From: Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: (whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v007.n018
Date: Mon, 8 Sep 1997 12:04:49 


[Posted from WHORL, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]



On Fri, 5 Sep 1997, Jim Jordan wrote:

> 	Finally, I think Wolfe, like Tolkein before him, is a bit amazed at how
> little Christianity is known and understood by SF and fantasy readers, so
> that obvious references to God (such as the Outsider) are frequently
> misread. So, he has to come on-line and tell us point-blank: the Outsider
> is God! 

Furthermore, I think it's a shame for Wolfe to say, in a context outside
the text of the novel, that the Outsider "is" God.  I'm a Christian, and
so have absolutely no objections to Wolfe writing about God 'as if he
really exists,' but it seems to be cheating somehow for Wolfe to give this
kind of extra authorial authority to God's existence in the Whorl when we
should be forced to evaluate the narrator's experiences for ourselves. 

-Rostrum