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<DIV>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.</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=PMorris33@aol.com
href="mailto:PMorris33@aol.com">PMorris33@aol.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=urth@lists.urth.net
href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net">urth@lists.urth.net</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, November 03, 2008 7:56
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> (urth) Change of Topic:
Latro</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT id=role_document face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>
<DIV>Does anyone know if a fourth book in the Soldier series is being
contemplated? After all, Latro has not been returned to his home.
</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 11/3/2008 5:09:14 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, <A
href="mailto:urth-request@lists.urth.net">urth-request@lists.urth.net</A>
writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
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style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>Send
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please edit your Subject line so it is more specific<BR>than "Re: Contents
of Urth digest..."<BR><BR><BR>Today's Topics:<BR><BR> 1.
Re: AEG: Is AEG Lovecraftian? (Bryan Alexander)<BR>
2. Stingray (Nigel Price)<BR> 3. Stingray (Nigel
Price)<BR> 4. Re: Stingray (James Wynn)<BR>
5. AEG: Is AEG Lovecraftian? (Nigel Price)<BR> 6.
Stingray (Nigel Price)<BR> 7. Re: Stingray (Matthew
Keeley)<BR><BR><BR>----------------------------------------------------------------------<BR><BR>Message:
1<BR>Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 17:10:48 -0500<BR>From: "Bryan Alexander"
<bryan.alexander@gmail.com><BR>Subject: Re: (urth) AEG: Is AEG
Lovecraftian?<BR>To: "The Urth Mailing List"
<urth@lists.urth.net><BR>Message-ID:<BR>
<a55c3dff0811031410h6cd912e8t9690b7f7b5bd81ba@mail.gmail.com><BR>Content-Type:
text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"<BR><BR>I admit to bringing a Lovecraftian
perspective to my reading of AEG. That<BR>was due in part to various
things I'd heard about the novel, which were then<BR>brought to mind with
the HPL inscription. So I suspected far more cosmic<BR>horror from
various quarters, including the flapping creature, than I ended<BR>up
with.<BR>My Phil Dick-style expectations were confirmed instead.<BR><BR>On
Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:55 PM, Dave Tallman <davetallman@msn.com>
wrote:<BR><BR>> Kieran Mullen wrote:<BR>><BR>>> That needs
a bit of explanation. For a work to be Lovecraftian I
don't<BR>>> think it is simply sufficient to stick in Hastur and
Cthulu and call it<BR>>> that. Lovecraft (IMO) came up with a
truly original ontological horror<BR>>> premise for his
fiction: the universe is dominated by inhuman forces
which<BR>>> we don't have a hope of understanding or
defeating. At best we can only<BR>>> hope that they ignore
us. (We can't even pray that they do - there is
no<BR>>> God, only atoms and a void). Humanity is a minor
irrelevance in a dark<BR>>> and hungry universe. Any
attempt to try to change that will only draw the<BR>>> attention of
forces that will destroy the inquirer.<BR>>><BR>>><BR>>
Given that Wolfe is a Christian I doubt very much that he would write
a<BR>> work consistent with such a nihilistic Lovecraftian premise. But
other<BR>> writers, such as August Derleth (also a Christian), have
expanded the<BR>> Lovecraft universe to include a more classical view of
good vs. evil. To me,<BR>> true horror cannot exist in a universe where
our ideas of sanity and<BR>> goodness are a mere fluke, a cosmic joke.
The efforts of the protagonists<BR>> become simply silly.<BR>><BR>>
But I don't think the Lovecraft parts are simply tacked on. From the<BR>>
beginning Reis announced his intention to retire to the South Seas (p.
