Traveller’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2015)

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

Puddin Pointy-Toes wrote: "Though I had read this previously it was in 2010, which sometimes feels like another lifetime, so I'm practically approaching it de novo.

What struck me almost immediately is that there are many ..."

Puddin Pointy-Toes! My word, what a long time it's been since seeing you around these parts, and it's a welcome surprise, so, very welcome to you! Ah, Neal Stephenson's novel Anathem... I have that book on my shelf, and I do remember reading a bit of it, and indeed, IIRC it does have some obscure terminology. I must really get to reading it properly.

As far as Wolfe's obscure terminology is concerned, I'm not sure how much I love it and how much I hate it. It does contribute to the general strangeness of the story world, which is of course what Wolfe was going for, but it can also be a bit of a pain that he uses so much of it, though I must say, now that I have been looking the words up, it kind of opens an extra dimension of the story world for me.

I first read this book so long ago that it was before I had started using the internet; - I might not even have had my own PC back then, so I didn't have an opportunity to look it all up. Consequently all the French and Latin terms and the references to extinct animals and so on, went right over my head. On my current re-read I'm seeing how multi-layered this book is, and that aspect certainly adds a layer.

Interesting. Novellas are my thing, and the list does look good, thanks!

Interesting point of view, Jennifer, thanks for that. Like you say, it's part of their society, and since each member of the guild was born and therefore brainwashed into having pride in the professionalism of their work, it's kinda a difficult situation. I think this whole issue becomes even more interesting as the story progresses.

As I mentioned before, I also like the fact that they take care not to enlist sadists who would actually enjoy torturing people and would therefore risk making the torture excessive. They do exactly just as much as they're supposed to, and then care for the patient after the torture or "excruciation" has been performed.

I've read a bit on now, and it's really notable how much all the non-torturers hate the Torturer's Guild. Perhaps being a kind of social outcast like this, even strengthens the guild members' ties and "feeling of belonging" with the guild.

Let me make a new post in case my editing causes trouble again...
...but anyway, I just wanted to add how strange it is that Severian's world seems full of images of Pleistocene (around 2.5 million years ago) animals, and that Severian actually recognizes what they look like and knows the terminology for them. ...but hold on, the Barylambda is an extinct genus of mammals found as fossils in deposits in North America in the late Paleocene Epoch (58.7 to 55.8 million years ago).

This can't be an accident; I don't think Wolfe would be sloppy enough to simply put that in for fun; but at this point I can't quite figure out why Severian knows about them, and why they feature so strongly. Perhaps the common denominator is that these animals are now extinct?
Is Wolfe perhaps suggesting that extinct animals were genetically engineered and bred again? If so, that would certainly fit in with his death and rebirth theme.

I had a few spare minutes today and am now at the part where Severian saves Triskele - I really love that part. Isn't it sweet how he keeps calling him "my dog" 🥺😢 ?

Anyway, so I looked up an 'Arctotherium', and it's a potentially huge stone-age bear, either roughly the size of a modern bear or larger. From Wikipedia:

" According to a 2009 study, the weight ranges for Arctotherium were calculated as follows- A. wingei at 51 kg-150 kg, A. vetustum at 102 kg-300 kg, A. tarijense at 135 kg-400 kg, A. bonariense between 171 kg-500 kg, and A. angustidens at 412 kg-1,200 kg"

...so even though Triskele was the smallest of the bodies lying on the trash heap, he wasn't exactly small.

This might also be a good place to note that Severian suspects, from his height and the shape of his nose and his coloring that he might be an exultant, a tall race of people mentioned in the story. To be fully transparent, I am a bit of a Wolfe fan and a few years back joined some online groups, where I saw it being suggested that the exultants were genetically engineered to be a superior breed of humanity, who became similar to aristocrats in the near past of our own world. This of course sets one off to wonder who Severian's parents were, and how they (or his mother at the very least) got to fall into the hands of the Torturers.

Jennifer wrote: "Oh I have thoughts about the toture and that,but its early and I have to get ready for work. I shall report back . It will give ne chance to gather my thoughts.

But aren't we all brainwashed to a degree..."

