(urth) Change of Topic: Latro

brunians at brunians.org brunians at brunians.org
Tue Nov 4 06:41:10 PST 2008


He was home for a while off-stage, between volume two and volume three.

He forgets.


.


> Actually, I don't think Latro will ever get home until he passes through
> India, Micronesia, Columbia, Ireland, Britain, Germania, and Slavakia. I
> asked Wolfe once if he anticipated a wrap-up to the series and he said no.
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: PMorris33 at aol.com
>   To: urth at lists.urth.net
>   Sent: Monday, November 03, 2008 7:56 PM
>   Subject: (urth) Change of Topic: Latro
>
>
>   Does anyone know if a fourth book in the Soldier series is being
> contemplated?  After all, Latro has not been returned to his home.
>
>   In a message dated 11/3/2008 5:09:14 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
> urth-request at lists.urth.net writes:
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>     Today's Topics:
>
>        1. Re:  AEG: Is AEG Lovecraftian? (Bryan Alexander)
>        2.  Stingray (Nigel Price)
>        3.  Stingray (Nigel Price)
>        4. Re:  Stingray (James Wynn)
>        5.  AEG: Is AEG Lovecraftian? (Nigel Price)
>        6.  Stingray (Nigel Price)
>        7. Re:  Stingray (Matthew Keeley)
>
>
>     ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>     Message: 1
>     Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 17:10:48 -0500
>     From: "Bryan Alexander" <bryan.alexander at gmail.com>
>     Subject: Re: (urth) AEG: Is AEG Lovecraftian?
>     To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
>     Message-ID:
>         <a55c3dff0811031410h6cd912e8t9690b7f7b5bd81ba at mail.gmail.com>
>     Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>     I admit to bringing a Lovecraftian perspective to my reading of AEG.
> That
>     was due in part to various things I'd heard about the novel, which
> were then
>     brought to mind with the HPL inscription.  So I suspected far more
> cosmic
>     horror from various quarters, including the flapping creature, than I
> ended
>     up with.
>     My Phil Dick-style expectations were confirmed instead.
>
>     On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:55 PM, Dave Tallman <davetallman at msn.com>
> wrote:
>
>     > Kieran Mullen wrote:
>     >
>     >>  That needs a bit of explanation.   For a work to be Lovecraftian I
>  don't
>     >> think it is simply sufficient to stick in Hastur and Cthulu and
> call it
>     >> that. Lovecraft (IMO) came up with a truly original  ontological
> horror
>     >> premise for his fiction:  the universe is dominated  by inhuman
> forces which
>     >> we don't have a hope of understanding or  defeating.  At best we
> can only
>     >> hope that they ignore us.   (We can't  even pray that they do -
> there is no
>     >> God, only atoms and a void).    Humanity is a minor irrelevance in
> a dark
>     >> and hungry universe.  Any  attempt to try to change that will only
> draw the
>     >> attention of forces  that will destroy the inquirer.
>     >>
>     >>
>     > Given that Wolfe is a Christian I doubt very much that he would
> write a
>     > work consistent with such a nihilistic Lovecraftian premise. But
> other
>     > writers, such as August Derleth (also a Christian), have expanded
> the
>     > Lovecraft universe to include a more classical view of good vs.
> evil. To me,
>     > true horror cannot exist in a universe where our ideas of sanity and
>     > goodness are a mere fluke, a cosmic joke. The efforts of the
> protagonists
>     > become simply silly.
>     >
>     > But I don't think the Lovecraft parts are simply tacked on. From the
>     > beginning Reis announced his intention to retire to the South Seas
> (p. 14).
>     > This cannot be a coincidence. Reis may have learned something during
> his
>     > time as ambassador to Woldercan. He may have realized there was a
> connected
>     > menace on Earth and determined to fight it. To some degree his
> provoking a
>     > fight between Squiddy and the Navy seems to have been a success. At
> the very
>     > least the storms took out many Cthulhu worshipers on the neighboring
>     > islands.
>     >
>     > Even Lovecraft allowed the forces of good to succeed sometimes, for
> example
>     > in "The Dunwich Horror." Even he could not help rooting for humanity
> against
>     > the monsters.