14).<BR>> This cannot be a coincidence. Reis may have learned something
during his<BR>> time as ambassador to Woldercan. He may have realized
there was a connected<BR>> menace on Earth and determined to fight it. To
some degree his provoking a<BR>> fight between Squiddy and the Navy seems
to have been a success. At the very<BR>> least the storms took out many
Cthulhu worshipers on the neighboring<BR>> islands.<BR>><BR>> Even
Lovecraft allowed the forces of good to succeed sometimes, for
example<BR>> in "The Dunwich Horror." Even he could not help rooting for
humanity against<BR>> the monsters.<BR>><BR>>
_______________________________________________<BR>> Urth Mailing
List<BR>> To post, write urth@urth.net<BR>> Subscription/information:
http://www.urth.net<BR>><BR><BR><BR><BR>-- <BR>Bryan
Alexander<BR>http://infocult.typepad.com/<BR>http://twitter.com/BryanAlexander<BR>--------------
next part --------------<BR>An HTML attachment was scrubbed...<BR>URL:
<http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20081103/cdec52ad/attachment-0001.htm><BR><BR>------------------------------<BR><BR>Message:
2<BR>Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 22:33:59 -0000<BR>From: "Nigel Price"
<nigelaprice@talktalk.net><BR>Subject: (urth) Stingray<BR>To: "Urth
List" <urth@lists.urth.net><BR>Message-ID:
<AFEFKBJKJDDJOMBNACBNGEEMDNAA.nigelaprice@talktalk.net><BR>Content-Type:
text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"<BR><BR>As I was writing about
evil undersea cities and civilisations in AEG and the<BR>Urth Cycle, one
part of my mind facetiously wandered and wondered whether<BR>Gene Wolfe had
ever watched the Gerry Anderson puppet show "Stingray" in the<BR>1960s. As I
thought whimsically about it, the parallels scattered through<BR>his books
became stronger and stranger. Was Seawrack inspired by Marina? Was<BR>the
idea of the US Navy attacking the Storm God inspired by the sight of<BR>Troy
Tempest and the WASPs attacking Titan and his aquaphibian
minions?<BR><BR>No, of course not, it's a silly idea. It's not as if Wolfe
ever refers to<BR>puppetry in his stories.<BR><BR>Hang on there, wait a
minute...<BR><BR>What about that dream Severian has of the toy theatre and
the marionette<BR>versions of himself and Baldander?<BR><BR>Goodness! If I'm
right, anything can happen in the next half hour...<BR><BR>Nigel (in a
playful mood)<BR><BR><BR><BR>------------------------------<BR><BR>Message:
3<BR>Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 23:00:41 -0000<BR>From: "Nigel Price"
<nigelaprice@talktalk.net><BR>Subject: (urth) Stingray<BR>To: "Urth
List" <urth@lists.urth.net><BR>Message-ID:
<AFEFKBJKJDDJOMBNACBNOEEMDNAA.nigelaprice@talktalk.net><BR>Content-Type:
text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"<BR><BR>Weird but true: Gerry
Anderson and Ray Harryhausen were both speakers at the<BR>1987 WorldCon in
Brighton, England, which Gene and Rosemary Wolfe
also<BR>attended.<BR><BR>Did Wolfe hear Gerry Anderson talk about his
work?<BR><BR>Then again, for anyone interested in creating submarine squid
deities,<BR>Harryhausen's amusing account of animating the six-limbed giant
octopus in<BR>"It came from beneath the sea" might well have been
inspirational. (The<BR>octopus only had six limbs because Harryhausen was on
a tight budget and an<BR>even tighter timetable. Animating extra limbs takes
time, and time is<BR>money!)<BR><BR>Nigel (who is trying to write a serious
analysis of AEG - coming soon - but<BR>keeps getting distracted by whimsical
notions)<BR><BR><BR><BR>------------------------------<BR><BR>Message:
4<BR>Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 17:57:00 -0600<BR>From: "James Wynn"
<crushtv@gmail.com><BR>Subject: Re: (urth) Stingray<BR>To: "The Urth
Mailing List" <urth@lists.urth.net><BR>Message-ID:
<8349DBE9E74F4391A5D742992EE9395D@GATEWAY><BR>Content-Type:
text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";<BR>
reply-type=original<BR><BR>> No, of course not, it's a silly idea. It's
not as if Wolfe ever refers to<BR>> puppetry in his stories.<BR><BR>In
The Book of the Short Sun, Horn remembers the following from his
<BR>childhood:<BR><BR>"I once had a toy, a little wooden man in a blue coat
who was moved by <BR>strings. When I played with him, I made him walk and
bow, and spoke for him. <BR>I practiced until I thought myself very clever.
One day I saw my mother <BR>holding the two sticks that held his strings,
and my little wooden man <BR>saluting my youngest sister much more cleverly
than I could have made him do <BR>it, and laughing with his head thrown
back, then mourning with his face in <BR>his hands. I never spoke of it to
my mother, but I was angry and ashamed."<BR>On Blue's Waters, pg.
