<div style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14px;"><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Good post.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div contenteditable="false" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">*******</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Eric Bourland</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">eb@hwaet.com</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.hwaet.com/" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 102, 147); text-decoration: underline; user-select: auto;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.hwaet.com/</a><a href="https://twitter.com/EricBourland" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 102, 147); text-decoration: underline; user-select: auto;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></div></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><hr id="previousmessagehr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; user-select: none;"><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">From</strong>: "Gwern Branwen" <gwern@gwern.net><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Sent</strong>: 8/26/23 12:13 AM<br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">To</strong>: urth@urth.net<br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Subject</strong>: (urth) _Edges_ shows "Suzanne Delage" involves memory loss; SD is probably Bram Stoker's _Dracula_<br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></span></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">I recently purchased a scan of the 1980 SF anthology _Edges_ to check the</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">accuracy of my transcript of Wolfe's enigmatic short story "Suzanne</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Delage" (https://gwern.net/suzanne-delage), which was first published</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">in it. The scan confirmed that,</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">as I suspected, some of the very-long paragraphs were mistakenly</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">combined, and helped me correct a few typographic errors like missing em-dashes.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">But what was more interesting was it turns out that _Edges_ contains</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">more commentary on "Suzanne Delage" than anyone on <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://Urth.net">Urth.net</a> or</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">elsewhere has ever pointed out online (that I am aware of from my</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">extensive searches). It was previously pointed out that Virginia</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Kidd's very short introduction to the story says that</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> His short story hereunder is a den of iniquities; no one else could have written it.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">And this has motivated the search for an esoteric narrative. But what</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">hasn't been pointed out before is that Ursula K. Le Guin's</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">introduction to the anthology as a whole contains a brief description</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">of what the iniquities in question are:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> ...Some—Engh, Mitchison, Sanders, Dorman—write of existences at the limits of civilization/the comprehensible/the known, that gleaming uneasy ground where two kinds or cultures meet, or fail to meet: the boundary, no man’s or woman’s land. Wolfe, and Pei, and Emshwiller tell of lives lived on the edge of hope, or a little over the edge.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">So, Wolfe's story in some way involves a life lived 'a little over the</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">edge of hope', which once had great hope and yet has since become in</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">some way hopeless as a result of great iniquities. (None of the</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">stories in _Edges_ I've skimmed so far ends well, so we can safely</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">assume that "Suzanne Delage" must represent a Bad End, even without</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Kidd telling us about iniquities.)</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">This is interesting but still</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">fairly consistent with many interpretations of "Suzanne Delage". But</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">it gets more interesting: the front and back cover of _Edges _</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">includes *per-story summaries*, written, presumably by Le Guin (or</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">more likely, Kidd). These summaries do not include the story names,</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">but because there are only 12 stories, by process of elimination and</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">checking against the individual story introductions / stories, we can</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">confidently identify almost all of the summaries, except for one: the</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">summary for either "Suzanne Delage"/Wolfe, Pei, or both, is:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> "VISIONS:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> ...</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> - of a sweetheart forever lost"</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">(I suspect that this summary is meant to apply to both, and they were</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">just too similar (as Le Guin's intro indicates) to give 2 different</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">blurbs too.)</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">So, since the protagonist doesn't recall ever so much as meeting</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Suzanne Delage, much less her being his sweetheart, his memory must</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">have been damaged or altered in some respect.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">This represents one of the first really solid clues as to what's going</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">on in SD, I think.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Any interpretation which doesn't involve memory loss is at odds with</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">the external evidence. This means we can reject: Borski's Snow White</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">theory (nothing in Snow White involves memory loss and his criticism</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">of the prince doesn't match up with the prince being victimized); the</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">sheer-probability/missed-connections stories (there is in fact</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">*exactly that* missed-connections story in _Edges_ - It's just not SD,</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">it's the Emshwiller story!) or the shaggy-dog-story explanation; most</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">of the cloning hypotheses; the sexual affair/romance gone bad ones (no</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">way for him to brainwash himself so totally) etc.