>     >
>     > _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
>     --
>     Bryan Alexander
>     http://infocult.typepad.com/
>     http://twitter.com/BryanAlexander
>     -------------- next part --------------
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>     ------------------------------
>
>     Message: 2
>     Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 22:33:59 -0000
>     From: "Nigel Price" <nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
>     Subject: (urth) Stingray
>     To: "Urth List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
>     Message-ID: <AFEFKBJKJDDJOMBNACBNGEEMDNAA.nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
>     Content-Type: text/plain;    charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>     As I was writing about evil undersea cities and civilisations in AEG
> and the
>     Urth Cycle, one part of my mind facetiously wandered and wondered
> whether
>     Gene Wolfe had ever watched the Gerry Anderson puppet show "Stingray"
> in the
>     1960s. As I thought whimsically about it, the parallels scattered
> through
>     his books became stronger and stranger. Was Seawrack inspired by
> Marina? Was
>     the idea of the US Navy attacking the Storm God inspired by the sight
> of
>     Troy Tempest and the WASPs attacking Titan and his aquaphibian
> minions?
>
>     No, of course not, it's a silly idea. It's not as if Wolfe ever refers
> to
>     puppetry in his stories.
>
>     Hang on there, wait a minute...
>
>     What about that dream Severian has of the toy theatre and the
> marionette
>     versions of himself and Baldander?
>
>     Goodness! If I'm right, anything can happen in the next half hour...
>
>     Nigel (in a playful mood)
>
>
>
>     ------------------------------
>
>     Message: 3
>     Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 23:00:41 -0000
>     From: "Nigel Price" <nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
>     Subject: (urth) Stingray
>     To: "Urth List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
>     Message-ID: <AFEFKBJKJDDJOMBNACBNOEEMDNAA.nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
>     Content-Type: text/plain;    charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>     Weird but true: Gerry Anderson and Ray Harryhausen were both speakers
> at the
>     1987 WorldCon in Brighton, England, which Gene and Rosemary Wolfe also
>     attended.
>
>     Did Wolfe hear Gerry Anderson talk about his work?
>
>     Then again, for anyone interested in creating submarine squid deities,
>     Harryhausen's amusing account of animating the six-limbed giant
> octopus in
>     "It came from beneath the sea" might well have been inspirational.
> (The
>     octopus only had six limbs because Harryhausen was on a tight budget
> and an
>     even tighter timetable. Animating extra limbs takes time, and time is
>     money!)
>
>     Nigel (who is trying to write a serious analysis of AEG - coming soon
> - but
>     keeps getting distracted by whimsical notions)
>
>
>
>     ------------------------------
>
>     Message: 4
>     Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 17:57:00 -0600
>     From: "James Wynn" <crushtv at gmail.com>
>     Subject: Re: (urth) Stingray
>     To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
>     Message-ID: <8349DBE9E74F4391A5D742992EE9395D at GATEWAY>
>     Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
>         reply-type=original
>
>     > No, of course not, it's a silly idea. It's not as if Wolfe ever
> refers to
>     > puppetry in his stories.
>
>     In The Book of the Short Sun, Horn remembers the following from his
>     childhood:
>
>     "I once had a toy, a little wooden man in a blue coat who was moved by
>     strings. When I played with him, I made him walk and bow, and spoke
> for him.
>     I practiced until I thought myself very clever. One day I saw my
> mother
>     holding the two sticks that held his strings, and my little wooden man
>     saluting my youngest sister much more cleverly than I could have made
> him do
>     it, and laughing with his head thrown back, then mourning with his
> face in
>     his hands. I never spoke of it to my mother, but I was angry and
> ashamed."
>     On Blue's Waters, pg. 158
>
>     Soon he after he was assaulted by the triple-jawed leatherskin---an
> obvious
>     reference to Pinnochio's Dog-fish.
>
>     J.
>
>
>
>
>     ------------------------------
>
>     Message: 5
>     Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 00:04:01 -0000
>     From: "Nigel Price" <nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
>     Subject: (urth) AEG: Is AEG Lovecraftian?
>     To: "Urth List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
>     Message-ID: <AFEFKBJKJDDJOMBNACBNCEENDNAA.nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
>     Content-Type: text/plain;    charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>     Kieran Mullen asks...
>
>     >>So what do you think?   Is AEG just  a romp
>     >>through different genres or is it really meant
>     >>to be a horror novel?
