(urth) Weekly blog links

["Fernando Q. Gouvêa"]

Well, I don't know. I remember when reviewers used to complain that 
Wolfe was too difficult (for example, an infamous review by Orson Scott 
Card). There's no doubt he reacted to that and tried to be more 
accessible at times. For me, however, it's not a matter of decline over 
time, but of variability. No author can hit the jackpot always. Fifth 
Head, Peace, New Sun were roughly contemporaneous, after all, with Devil 
in a Forest, Free Live Free, There Are Doors, Castleview.

To my taste, Castleview and Pandora are distinctly weaker than Pirate 
Freedom or An Evil Guest.

Similarly with the shorter work. Wolfe seems to have weighted his "Best" 
volume heavily towards the older stuff, but I'm not convinced that the 
newer stories are not as good. Different, certainly. But "Ziggurat", 
say, is as good a story as "The Death of Doctor Island", and perhaps 
better. For one thing, it's far more complex morally.

Fernando

>> How many of you agree that the Wolfe of Fifth Head, Peace, New Sun,
>> Endangered Species (partially), and Death of Dr. Island and OS and OS
>> is not even recognizably the same author as that of Pirate Freedom, An
>> Evil Guest, or the Short Sun? (Shared concerns, yes. The quality of
>> execution, however, is more like that of a bad imitator.)
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Fernando Q. Gouvea             
Carter Professor of Mathematics   
Colby College                     Editor, MAA FOCUS
5836 Mayflower Hill               Editor, MAA Reviews
Waterville, ME 04901              http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/19/
http://www.colby.edu/~fqgouvea

What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing to compare it with.