(urth) Weekly blog links
James Wynn
crushtv at gmail.com
Wed Apr 15 08:05:12 PDT 2009
>David Stockhoff:
> But another likely factor is that BotNS was written with dozens,
>if not hundreds, of literary predecessors in mind, and fantasy
>and satire are rarely far apart. Urth's society is recognizable;
>the Whorl's is not, or at least not so readily. And the later books'
>antecedents seems to lie less in Chesterton
>and Vance than in older myth. IMHO.
Well, the older myths are certainly close to the surface in SS, as they are
in LS. But for literary references, I recommend you read ER Burrough's
"Mars" series and Lan Wright's "The Last Hope of Earth" (aka "The Creeping
Shroud"). Also, Wright's "Pictures of Pavanne" has some rather obvious
homages in LS/SS. I haven't read anything else by Wright, but it wouldn't
surprise me. Also, Dan'l recently identified Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky"
as an identifiable reference. "Pinocchio" is an important source. Yarboro's
"Hyacinths" about about artists who dream stories for televised
entertainment might have been on Wolfe's mind. Fleming's "Brazilian
Adventure" is a source for LS. I haven't re-read it since reading SS, but it
wouldn't be unlikely since it is about a boat ride up the Amazon river.
There are almost certainly more. SS has an aroma of many secret flavorings
which I cannot identify.
J.
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