Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 10:31:04 -0500
From: James Jordan 
Subject: Re: (urth) Star vampires ate my hamster!

Nigel,
         I think you have 1/2 of the reason Wolfe uses this old SF tropes 
(that he grew up with it and has some nostalgia for it). The other is what 
he himself has said: that these are also the old tropes of traditional 
pre-modern literature. All premodern literature, he insists, is fantasy 
literature. The lurid stuff you mentioned is also in the Odyssey, the 
Kalevala, Bulfinch's *Mythology,* etc.; though of course not in the SF form.

Nutria


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