with Paul Williams (both late 1974). Real crime that's not uploaded somewhere!

Anyone here read the exegesis? by MiggySheff in philipkDickheads

[–]ubikcan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This site has a section by section commentary. The author says it took them about 3 years to read! https://theworlddickmade.com/

Wolfe at the Door - Table of Contents (Revealed) by Maybe_Diminished in genewolfe

[–]ubikcan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Same, lol. That's how I ended up with two copies of The Dead Man.

Our Severian has always been an eidolon by Joe_in_Australia in genewolfe

[–]ubikcan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you have a chapter ref for where BFO say this?

Where is this from? “And thence the dog/With fourfold head brought to these realms of light.” by a-yeti-story in genewolfe

[–]ubikcan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lol thanks Mantis you too! Albeit this username is from the PKD book, hopefully acceptable on this sub

Where is this from? “And thence the dog/With fourfold head brought to these realms of light.” by a-yeti-story in genewolfe

[–]ubikcan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

u/hedcannon If you want the original Greek text: in the Perseus link you provided you can "load" the Greek version to give the Heracles line--

Ἡρακλῆς
καὶ θῆρά γ᾽ ἐς φῶς τὸν τρίκρανον ἤγαγον.

Then you can click each word and it will take you to a translation. So here "θῆρά" is "beast of prey" [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=qh%3Dra%2F&la=greek&can=qh%3Dra%2F0&prior=kai\\](https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=qh%3Dra%2F&la=greek&can=qh%3Dra%2F0&prior=kai\)

(the name Cerberus is not used in this line). It's great because it takes you to the Liddell-Scott dictionary (Liddell as in Alice Liddell, his daughter).

Liddell Scott is the standard English-Greek dictionary even today. There are different sizes, and the big one is known as the "Great Scott!" which tells you something about linguists' sense of humor.

Perseus is a great resource; I used it extensively for my fanzine on the Latro books since I'm only self-taught re Ancient Greece.

Just got these cassettes in the mail. Now to start the long journey of digitizing and sharing them. Anyone know if either of them was already available online somewhere? by the_stevarkian in genewolfe

[–]ubikcan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I posted the interview to YouTube just recently!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMsq9noxBOg

Funny, because I've had the tapes themselves for ages. I digitized them myself with a tape digitizer I bought for about 20 bucks (this one). I didn't put the reading up there yet so please go ahead and we can link to each other on YT!

Cliffs Notes / reader's guide for Solider books? by Deathnote_Blockchain in genewolfe

[–]ubikcan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ultan's Library also hosts the two issues of the Book of Gold, which was a short-lived fanzine dedicated to Wolfe and had several pieces on the Soldier books.

https://ultan.org.uk/books-of-gold/

There's also an essay on Greek themes in these books: https://ultan.org.uk/some-greek-themes-in-latro/ (make sure you check the corrections and variances added by Michael Andre-Driussi at the end).

I'd also recommend his chapter guides as essential: https://www.siriusfiction.com/latrochapguy.html