>
>     No, I don't think that AEG is a Lovecraftian horror story in the sense
> that
>     you define. As far as I understand - which is not very far at all - it
>     borrows some Lovecraftian elements, but does not share their
> underlying
>     philosophy, their "ontological horror premise" (great phrase!).
>
>     I've read back through all the posts here on AEG and I've reread bits
> of the
>     story but I still don't really understand how all the parts of the
> book fit
>     together. I'm trying to work it out. The nature of Gideon Chase seems
> to be
>     key. That in turn, because Gideon was born there and is probably a
>     human-Woldercanese hybrid, is tied up with the moral status of the
> planet
>     Woldercan.
>
>     Wolfe depicts Woldercan as a place which has talking fish, dangerous
>     forests, alchemy and different physics. The inhabitants superficially
>     resemble humans but are subtly different. They can breed successfully
> with
>     lower animals, including humans, and male Woldercaners try to seduce
> and
>     mate with human females. All in all, Woldercan sounds more like
> Fairyland
>     than a conventional science fiction alien planet. If it is a sort of
> SF
>     Fairyland, that would make the Wolders fairies, or fairy analogues
> anyway.
>
>     The moral status of fairies and Fairyland is moot in the European
> tradition.
>     Sometimes they are morally equivalent to humans, with the "good" and
> "bad"
>     fairies familiar in children's stories. Often, though, they are
> depicted as
>     being amoral and "other", outside human schemes of morality and, when
> their
>     stories get merged with the Christian tradition, outside the divine
> scheme
>     of salvation.
>
>     Yet another tradition, evident in stories like that of Tam Lin and
> some
>     versions of Thomas the Rhymer, has Fairyland as a subsidiary dominion
> of
>     Hell to which it pays tax (usually every seven years) in the form of
> human
>     souls. Fairies in this tradition become similar to devils or demons.
>
>     In the opening chapter of AEG, Gideon tells the President that there
> is no
>     such thing as good and evil. His position seems to be that there is no
> such
>     thing as absolute good or evil, only things that we ourselves
> disapprove of.
>     If he means that no person is ever wholly good or wholly evil, he must
>     surely be right. If he means that good and evil do not themselves
> exist,
>     then, from Wolfe's perspective as a Christian, he must surely be
> wrong. He
>     seems to mean both, which is confusing!
>
>     Gideon's perspective is either that of an amoral alien, analogous to
> the
>     amoral fairies I described above, with no human sense of good or evil,
> or he
>     himself is evil and is deceiving others with his untruths, which makes
> him
>     more of the "demonic" type of alien/fairy.
>
>     Wolfe has stated in interviews that his starting point for AEG was the
> idea
>     of a detective who was a wizard. Gideon is a wizard, and certainly the
>     archetypal wizard, Merlin, is half-human and half-devil in some
> accounts of
>     his parentage.
>
>     By this account, Gideon is at best amoral and at worst positively
> evil.
>
>     At the start of AEG, the President of the United States attempts to
> recruit
>     Gideon to work with the FBI in catching Bill Reis. In many stories,
>     certainly in the 1930s pulp stories which Wolfe is pastiching, this
> would
>     make Gideon the good guy, an untouchable science fictional Eliot Ness.
> But
>     there's a strong element of satire in AEG. The USA over which the
> President
>     presides is a place where abortion has become legalised child murder,
> and
>     where the various federal agencies fight an endless turf war against
> each
>     other, possibly under the manipulative influence of demonic submarine
>     aliens. The moral status of the President in this story is pretty
> cloudy,
>     especially as we later come to see that Bill Reis himself may be far
> from
>     being the evildoer the President claims. As the President's agent,
> Gideon's
>     moral status is equally suspect.
>
>     That's at the start of the story. Does Gideon change?
>
>     I'm not clear in my own mind whether Bill Reis starts off bad but is
> changed
>     by the transforming power of his love for Cassie, or whether he was
> always
>     good and it just takes Cassie and the reader a long time to find the
> correct
>     moral orientation within the confusing landscapes of AEG. I think that
>     there's at least an element of the former because Bill Reis learned
> his
>     alchemy and other tricks on the morally dubious Woldercan.
