From: m.driussi@genie.geis.com
Subject: (urth) Urth syllabus
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 98 21:46:00 GMT


[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

Reply:  Item #5968886 from URTH@LISTS.BEST.COM@INET02#

Dan,

I don't recollect Wolfe mentioning NON-STOP or THE LONG AFTERNOON OF
EARTH.  (I keep meaning to make a big ol' list of every book that
Wolfe ever mentions in passing in his own essays or interviews.
Someday, maybe.)

Re: Funes memory as different than Severian's.  Right, I'm glad you
mentioned it because that's what I was thinking myself.  But I was
thinking that the treatment was more like that of Proust rather than
C.S. Lewis.  (Speaking of whom--it is somewhat surprising how very
similar A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS [1920] and OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET
[1938] are.  I'd like to read an essay addressing this in depth.)

I'm not sure how much Wolfe is a fan of A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS (I mean
this literally rather than as a euphemism for "I know he hates it").
In a letter he once told me he thought it was a particularly grim
Protestant Pilgrim's Progress.  Now Harold Bloom loves A VOYAGE TO
ARCTURUS to death, and this fact is somewhat disturbing to alga!

Rostrum,

Re: Vance, a reader who likes DE; lukewarm to EO; bored with AA.
Well you might favor Vance's serious fantasy over his comical fantasy
and his science fiction.  If this is the case, avoid all other Dying
Earth novels and try the Lyonese trilogy.  If you want to give the sf
another try, the DEMON PRINCES series is a sort of James Bond as
ninja in space; PLANET OF ADVENTURE series is Vance's Barsoom.  If
you want sf with a dash more fantasy, go with the award winners: THE
LAST CASTLE and/or THE DRAGON MASTERS (but I don't recommend you read
them back to back, nor do so with SON OF THE TREE/HOUSES OF ISZM; these
pairings are thematically a tad too similar.  The better doubles, IMHO,
would have been SON OF THE TREE/THE DRAGON MASTERS and THE LAST CASTLE/
HOUSES OF ISZM).  And EMPHYRIO is another surprisingly-like-TBOTNS
book.

(There is a ton of Vance fiction out there and just about everybody
ranks 'em differently.  I myself like the recent NIGHT LAMP and most
recent PORTS OF CALL, fwiw.)

=mantis=

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/