I agree that there isn't really anything in the text to support that the story is an actual artifact in the same way that Book of the New Sun is. What I meant was it seems to be told from a standpoint that is somewhat removed from the actions of the protagonist and at least neutral towards the masters. Given the current state of the world in the story, I could see someone in the world producing a sort of "cautionary tale" about the humans. For, how would a master see someone like Paul? I imagine they would see them like a person with disease or disability or something like that. That is to say, they would see the humans as something that cannot help but be and act the way they are since their genes remain unaltered \ unimproved and, therefore, the humans are something to be aware and cautious of, but not to, say, hate or revile because they can't help the way they are. I imagine the Romans felt similarly about the early Christians. They were this weird new sect, one of a hundred they had seem come and go, and, despite their odd rituals gaining some traction, they don't really pose much of a threat to the empire as a whole. So, what do you do? Nothing really, just feed a few to the lions when they get uppity. Thus, if you were a master (or a Roman) and wanted to write a story about the humans (or the Christians) I could see you going about it in this way. Anyway, if this is the parallel being drawn, choosing the name Paul would make sense.

Glen, can you say more about how you see the Politics at work in the story? Brandon, the biggest issue I have with this reading is that I don't think it actually has any explanatory effect as to the meaning of the story. I mean, in a sense, it would almost feel reductionist to say that the "moral" of this story is to find the proper relationship between the spiritual and the worldly. So much of the story seems to have nothing to do with that. If that is the intent, why present it in this way? In what way, if any, does the telling of the story as a mythic tale, support, inform, or aid in what it is about?

Glenn, I think you are right about the garden episode and I think I misspoke. What I meant was that their sin was not in desiring knowledge, or the beauty of the fruit or any of those other things listed, but in acquiring it in an improper way. Thus, they seemed to have achieved some kind of knowledge which was unnatural, that is to say, not via their natural mode of coming to know, to them. On a somewhat different note, I often find that Wolfe uses these types of allusions to give his world a richness and a depth, but that, perhaps, and I will hide behind my couch as I say this, doesn't really do much with them after that. What I mean is, bringing up the questions that the story of the fall of man, or the anthropological questions that a character like mr. Milion, raises is one thing, but commenting on them is another. Asking the questions is, of course, the place where one must start, but why bring them up at all if one does not, are least, attempt an answer? I am open to correction and guidance on this for I am not as well read in Wolfe and the commentary on him as, I'm sure, others here are, but I want so badly to see an argument from Wolfe on these topics in his stories. Perhaps I am looking for something Wolfe simply doesn't even intend to offer, or, and perhaps more likely, he has simply slipped them right under my nose. It wouldn't be the first time he has done so.

@Glenn This section of the forums seemed pretty lonely so I figured I'd read it and liven up the place a little. I also know it's nice to know people out there are consuming the stuff you make and put effort into. Reading this reminded me a lot of the few months I spent in Oxford, thinking about my time there and the people I was with. Let me ask you this though, how is it that you seem to be able to get into the head-space of a little girl so easily? Haha. On a somewhat more serious note, I suppose, I think all of the authors in the PDF of this listed Lovecraft as one of their favorite writers. I've read a fair amount of Lovecraft and I enjoy him as well, but I have to admit that I find his recent resurgence somewhat inscrutable. I think part of it is that, Lovecraft tried to write about these things that were so hyperbolic, i.e. this monster is beyond human comprehension, to look upon creature X is to have one's very ego ripped away from them, etc. and I think the popular reception of him has taken what is actually in his writing and turned what is already pretty hyperbolic up to 11. But that doesn't really match the tone of Lovecraft because even though he is writing about these cosmic horrors and men being driven to madness, his actual writing is pretty understated. His narrators often come across as sort of trying to maintain proper English gentlemanly decorum, despite being American, and despite the things that are being talked about. Also, and perhaps this is just me, I don't find Lovecraft to be an evocative writer in the sense of his writing evoking strong emotions from me. I think you could probably point to writers that do that sort of thing better than him on every front, writers that are scarier, more suspenseful, more exciting, etc., but, at the end of the day, reading Lovecraft is still great. Perhaps his strength lies in the world-building or in his ability to draw one in to his world. His writing does stimulate the imagination and perhaps this is why people like so much to write in his world specifically, whereas you don't get a lot of people writing in, say, Tolkien's world specifically, unless, I guess, you chalk up every instance of an elf or orc to writing to being in Tolkien's world.

That was a really fun story, and exciting. I got to around pg 60 and I had to make the hard choice to drive home instead of finishing the last few pages.

Oh shit, maybe not...unless you're bluffing...

I'm on page 55 and I think I just figured it out.

