From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Re: The Best Introduction To The Mountains
Date: Sun, 06 Jan 2002 23:33:10 -0600

on 1/4/02 3:32 PM, Thomas Bitterman at tom@bitterman.net wrote:

> Perhaps he has reserved some wriggle-room in "legitimate", but it seems
> unlikely given
> the "Luciferian" element in Vodalus's opposition to the autarch.  Wolfe
> seems to be
> implying that any form of civil disobedience is immoral.

In other works Wolfe approves not just of civil disobedience but of
revolution: Silkhorn leads a revolution in Dorp, and Wolfe endorses the
revolution that is gathering at the end of "Bluesberry Jam" (perhaps his
silliest story).  (I can't put my hands on my copy of FREE LIVE FREE at the
moment, and don't remember whether the Quadrumvirate were to have been
revolutionaries.)  Which raises the question, of course, of how one knows
when rebellion is allowable.  The Autarch's rule in BOTNS seems on the face
of it more tyrannical than the judges in Dorp, yet Wolfe approves of the
latter rebellion and denounces the former ones.

--Adam