(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press

[Joel Sieh]

Yeah, same here.  It definitely has some dark undertones.

I get the following out of it so far (SPOILERS AHEAD):

- Robots are at the same time perfect (and more convenient), but not as good
as the real thing.

- Real is messy, imperfect, inconvenient, and is being slowly exterminated
for it.

- I think there's a contrast of impurity/purity implied there, too.  Roberta
teaches Julianne. Roberta is blond (pure), while Julianne is brunette
(impure) (according to some folklore - not sure where I'm getting that,
maybe pulpy werewolf stories).

- Roberta the robot girl pities Robber the robot dog, and through this we
get to see her self pity.  At the same time she pities him, she loves him.
Maybe she loves him because he is like her, or because she empathizes with
him.  And maybe her understanding is why he loves her (as shown by his
attempts to get back to her - I'd like to think it's because she understands
and values him, and not just because they're both robots).

- I think Julianne kills Rover the real dog....  At least that's what the
narrator wants us to think, without coming out and saying it.

- Maybe the narrator does, but I don't think so.  There's the repeated hedge
imagery when Rover comes into his yard and when the dog dies, but I think it
more likely that the narrator is some incarnation of death....  Or
something.  His talk at the beginning about the inevitability of death, his
fascination with the girls, his attempt at proving the value of living
things through his dog-swapping experiment, and his collection of the dead
dog at the end lead me in that direction.  As a side note, I thought
"penetrated" was an odd word choice in the following sentence: "Roberta's
puppy had penetrated the hedge that separates the Robinson's back yard from
our own."  With the screaming in the same paragraph, it could take on a
violent or sinister quality like what Michael Swanwick says of "A Solar
Labyrinth".

- A question that popped out at me while I was reading:  Who is the "our" in
the "our own" in the sentence quoted above?

- The narrator fixates on innocence.  He mentions it when he talks about the
girls and baby dogs/animals.  There may be parallels between his
relationships to the girls and their relationships to the dogs.

- Some other things I noticed:  Both the narrator and Roberta tried to
teach.  Robots, children, and small animals share the quality of innocence,
and the narrator definitely does not (or believes he does not).

Just a bunch of bits and pieces.  That's what I often end up with at the end
of a first reading of Gene Wolfe, however.  Not quite enough to put it all
together, yet.  Maybe it'll help move the discussion along, though!

--Joel

On 6/26/07, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Just read it. It looks like one of those stories Wolfe does occasionally
> that seem kind of pointless at first and come back to whack you later.
> This one hasn't come back to whack me yet, but I feel it in there trying
> to figure itself out.
>
> On 6/26/07, Matthew Keeley <matthew.keeley.1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Subterraneanpress.com just posted a new Wolfe story. Should be an
> > interesting read. Does anyone know if Wolfe plans to publish any books
> with
> > Subterranean? It's a great small press, and I wouldn't mind seeing a
> Wolfe
> > volume from them.
> >
> > -Matt
> >
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>
> --
> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
> -----
> http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
> http://www.danehyoakes.com
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