Indeed we are all brainwashed into our specific culture. And my current brainwashing makes me uncomfortable with what goes as acceptable in Severian's world, but of course Wolfe knows that. I'm just finding it interesting how he as a writer pulls that off.

As you, say, Jennifer, it is indeed perhaps a discussion we should have later on, but it is, in my opinion, in the meantime something worthwhile to keep an eye on while we read along.

Whitney wrote: "
Posts have been changed and deleted so much that my original comment here appeared to have been replying to something very different than it was. I made this note rather than just deleting and leaving a void. It's a great book, enjoy y'all.
..."

Absolutely nothing has been deleted. I don't play that way. I added two edits to message 19, the first edit before I saw Whitney's comment and the second after I read Whitney's comment.
To me this is a trifling issue, and I don't mind bending backwards to make a valued member feel welcome and appreciated, but I do draw the line when insinuations and accusations of underhandedness are made.

There is no need to be underhanded about anything. We are not here to compete, we are here to enjoy exploring literature. As the members of this group well know, nobody is "the boss"; we are all equals and we are here to help one another in our appreciation of and our understanding of the richness that literature has to offer to all of us, no matter what the specific person's point of view.

I do indeed edit my comments to fix typo's without explicitly drawing attention to it- I am a huge typo-maker, but when I significantly edit the content of the message, I usually mark it as such, and I, for one, don't delete my comments if they have been up for more than an hour and definitely not once people had seen them.

Like everyone else, I sometimes make mistakes, but when called out on them, I will always accede rather than come across as a pompous ass who cannot even acknowledge their own mistakes.
So I especially do not appreciate over-competitive attitudes in our threads here where the whole thing is turned into a contest and accusations are flung around. We need to have respect for all our members unless they are misbehaving and EVERY opinion, no matter how big or small is valued and should be respected if expressed in good faith.

I was wondering when would be a good time to address the elephant in the room, being the horrible things that happen in the story itself. From the very start we are introduced to things that are taboo in our own society - meddling with whoever knows what in graveyards, but worse, the fact that the torturer's guild actually does executions and conducts torture, as we soon find out in Chapter 3.

Wolfe makes a point to make it clear that sadists are not allowed in the guild - when someone voluntarily wants to join the guild, they are refused entry; and all who belong were basically "born" into the guild, and so need to be brainwashed into doing the horrible things they do, since it is of course against any normal compassionate person's nature to hurt, kill and torture.

Part of the success of the brainwashing is that it starts while the boys are still very young: they are exposed to what the torturers do at a very young age already, so this must feel like a part of life for them. (Similar to how in a hunting culture, boys go along with the hunters to get them used to the idea, and girls help the mothers skin and clean the prey brought home for food.)

I find it interesting to see how they have brainwashed Severian - this is partly done with guild rituals, and by not seeing the 'clients' really as human beings but as the subjects of an 'honorable' job that the torturers supposedly have to fulfil with professionalism. Severian even thinks the torturers are kind when they'd only give him a thrashing and not worse.

Any thoughts?

Jennifer wrote: "In my first read I completley missed that this was a future Earth. But is it really Earth ? Or a earth like planet, hence the crashed space ship. I am not remembering a description of the sky so far, but I feel like something was off....now have to check.

Also we are all finding different and unusual words that grab us. I like that..."

It is fun, isn't it, Jennifer? I can't remember if you read that Umberto Eco along with us where Eco also played with clues and references - oh that was a separate group, but anyway, it's like Wolfe toys a bit with his readers - he's playing with our minds, and it's rather fun!

Has anybody around here read The Fifth Head of Cerberus or The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories and Other Stories ?

Cordelia wrote: "I'm going to start again. Read one chapter at a time. Will look up strange words and puzzling stuff. Before I was relying on my knowlede of Medieval history, but some things dont quite fit."

Cordelia, you can do that, but there's so much to take in at once, isn't there! This book kinda has layers, like an onion, but you can't see all of the layers right from the start, so maybe you should go with your gut and focus on enjoying the story itself. There's actually a quite cool storyline in which Severian as a person's character develops, from being a naive boy, to something a lot more sophisticated.
There's almost too many themes in the story for a person to notice and follow every single one, -it can be quite exhausting, which is why it's nice to have these threads where we can point things we find out to one another. :)

Whitney wrote: "Um, editing your post to make it look like you made a point before the person who actually made it, is not cool. Somewhat short of a dirty delete, but still, not cool. I think we have different opinions about what constitutes a discussion. I will bow out since this is your pond.d..."