158<BR><BR>Soon he after he was assaulted by the triple-jawed
leatherskin---an obvious <BR>reference to Pinnochio's
Dog-fish.<BR><BR>J.<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>------------------------------<BR><BR>Message:
5<BR>Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 00:04:01 -0000<BR>From: "Nigel Price"
<nigelaprice@talktalk.net><BR>Subject: (urth) AEG: Is AEG
Lovecraftian?<BR>To: "Urth List" <urth@lists.urth.net><BR>Message-ID:
<AFEFKBJKJDDJOMBNACBNCEENDNAA.nigelaprice@talktalk.net><BR>Content-Type:
text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"<BR><BR>Kieran Mullen
asks...<BR><BR>>>So what do you think? Is AEG just a
romp<BR>>>through different genres or is it really meant<BR>>>to
be a horror novel?<BR><BR>No, I don't think that AEG is a Lovecraftian
horror story in the sense that<BR>you define. As far as I understand - which
is not very far at all - it<BR>borrows some Lovecraftian elements, but does
not share their underlying<BR>philosophy, their "ontological horror premise"
(great phrase!).<BR><BR>I've read back through all the posts here on AEG and
I've reread bits of the<BR>story but I still don't really understand how all
the parts of the book fit<BR>together. I'm trying to work it out. The nature
of Gideon Chase seems to be<BR>key. That in turn, because Gideon was born
there and is probably a<BR>human-Woldercanese hybrid, is tied up with the
moral status of the planet<BR>Woldercan.<BR><BR>Wolfe depicts Woldercan as a
place which has talking fish, dangerous<BR>forests, alchemy and different
physics. The inhabitants superficially<BR>resemble humans but are subtly
different. They can breed successfully with<BR>lower animals, including
humans, and male Woldercaners try to seduce and<BR>mate with human females.
All in all, Woldercan sounds more like Fairyland<BR>than a conventional
science fiction alien planet. If it is a sort of SF<BR>Fairyland, that would
make the Wolders fairies, or fairy analogues anyway.<BR><BR>The moral status
of fairies and Fairyland is moot in the European tradition.<BR>Sometimes
they are morally equivalent to humans, with the "good" and "bad"<BR>fairies
familiar in children's stories. Often, though, they are depicted as<BR>being
amoral and "other", outside human schemes of morality and, when
their<BR>stories get merged with the Christian tradition, outside the divine
scheme<BR>of salvation.<BR><BR>Yet another tradition, evident in stories
like that of Tam Lin and some<BR>versions of Thomas the Rhymer, has
Fairyland as a subsidiary dominion of<BR>Hell to which it pays tax (usually
every seven years) in the form of human<BR>souls. Fairies in this tradition
become similar to devils or demons.<BR><BR>In the opening chapter of AEG,
Gideon tells the President that there is no<BR>such thing as good and evil.
His position seems to be that there is no such<BR>thing as absolute good or
evil, only things that we ourselves disapprove of.<BR>If he means that no
person is ever wholly good or wholly evil, he must<BR>surely be right. If he
means that good and evil do not themselves exist,<BR>then, from Wolfe's
perspective as a Christian, he must surely be wrong. He<BR>seems to mean
both, which is confusing!<BR><BR>Gideon's perspective is either that of an
amoral alien, analogous to the<BR>amoral fairies I described above, with no
human sense of good or evil, or he<BR>himself is evil and is deceiving
others with his untruths, which makes him<BR>more of the "demonic" type of
alien/fairy.<BR><BR>Wolfe has stated in interviews that his starting point
for AEG was the idea<BR>of a detective who was a wizard. Gideon is a wizard,
and certainly the<BR>archetypal wizard, Merlin, is half-human and half-devil
in some accounts of<BR>his parentage.<BR><BR>By this account, Gideon is at
best amoral and at worst positively evil.<BR><BR>At the start of AEG, the
President of the United States attempts to recruit<BR>Gideon to work with
the FBI in catching Bill Reis. In many stories,<BR>certainly in the 1930s
pulp stories which Wolfe is pastiching, this would<BR>make Gideon the good
guy, an untouchable science fictional Eliot Ness. But<BR>there's a strong
element of satire in AEG. The USA over which the President<BR>presides is a
place where abortion has become legalised child murder, and<BR>where the
various federal agencies fight an endless turf war against each<BR>other,
possibly under the manipulative influence of demonic submarine<BR>aliens.
The moral status of the President in this story is pretty
cloudy,<BR>especially as we later come to see that Bill Reis himself may be
far from<BR>being the evildoer the President claims. As the President's
agent, Gideon's<BR>moral status is equally suspect.<BR><BR>That's at the
start of the story. Does Gideon change?<BR><BR>I'm not clear in my own mind
whether Bill Reis starts off bad but is changed<BR>by the transforming power
of his love for Cassie, or whether he was always<BR>good and it just takes
Cassie and the reader a long time to find the correct<BR>moral orientation
within the confusing landscapes of AEG. I think that<BR>there's at least an
element of the former because Bill Reis learned his<BR>alchemy and other
tricks on the morally dubious Woldercan.<BR><BR>Either way, Gideon's
transforms Cassie into a star (her name, after all, is<BR>that of an
astronomical star) and its her loveliness which captures both<BR>Gideon and
Bill Reis' hearts. Somehow, this love helps to orientate all<BR>three of
them. Cassie chooses to marry Bill and Gideon goes to work for
him,<BR>although he doesn't seem to break his agreement with the President
so much<BR>as suspend it.<BR><BR>That seems to be one half of the story.