To be honest, I haven't read that much Wolfe. I have read BotNS, UotNS, 5th Head, and I'm about halfway through The Sorcerer's House. BothNS, UotNS, and 5th Head all, to me, smack of existentialism. The reason for that is that the driving question behind existentialism, and what differentiates it from other philosophical realms of thought, is the question of, "Who am I as an individual and what is my relationship to the world?" I think it could be argued that this is the central or foundation question of BothNS, UotNS, and 5th Head. The existentialists are a funny lot. Most of them are given to atheism but there are a few notable exceptions, including Kierkegaard, who is considered the founder, and Dostoevsky. Christians, and especially Catholics, are also incredibly interested in the question of personhood, they may have even invented the concept. The reason the two, that is to say, Essentialism and Existentialism, come together in Catholicism is because, as I'm sure you know, Catholicism works, more or less, within the Aristo-Thomistic metaphysical framework (i.e. Essentialism), but has to be concerned with the person-as-individual (Existentialism) because Christ was an individual person and therefore lived a person-as-individual life that was peculiar to Him. In some sense the marrying of the two philosophies is the project of Christianity.

The relationship of the various beings within the story is incredibly complicated. What I mean is, Nietzsche says that the slaves trick the masters into thinking that they are the same, affirming that there is some significant difference between them. This is, of course, not true, the masters and the slaves are both of the same kind, viz., human beings. On St. Croix , however, not only may there be actual non-humans (abos, half-abos half-humans, human clones that may have had their DNA so altered that they can no longer properly be called human), but, moreover, some of those non-humans (the abos) may, in fact, be tricking the actual humans into thinking that they (the abos) are actually human by imitating them. I think the important question then becomes, what is the true nature of the Abos. Are they truly rational animals - are they persons - or are they simply able to pass the Turing Test? This, of course, would then make us think of Mr. Million. Is he a human? I would say no. Is he a person? He certainly seems to be able to pass the Turing Test, but that does not a person make, and personally I am sympathetic to Searle's Chinese Room argument. I'm not sure Wolfe gives us the information we need to make a conclusive judgement.

Wow! Both Glenn and Brandon. I feel like I'm talking with a couple of celebrities!. Let me further elaborate on what I was thinking. This is, of course, going to be in broad strokes and I'm sure someone more familiar with both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche could to a better job, but here goes: Like I said, I think 5's existentialism is stuck at the point of needing to take the leap of faith. I think the reason for this is that he cannot, as Kierkegaard puts it, "move beyond the Socratic". In a certain sense, 5's entire project, and that of his father, and perhaps all the way back to whoever it was that became Mr. Million, is entirely Socratic, they want to "Know Thyself". And they're doing it in a very Socratic way. As I'm sure you guys know, Socrates\Plato's epistemology was one of aletheia, of un-forgetting. For, in the transmigration of souls, the soul would pass into the after life, come to know all things, and then pass thought the river lethe and forget it all again before being re-ensouled in a body. Thus, for Socrates\Plato, the process of coming to know something wasn't really learning something new, but remembering something you had forgotten. Thus the entreaty to "Know Thyself" was entirely appropriate for Socrates because one only needed to look into oneself to find knowledge. 5 is doing the same thing, and is, in fact, trying to do it so hard that he has made copies of himself to that he could come to know himself all the more. He also literally looks inside of things in his laboratory work. But Christianity changed all this. Christianity, of course, claims that there are truths that are beyond our ability to reason to. That, in fact, there are truths that must be revealed to us by God. Thus, Kierkegaard says we have to move beyond the Socratic to come to know those things because they cannot be found within, they are radically different than us despite them also being what makes us up at our very metaphysical core. Thus the irony is, to come to know ourselves more perfectly, we have to give up ourselves entirely, take the leap of faith, and hope that God will catch us and return us to ourselves. The other point I had in mind is that I think that 5's is, more or less, Nietzschean in his moral and social outlook. I think that the quote that Glenn brought up above illustrates this well. In that quote, 5 at first sees the slave as something that he might buy and help until the slave shows himself to be truly slavish by responding in that "servile way" of slaves, and he is disgusted by it. Why is he disgusted by it? Perhaps because he sees himself as a wolf and the people below him in social standing, and perhaps in intelligence as well, as prey. This, Nietzsche says, is the trick of the slaves, to make the "non-slaves" feel bad for them and to then elevate them to equal status. Nietzsche says that not only is it absurd for the predator to feel sympathy for the prey, it is also absurd for the predator to be held accountable for being a predator and killing prey. This was also one of Nietzsche's critiques of Christianity, namely, that it wanted to invert the power structure between the slaves (the Jews \ the early Christians) and the masters (their many oppressors \ the Romans). Anyway, I've written a huge wall of text now so I think I'll stop. However, I think there are also interesting metaphysical questions like the ones you have both brought up in your recent episode. I think the question of who are human and who are rational \ intellectual creatures is an important one. A creature can be rational \ intellectual and be not human and a creature can be rational \ intellectual and not be part of Christ's salvific work. Perhaps very few of the character in the story are humans and were thus not saved by Christ's salvific work and are therefore in hell. Perhaps David is the exception, which is why he was able to leave the brothel permanently.