From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey@stic.net>
Subject: (urth) "Copperhead": What went wrong
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 19:28:59 

It turns out that I was all wrong about the apparent timeframe difficulties
of "Copperhead" that I distracted the list with a few months back. The New
President had not been in office for the fifteen months or so that I
thought, which seemed to place added emphasis on his being referred to as
"New". The president came to office in the usual way. His inauguration, the
crash, the appearance of Jane Doe, and the day the story takes place were
all in the same calendar year. There was no second spring of his presidency.
Sorry about that. The story takes place in the middle of October.

How do I know this? Mantis told me so. A few weeks ago he e-mailed me to let
me know that he had written to Gene Wolfe a few months earlier about
"Copperhead", in the course of which he mentioned my squabbles about the
timeframe, to which Wolfe replied as outlined above; he didn't see any
problem with the timeline of the story. I reminded mantis of the reference
to "the spring night" toward the end of the story, which had been my reason
for going off on that tangent in the first place. There I left the matter
until, to shorten this up, I received a note from Gene Wolfe today
acknowledging that the "spring" reference in the story was an error and
apologizing--of all things--for it. Sheesh. All that for a simple, one-word
mistake that he was hardly accountable to me for. What can I say? They don't
make 'em like that anymore.

-Roy



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