>
>     Either way, Gideon's transforms Cassie into a star (her name, after
> all, is
>     that of an astronomical star) and its her loveliness which captures
> both
>     Gideon and Bill Reis' hearts. Somehow, this love helps to orientate
> all
>     three of them. Cassie chooses to marry Bill and Gideon goes to work
> for him,
>     although he doesn't seem to break his agreement with the President so
> much
>     as suspend it.
>
>     That seems to be one half of the story. Bill is inspired to
> self-sacrifice,
>     Cassie loves the Christ-like Bill and Gideon is working, at least for
> the
>     moment, for the good guys. Gideon may have transformed Cassie into a
> star in
>     order to trap Reis, but the her power of beauty has transformed all
> three of
>     them for the better.
>
>     But the other half of the story seems to involve putting the bad guys
> into a
>     properly inverted hierarchy of wickedness.
>
>     Cassie's story of how she came to love the neighbour's dog is
> instructive in
>     this context. Scared of the neighbour's dog but even more scared of
> her
>     violently abusive father, she finds herself sheltering with the animal
> and
>     accepting its protection. Her clear perception of the greater source
> of
>     danger enables her to accept the dog just as she later accepts the
> help of
>     the bat creatures which would otherwise have terrified her in order to
>     escape the agents of the evil Storm God.
>
>     The US Navy act as agents of the bad American President and pursue
> Bill Reis
>     for his gold. Reis uses that gold, however, to direct them against the
> Squid
>     God. If the US President, his navy and other agencies are not made
> virtuous
>     as such, they are at least properly directed against the greater evil
> of the
>     malevolent underwater alien.
>
>     I still don't fully understand the ending. Why does Gideon return to
>     Woldercan? Because it is his true home? Perhaps it's because the spell
> of
>     Cassie's star quality has been broken and without it he has fallen
> from
>     virtue back to his old immoral/amoral ways. I don't know what Cassie
> is
>     looking for.
>
>     As an allegory, AEG is confusing. But I don't think it is an allegory
> any
>     more than it's Lovecraftian horror. It uses allegory, or has an
> allegorical
>     dimension, but there's a lot more going on and the correspondences
> between
>     characters and qualities seem to be dynamic rather than static.
>
>     Nigel
>
>
>
>     ------------------------------
>
>     Message: 6
>     Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 00:10:14 -0000
>     From: "Nigel Price" <nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
>     Subject: (urth) Stingray
>     To: "Urth List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
>     Message-ID: <AFEFKBJKJDDJOMBNACBNGEENDNAA.nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
>     Content-Type: text/plain;    charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>     Thanks for that, James. I'd forgotten about that marionette reference
> in
>     OBW.
>
>     There's the story "The Toy Theater" in TIoDDaOSaOS too. That's all
> about
>     marionettes.
>
>     I started this thread as a sort of joke on myself, but now I'm really
>     beginning to wonder!
>
>     Nigel
>
>
>
>     ------------------------------
>
>     Message: 7
>     Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 20:08:43 -0500
>     From: "Matthew Keeley" <matthew.keeley.1 at gmail.com>
>     Subject: Re: (urth) Stingray
>     To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
>     Message-ID:
>         <44fb53d10811031708s57a39c09k508af7025e14b5bd at mail.gmail.com>
>     Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>     On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 7:10 PM, Nigel Price <nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
> wrote:
>     > Thanks for that, James. I'd forgotten about that marionette
> reference in
>     > OBW.
>     >
>     > There's the story "The Toy Theater" in TIoDDaOSaOS too. That's all
> about
>     > marionettes.
>     >
>     > I started this thread as a sort of joke on myself, but now I'm
> really
>     > beginning to wonder!
>     >
>     > Nigel
>     >
>
>     And "Strange Birds" from the chapbook of the same name. Have we ever
>     discussed those two stories here? I thought they were pretty good, but
>     I'm not sure how many people actually ordered the chapbook. Well at
>     least Mr. Gevers read it:
>     http://slaughterhousestudios.blogspot.com/2006/05/strange-birds-indeed.html
>
>     Minor spoiler
>     -
>     -
>     -
>     -
>     -
>     -
>     -
>     -
>     -
>     "Strange Birds" actually features the return of Stromboli [sic?] from
>     "The Toy Theater". I guess Wolfe does have a thing for puppets and
>     puppeteers.
>
>     -Matt
>
>
>     ------------------------------
>
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>     End of Urth Digest, Vol 51, Issue 4
>     ***********************************
>
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