From: William Ansley <wansley@warwick.net>
Subject: Re: (whorl) Short Sun books inaccessible?
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 22:59:59 

At 11:39 AM -0600 2/20/01, Adam Stephanides wrote:

>I agree that RTTW's surface layer is less immediately enjoyable than that of
>some of his other works, but I don't think it's because of too many "buried
>layers of meaning"; I think it's because of the arbitrariness I mentioned in
>an earlier post, and the number of subplots he leaves dangling.  (Of course,
>it's possible that these reflect some hidden meaning that I've missed.)
>

Adam,

I think you are exactly right. I was confusing complexity/obscurity 
of plot with  'multiplexity'/obscurity of layers of meaning. I hope 
that if I do re-read the LS and SS books all in a row that they will 
seem less arbitrary and some of the dangling subplots will turn out 
not to be dangling after all. But I am not likely to re-read these 
books any time soon and it is not a strong hope.

>As I said earlier, I don't think RTTW is the most obscure of Wolfe's books;
>nor do I think any of the SS books are among the most obscure.

Again, I have to agree with you, now that I really think about it. It 
actually just seems incomplete to me, which is why I so strongly 
suspect that Wolfe is going to write a sequel. (Not that I expect the 
sequel, if there is one, will provide a complete sense of closure!)

>  > I also have to admit that I enjoyed the SS books less than the LS
>>  books and those less than the NS books,
>
>I would rank the New Sun books first, the Short Sun books second, and the
>Logn Sun books third.

I rank the LS and SS books well below NS and very close together. It 
is really a toss up between the two newer series. I remember that I 
was in no great hurry to buy the final volume of LS and the reason 
that I got a copy of RttW as quickly as I did was so that I could 
continue to follow the discussion here. Oh yeah, and a forlorn hope 
that Wolfe would provide answers. Well he did provide *some* answers, 
I have to admit that, although some of them were answers I didn't 
like.

William Ansley

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