Whitney, as I explained, if you are talking about the Nenephars, I made the edit BEFORE I saw your post, or even Cordelia's, for that matter. I was busy looking it up as you posted. Not sure how to deal with that since my edit had nothing to do with the fact that you posted. In fact, you definitely gave some food for thought on the situation when you mentioned the mystery of how he was saved. This is something I just vaguely remember from my previous read, and so not sure if this mystery is ever solved, so thank you very much for mentioning that! Not sure what to do now to make you feel better about this -I can mention you before my edit, but like I said, the edit was done before I had refreshed the page to see any other posts. As my other members know, I'm a very fair person and would always acknowledge any person's input. Your input so far has been very valuable, so I do hope you'll be back.

Whitney wrote: "I got that this was just because Severian had almost drowned after getting tangled up in the roots. There is still the mystery of how he was saved, however, with his vision of the dead Master, and witnesses saying he shot up out of the water..."

Yes, I remembered the very beginning and edited that post - and as I said in my edit, I wouldn't put it past Wolfe for it being a metaphor for Severian's general situation. Ok, let's discuss that part later again! It's as if Wolfe leaves this trail of breadcrumbs that one picks up on with a subsequent reading...

Cordelia wrote: "I've read the first 3 chapters. Society appears to be pretty medieval - broken into different guilds, each with a different role in society. But there are symbols of flying machine in the mausaleum..."

Nice to see you reading along with us, Cordelia, thanks for contributing! This far in the story, since there is mention of an Autarch - which sounds a heck of a lot like an autocrat, I was guessing that the torturers are probably there to quell dissent among the populace, and lets face it, they sound pretty intimidating, so just the thing a dictator would use to "keep the peace"!

Just a quick note - a nénuphar is the French word for water lily, so I'm trying to picture the swimming situation that Severian mentions: "At the place where we swam, Gyoll had lost its natural banks hundreds of years ago. Here it was a two-chain-wide expanse of blue nenuphars penned between walls of stone." A bit after that, he mentions that it was because of the nenuphars that he never returned to their old swimming place. This has me puzzling a bit. I'll look it up among the plethora of "New Sun" commentary out there.
EDIT: Oh, that's how he almost drowned- he got stuck in the water lilies. Perhaps symbolic of his situation in life at this point? (That he is powerless and "stuck").

SECOND EDIT: Apologies for not seeing your reply in time, Whitney! Whitney pointed out what I mentioned in my edit above, and mentioned that this is part of a bigger theme or mystery. Thanks for that, Whitney, I do hope you'll be around later when this theme surfaces again! :) ...as Whitney pointed out, who is the woman who is crying (while Severian was underwater), and which woman's face did he see? ...and who threw him out of the water?

Whitney wrote: "I think your question belongs in the next thread you set up to avoid spoilers? It can't really be addressed without digging in to the book more. So I will post over there."

Indeed, thanks, Whitney.

Whitney wrote: "I don't recall many serious writers,..."

You are right- Wolfe is actually a serious writer, though he hasn't really received much recognition for being one, (beyond the recognition of him being allusive AND elusive), (he's actually quite Borgian, and he probably comes close to Umberto Eco in his allusiveness), but yes, if we're looking at 'serious' writers along the lines of Orwell, Zamyatin, Huxley and the likes, we certainly -did- see more dystopias than utopias, though I kinda feel that those writers dealt with the near future, none of them went as far into the future as Wolfe did; -in fact I actually find him being pretty upbeat in the sense that he believes humanity would still be around, but of course, nothing prevents Wolfe from using creative licence in creating his own brand of smoke-and-mirrors pseudo fantasy which makes his writing so fascinating.

