(urth) Long Review Essay on Wizard Knight
thalassocrat at nym.hush.com
thalassocrat at nym.hush.com
Mon Sep 24 00:54:31 PDT 2007
On Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +1000 Adam Stephanides
<adamsteph at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>The idea of Able as a Mary-Sue (the technical term for a male
>specimen is Gary-Stu) hadn't occurred to me, but it makes sense.
>It had crossed my mind that Able may have been wish-fulfillment on
>Wolfe's part. The short story "Golden City Far," which was first
>published around the same time as The Knight iirc, is even more
>obviously wish-fulfillment, to the point that I found it
>embarrassing. And there's no hint of parodic intent in that story,
>so I doubt that Able's Gary-Stu qualities are parodic.
I think the Toug character puts a spike in this. He's pretty much
Able minus the "power-ups", and if Wolfe had been indulging just in
Gary-Stu-ism, I don't think he would have bothered with him.
OTOH, I think Wolfe would be a better writer if the Tougs and Horns
were his main characters ...
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