(urth) Gene Wolfe to Appear on Coode Street Podcast

[Jerry Friedman]

Is there any reason to think Wolfe would answer specific questions about the stories, such as the ones Ryan Dunn suggested?  I think he's said he won't do that any more.  Even if he won't, we might have fun discussing what questions we most want the answers to and seeing whether there's any agreement.
 
Anyway, here are questions on his beliefs (mostly).  The introductory parts about his stories can be shortened or removed.
 
In "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", the narrator is a clone--possibly a clone of you, some generations later--and many readers have understood his appalling character as suggesting that this unnatural method of reproduction would produce people cut off from the good side of humanity, maybe even leading to the Beast of Revelation.  In Pirate Freedom, the narrator is the product of genetic engineering, possibly a clone, and though he has a good side, he does some terrible things and calls himself a "half-human monster".  Now perhaps human cloning is possible or will soon be.  What do you think of it?  What would you tell somebody who was thinking of trying to get a clone made of himself or herself or of a dead family member?
 
In The Book of the New Sun, the narrator is a torturer who eventually decides to end torture in his Commonwealth.  In Pirate Freedom, the narrator comments that the torture that has been in the news recently (which may be the same in his world as in ours) isn't even true torture and too much of a fuss has been made over it.  What is your opinion on the harsher interrogation techniques that American soldiers, and intelligence operatives have used in this century on prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, etc.?  Are they torture?  Are or were they morally justified?  Would you like to see them outlawed?
 
In an interview with James Jordan, you said, "I think that the gods of paganism were real."  Do you still believe that?  What can you tell us about these beings?  Do you believe they still exist and still interact with us?  Do they appear in your fiction outside the Soldier series?
 
Jerry Friedman
 

>________________________________
> From: Fred Kiesche <godelescherbach at gmail.com>
>To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> 
>Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2012 6:58 AM
>Subject: (urth) Gene Wolfe to Appear on Coode Street Podcast
>  
>
>Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe will be having special guest Gene Wolfe on The Coode Street Podcast (to be recording this weekend). They have put out a call for questions. Post them here or e-mail me (GodelEscherBach at gmail.com) and I'll pass 'em on.
>
>
>-- 
>F.P. Kiesche III  "Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book. Always, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?" (The Duke of Gloucester, on being presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.) Blogging at The Lensman's Children (http://theeternalgoldenbraid.blogspot.com/).
>
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