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">We are left with: vampires; underspecified Spanish Influenza theories;</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">and underspecified ghosts.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Ghosts generally do not come with any brainwashing or memory-loss</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">powers, so it's hard to see what sort of narrative that yields.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Spanish Influenza comes off a bit better, due to the association with</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">encephalitis and comas (see also _Sandman_), but it's very hard to</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">give a purely naturalistic explanation here: both the narrator and</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Suzanne Delage appear to be very alive and well, and not in a coma,</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">and the narrator, who is the one who ought to be brain-damaged here,</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">asserts a successful life with a career and multiple marriages after</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">an athletic highschool career in which he is visible in many photos</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">and participated in many football games.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">The one SD theory which suddenly looks extremely attractive in light</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">of comments about 'a sweetheart forever lost' is vampirism, and we can</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">now be more specific about what classic mythological horror monster</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Wolfe is invoking, which we are supposed to recognize the allusions to</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">in order to fill in the gaps and understand the true story: Bram</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Stoker's _Dracula_!</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">I don't believe anyone has brought it up before, but the parallels are</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">(ahem) uncanny.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Wolfe loves vampires, of course, and recall that _Dracula_ is all</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">about stealing a nubile young bride, and one of Dracula's canonical</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">powers is mind-control by biting & hypnosis. If Suzanne Delage was the</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">protagonist's lover and a vampire decided to take her, then we can</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">explain everything neatly: a vampire (Delage's implied but unmentioned</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">husband?) mind-controlled Delage into leaving him and him into</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">forgetting about her very existence (no inconvenient questions), and</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">destroying the photos that might remind them of each other or serve as</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">dangerous documentation, and perhaps adding post-hypnotic suggestions</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">to avoid each other. (Note that in _Dracula_, Dracula makes a</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">particular point of trying to destroy all documentation the</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">protagonists have collected about him.) The narrator then *has* been</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">the victim of a truly extraordinary event passing the bounds of all</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">ordinary rationality, one which involves great iniquities, plural, and</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">"a sweetheart forever lost", parallel to the Pei and Emshwiller</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">stories.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Spanish Influenza references and oddities may then serve as cover</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">for vampiric depredations: the highschool was suddenly afflicted by</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">new vampires preying on the students, producing anemia, exhaustion,</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">and other issues, which might be ascribed to lingering effects of flu</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">or other issues (cf. Long Covid, encephalitis, and Mina's experiences</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">in _Dracula_). Also a classic gimmick for vampire fiction - the crimes</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">covered up by a war or crime or pandemic.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">The daughter is then most likely Suzanne: as dramatically appealing as</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">it is, and as extremely stereotypically vampiric as the 'daughter' is</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">described as looking, I've objected that this involves practical</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">difficulties. However, now we are required to invoke mind-control &</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">memory-modification powers, so there's no longer any difficulty in</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">things like Suzanne pretending to be her own daughter, and it explains</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">why the encounter had such an impact on the narrator (the old buried</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">love trying to overcome the vampiric mindcontrol), and the oddly</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">ephebophilic tone people have remarked on - but of course, the "Brides</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">of Dracula" female vampires were lethal seductresses in _Dracula_ (a</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">lead followed by much subsequent vampire fiction). We can also explain</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">how Suzanne is out in broad daylight with no apparent ill effect if</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">this is a vampire story: she is cursed like Mina Harker</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mina_Harker), and increasingly vampiric</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">in powers and nature, but not actually a vampire until she dies.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">(Since there are no apparent vampire hunters and the protagonist &</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Suzanne are still well within an ordinary human lifetime, there is no</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">particular reason to assume Suzanne has died and become fully</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">vampiric.)</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">We can go even further: the collecting expeditions are probably how</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">the vampire located the town to parasitize. _Dracula_, as has been</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">noted, is chock-a-block with trains, and we are told that the mothers</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">'once or twice went by rail'; rail, of course, would be the logical</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">way to transport a vampire and his coffins, inasmuch as Dracula's</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">preferred method of ship or carriage would not work in a contemporary</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">1920s settings for a family which doesn't have a carriage and lives in</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">a landlocked town. At some point, they dug too deep into antiquities,</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">and unearthed an aristocratic family they would have done better to</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">leave undisturbed, and the next time, the female thralls ensured</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">transport for their fell master to fertile new grounds to hunt...