From: "Tony Ellis" 
Subject: Re: (urth) A Sad Loss
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 11:16:51 +0100

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
>The dedication to THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS reads:
>
>To Damon Knight, who
>one well-remembered
>June evening in 1966 grew me from a bean.
>
>I have no idea what that means, but.

Hmm. There used to be some sort of in-joke in SF publishing circles that
publishers (or editors?) didn't discover their writers, but grew them from
magic beans. Please don't ask me where I got this from, because I've been
racking my brains trying to remember ever since I saw your post. It feels
like I read it in an essay or a foreword somewhere, and I can conjure up
almost the exact sentence, but not the source.

On another level, if you're right about Number Five's family name being more
than just a pun, then it's hard not to also see this dedication as a joking
comparison of the Knight-Wolfe relationship to that of father and son in
5HC.  After all, Maitre grows little Gene Wolfes from seed too.



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