I just finished reading 'Beautyland' in the Castle of Days collection. I blew me away with its bleak outlook for our human nature. It has the same dark pessimism as 'Paul's Treehouse'. I'm wondering what Wolfe thought about environmental issues as an aspect of his religious beliefs, if he disused the topic anywhere? I mostly just wanted to mention Beautyland which I thought was a masterfully written story.
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I'm glad you liked this story. Wolfe's environmentalism in these early stories is something that really struck me when we began reading his work in order. It is definitely connected to his religious beliefs about what "dominion" means and what creation is for. We've seen some of that in The Fifth Head of Cerberus, but I think the place where we see this the most clearly is in The Death of Dr. Island, which we're working on now. It will be a topic of our discussion episode, which will kick off 2020 for us.
There's also some really awesome environmental-destruction world-building in "The Hero As Werwolf," which we have coming in 2020, too. That's a story that blew me away.