</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">So, I think this resolves SD. It explains all of the external evidence</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">and fits the internal evidence demands of an extraordinary forgotten</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">event, it fits into how we know Wolfe liked to refashion and allude to</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">sources and is a truly Wolfean reading in a way that the suggestions</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">about cloning or ghosts have been unable to provide, the parallels</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">like the destruction of documentation or the Brides of Dracula or</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">mind-control/hypnosis or Mina Harkness being cursed or the mention of</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">just 1 trip by train are striking (and unexplained by all other</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">theories), it provides a satisfyingly horrifying narrative of a small</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">town being stalked and controlled by a vampire</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">------------------</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">The _Edges_ table of contents:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">#. Introduction by Ursula K. Le Guin</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">#. “The Ballad of Bowsprit Bear's Stead” by Damien Broderick</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">#. “Omens” by Carol Emshwiller</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">#. “Touch the Earth” by Scott Sanders</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">#. “The Other Magus” by Avram Davidson</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">#. “Peek-a-Boom” by Sonya Dorman</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">#. “Suzanne Delage” by Gene Wolfe</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">#. “The Finger” by Naomi Mitchison</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">#. “Barranca King of the Tree Streets” by Lowry Pei</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">#. “Thomas in Yahvestan” by George P. Elliott</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">#. “The Vengeance of Hera” by Thomas M. Disch</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">#. “Falling” by Raylyn Moore</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">#. “Father Returns from the Mountain” by Luis Urrea</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">#. “The Oracle” by M. J. Engh</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">The back cover rules out 4 stories easily by providing their authors:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Back cover:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> - Tom Disch: on the Vengeance of Hera in White Plains, New York [“The Vengeance of Hera”]</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> - Naomi Mitchison's dark tale of magic in modern-day Africa [“The Finger”]</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> - Avram Davidson’s: lament for a misplaced magus [“The Other Magus”]</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> - M. J. Engh’s: poignant, moving novella of love, revolution, and the dragon at the bottom of the world [“The Oracle”]</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> A dozen dazzling journeys that hurtle you across the vast landscape of the imagination to its furthest... EDGES</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">We can cross them off the list of the dozen stories, and turn to the</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">front cover, and begin reading through the stories to figure out their</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">summary:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> GLIMPSES:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> - of disaster too great to believe</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> [“Falling” by Raylyn Moore]</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> - of a captured quantum creature</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> [“Peek-a-Boom” by Sonya Dorman]</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> VISIONS:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> - of a lover never known</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> [This is *not* "Suzanne Delage", but Emshwiller's "Omens", as the story introduction makes clear: "There are reputed to be a limited number of possible story situations, anyhow, of which boy meets girl is one. Boy almost meets girl is another." The story then confirms this.]</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> - of a sweetheart forever lost</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> [There are only 2 possible candidates for this (as Urrea's “Father Returns from the Mountain” is the only other unlisted story and doesn't match): “Suzanne Delage” by Gene Wolfe; and “Barranca King of the Tree Streets” by Lowry Pei.]</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> JOURNEYS:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> - to the last days of a dying empire</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> [“The Ballad of Bowsprit Bear's Stead” by Damien Broderick]</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> - to the land of lust and lost gods</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> [“Thomas in Yahvestan” by George P. Elliott]</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> - to an awesome world of earth and sky</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">> [“Touch the Earth” by Scott Sanders]</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Assuming that both Wolfe & Pei are meant by 'a sweetheart forever</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">lost', that means 11/12 stories are covered on the covers. Apparently</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">omitted from both front & back cover is:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">- “Father Returns from the Mountain” by Luis Urrea</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Skimming, Urrea's story is pretty weird and experimental, so I'm not</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">surprised it got omitted. I'm not sure how I'd capsule-summarize it</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">either.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">--</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">gwern</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">_______________________________________________</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Urth Mailing List</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">To post, write urth@urth.net</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Subscription/information: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://www.urth.net" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 102, 147); text-decoration: underline; user-select: auto;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.urth.net</a></div></div>