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From: "Joshua A. Solomon" <j.solomon@ucl.ac.uk> Subject: (urth) recent Wolfe stuff Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 11:12:05 +0100 [Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works] Recently visited my local sf shop, found a couple of Wolfe things. "Counting Cats in Zanzibar" and "Try and Kill It" are two short stories published in Asimov's last year. Another, published in F & SF, I haven't succeeded in tracking down yet. Both of these stories allude to "God's finger's." Anybody want to take a stab at what these are supposed to represent? Does anybody know of any other stories involving supernatural digits? Does anybody know of any more recently published Wolfe things? I think that URTH is an appropriate place to post Wolfe-related news items. For example, the May issue of Interzone contains an (extremely superficial) interview with the man. bee FWIW my initial guess re. God's fingers is that they create the artifice responsible for turning ordinary fiction into speculative fiction. PPS My previous post (several weeks ago, to WHORL) about A Solar Labyrinth seems to have vanished without a trace, but it's noteworthy that, according to said interview, GW claims that it is one of his favorites. (The others were, Westwind, The Eyeflash Miracles & THERE ARE DOORS.) I had said that I thought this story was the archetypical GW story. IMO Wolfe writes specifically for the audience who will have the perception and imagination to discover and become fascinated, if not entrapped, in the literary mazes (puzzles, really) he builds. -- Joshua A. Solomon Institute of Ophthalmology Bath Street London EC1V 9EL Voice: (44) 171 608 6924 Fax: (44) 171 608 6846 j.solomon@ucl.ac.uk http://vision.arc.nasa.gov/personnel/jsolomon