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From: "Tony Ellis" <tony.ellis@futurenet.co.uk> Subject: Re: Re: (urth) Fairy Tale logic? Bah! Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 18:30:24 +0000 Yes. As usual I'm joining the debate after all the clever stuff has been said, but count me in as a member of the NOT-fairy-tale-logic camp, too. One of the games TBOTNS plays, as we've said many times, is to take existing fantasy cliches and give them an entirely new spin. One of the best ways you can do that is to give a scientific explanation to a classically "fantastic" event. We've all become so accustomed to thinking of Typhon as Autarch, Satan, and mysterious link to the Whorl that it's easy to forget exactly how we first encounter him. As Sev says, it's as if a constellation has taken on human form. Typhon is a two-headed giant. An ogre. A troll. Because that's what heroes meet when they're wondering in the mountains. The twist is, this troll is bio-engineered. The explanation of Father Inire's mirrors is important for the same reason. Magic mirrors are a fantasy cliche - the idea that travel-by-mirror could actually work is something new and thought-provoking. To complain that the explanation is psuedoscience is unsporting - any and every SF story that features FTL travel or hyperspace or whatever is using psuedoscience, and few if any describe how it works with the marvellous, opaque eloquence of that passage in Torturer. Rostrum wrote: > How can QT explain the New Sun being attached to Severian, or being > "birthed" by an act of intercourse? > I'll concede the first point. I can think of several explanations, as it happens, but since I'm opposed to arguments that have to write their own Wolfe fiction to work, I'll agree that some miracles may be just that. But I've never agreed with this thing about the New Sun being created by Sev and Apheta making love. That's just symbolism. The New Sun was created deep within the world of Yesod, and someone pressed the "go" button when Apheta and Sev happened to be getting it on. Because of his mystic link, Sev felt it come into being. Simple as that. *More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/