Bill is inspired to self-sacrifice,<BR>Cassie loves the Christ-like Bill and
Gideon is working, at least for the<BR>moment, for the good guys. Gideon may
have transformed Cassie into a star in<BR>order to trap Reis, but the her
power of beauty has transformed all three of<BR>them for the
better.<BR><BR>But the other half of the story seems to involve putting the
bad guys into a<BR>properly inverted hierarchy of
wickedness.<BR><BR>Cassie's story of how she came to love the neighbour's
dog is instructive in<BR>this context. Scared of the neighbour's dog but
even more scared of her<BR>violently abusive father, she finds herself
sheltering with the animal and<BR>accepting its protection. Her clear
perception of the greater source of<BR>danger enables her to accept the dog
just as she later accepts the help of<BR>the bat creatures which would
otherwise have terrified her in order to<BR>escape the agents of the evil
Storm God.<BR><BR>The US Navy act as agents of the bad American President
and pursue Bill Reis<BR>for his gold. Reis uses that gold, however, to
direct them against the Squid<BR>God. If the US President, his navy and
other agencies are not made virtuous<BR>as such, they are at least properly
directed against the greater evil of the<BR>malevolent underwater
alien.<BR><BR>I still don't fully understand the ending. Why does Gideon
return to<BR>Woldercan? Because it is his true home? Perhaps it's because
the spell of<BR>Cassie's star quality has been broken and without it he has
fallen from<BR>virtue back to his old immoral/amoral ways. I don't know what
Cassie is<BR>looking for.<BR><BR>As an allegory, AEG is confusing. But I
don't think it is an allegory any<BR>more than it's Lovecraftian horror. It
uses allegory, or has an allegorical<BR>dimension, but there's a lot more
going on and the correspondences between<BR>characters and qualities seem to
be dynamic rather than
static.<BR><BR>Nigel<BR><BR><BR><BR>------------------------------<BR><BR>Message:
6<BR>Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 00:10:14 -0000<BR>From: "Nigel Price"
<nigelaprice@talktalk.net><BR>Subject: (urth) Stingray<BR>To: "Urth
List" <urth@lists.urth.net><BR>Message-ID:
<AFEFKBJKJDDJOMBNACBNGEENDNAA.nigelaprice@talktalk.net><BR>Content-Type:
text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"<BR><BR>Thanks for that, James.
I'd forgotten about that marionette reference in<BR>OBW.<BR><BR>There's the
story "The Toy Theater" in TIoDDaOSaOS too. That's all
about<BR>marionettes.<BR><BR>I started this thread as a sort of joke on
myself, but now I'm really<BR>beginning to
wonder!<BR><BR>Nigel<BR><BR><BR><BR>------------------------------<BR><BR>Message:
7<BR>Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 20:08:43 -0500<BR>From: "Matthew Keeley"
<matthew.keeley.1@gmail.com><BR>Subject: Re: (urth) Stingray<BR>To:
"The Urth Mailing List" <urth@lists.urth.net><BR>Message-ID:<BR>
<44fb53d10811031708s57a39c09k508af7025e14b5bd@mail.gmail.com><BR>Content-Type:
text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1<BR><BR>On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 7:10 PM, Nigel
Price <nigelaprice@talktalk.net> wrote:<BR>> Thanks for that,
James. I'd forgotten about that marionette reference in<BR>>
OBW.<BR>><BR>> There's the story "The Toy Theater" in TIoDDaOSaOS too.
That's all about<BR>> marionettes.<BR>><BR>> I started this thread
as a sort of joke on myself, but now I'm really<BR>> beginning to
wonder!<BR>><BR>> Nigel<BR>><BR><BR>And "Strange Birds" from the
chapbook of the same name. Have we ever<BR>discussed those two stories here?
I thought they were pretty good, but<BR>I'm not sure how many people
actually ordered the chapbook. Well at<BR>least Mr. Gevers read
it:<BR>http://slaughterhousestudios.blogspot.com/2006/05/strange-birds-indeed.html<BR><BR>Minor
spoiler<BR>-<BR>-<BR>-<BR>-<BR>-<BR>-<BR>-<BR>-<BR>-<BR>"Strange Birds"
actually features the return of Stromboli [sic?] from<BR>"The Toy Theater".
I guess Wolfe does have a thing for puppets
and<BR>puppeteers.<BR><BR>-Matt<BR><BR><BR>------------------------------<BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>Urth
Mailing List<BR>To post, write urth@urth.net<BR>Subscription/information:
http://www.urth.net<BR><BR>End of Urth Digest, Vol 51, Issue
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