Whitney wrote: "The Byzantine empire was a large influence on Wolfe's society..."
I was aware that he delves into antiquity quite a bit with many of his writings - for example Roman antiquity in Latro in the Mist. I was not aware that it was specifically the Byzantine empire with Shadow. (view spoiler)[I'm also aware of the Roman Catholic influence, but let's leave that up to new readers to discover, in case it gives them a misconception of what the story is about. (hide spoiler)]

Whitney wrote: "I was alive and reading science fiction 40 years ago, and outside of "Star Trek", I don't recall many serious writers, especially someone conversant with history such as Wolfe, expecting an egalitarian society to be the inevitable future."

Well, much of science fiction back then was either Space Opera, or somehow set in an interplanetary future, so in that sense one can also say that Wolfe forecast technical decay to whatever extent the world of the story deals with where Severian finds himself at the start. Though it seems true to me that perhaps just swathes of certain populations in this story are apparently technologically naive and therefore saw any technology as akin to "magic"? I'd have to read more to see how that plays out for me in this re-read where I'll have my eyes open to all the possibilities. (view spoiler)[ I know that spacecraft and aliens are dealt with at various points in the book - there's already a reference to "pale cacogens from other planets" at the start of the book, but maybe we shouldn't discuss that part yet - I feel I'm not far enough in yet (hide spoiler)]

Anyway, since this thread is for discussion of the first two chapters, I want to add to what Whitney and Jennifer mentioned about the story world. I find the social structures he exposes during his exposition pretty interesting.
I was hoping to screen brand-new readers for a while from the fact that we are talking about a future earth here, since Wolfe so deftly disguises this fact by making it seem rather more like some kind of ancient medieval society. I think it's more fun if you discover the actual background of the world more gradually, so perhaps we should cover things like that under spoiler tags?

In any case, the first time I read it, nothing really alerted me, and I read happily under the assumption that this was some kind of parallel but ancient world that I was reading about, and I was in my second read-through, far more focused on all of the symbolism and on the idea of a society of torturers and how Severian himself as an individual copes with the idea of having to do things that go completely against the grain of his nature, but I’ll say more about that on the first spoiler thread.

So the society we are dealing with in the story, is far from being an egalitarian society as we might have expected the future to be 40 years ago when the book was written; - it seems as if Wolfe foresaw that this might never be the case - or in any case, that such a social structure wouldn’t last long – not over the entire world, in any case.
I'd be very interested to hear from the rest of you, if you think that an equal class-free, racist-free, sexist-free society could exist for a long time; seeing that we've had so much right-wing backlash in the West against "wokeness" in our current world. (And let's not even mention the existence of democracy - so far in the story, we see signs of autocratic repression just from the fact that a torturer's guild exists and that there are soldiers to be found everywhere.)
Perhaps we should continue the discussion of that here.

Hi everyone, since this book has a high spoiler potential, let's keep our discussion of the contents of Chapters 3 through to the end of Chapter 10 to this next thread here : https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Your cooperation is much appreciated. :)

Hi everyone, since this book has a high spoiler potential, let's keep our discussion of the contents of Chapters 3 through to the end of Chapter 10 to this thread. I'll make a new thread for Chapters 11 onward after that.
In the first 10 or so chapters, the foundation is laid for Severian's travels later on.
I'll be back soon to discuss more!

In the previous thread I made an observation that this story has overtones of a dystopia; it's pretty clear from the start of the series already that it's not taking place in a democracy, since so far in the story, we have seen signs of autocratic repression just from the fact that a torturer's guild exists and that there are soldiers to be found everywhere. It's also obviously not an egalitarian society - the discussion of which Whitney and I have continued with in this thread.

Jennifer wrote: "I am reading slow, but I also feel that this is not a "fast" read. I have been busy with work and then our local elections, I work the polls. So now that things are getting back to kinda normal, I ..."

Whitney wrote: "Jennifer wrote: "I am finding the Citadel itself to be just this interesting space. A very large massive, decaying, interconnected space. Like a maze."
..."

Apologies, people, got sidetracked again. Indeed, guys, glad you're seeing more in the work on your subsequent read. Will comment more specifically soon, I think we should do the spoiler thread thing even though we're not many.

Well, I guess time is up, and our discussion is officially starting. I had hoped that by giving more time, more people will join. Nevertheless, I will shortly make a spoiler thread, so that the little surprises are only gradually revealed to those who might still wish to join.