{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/131", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 131, "subject": "Digest urth.v003.n009", "messages": 3, "voices": 2, "first": "1997-08-05T23:11:02+00:00", "last": "1997-08-07T12:56:07+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Patri10629", "address": "patri10629 at aol.com" }, "date": "1997-08-05T23:11:02+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Digest urth.v003.n009", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Dear buds,\n\nWould I be entirely a smart ass to admit that I loved that story that you\nare discussing in indimidating detail and am grateful for all the grey cells\nyou are expending? Really. I have nothing to add. Other than \"Wow!\" To youse\nand Wolfe.\n\nMy wife has pnemonia (however you spell it) and forced to her bed has finally\nsuccumbed to my pestering and is 3/4s thru the LONG SUn books--she loves\nthem. \n\nWonderful, eh?\n\nTHE DEATH OF DOCTOR ISLAND... is killing me as I speak. So Damn Beautiful.\n\nbest as always\n\nPatrick" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice Turner", "address": "al at ny.playboy.com" }, "date": "1997-08-07T12:53:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Digest urth.v003.n009", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is my third attempt to send this post:\n\nmantis,\n\nI was so sure you were going to call me on Cim that I checked this a.m.\nand, yes, both Buck in CALL OF THE WILD and White Fang catch fish. Plus\nfrozen salmon is a staple for the sled dogs. I've got other aguments too,\nbut I guess I don't need 'em. Oh, and I found a scene in which a wolf pack\npulls down a moose that may well be a model for the Nashwonk scene.\n\nInstead, you want to make the Pamigaka boars. Hmmm. Round faces, jowly,\nsmall eyes, flat upturned noses, check. Snuffling, bristly, check.\nShort-handled tools with heavy, curved blades, bingo. Tusks. You win.\n\nOkay, I'm not quite ready to tackle the Min. Let's talk some more about Cim\ninstead. The murder of Fishcatcher that she talks about so artlessly is\nstrange. It's the one killing that seems to have no motive at all. I'm\ngoing to assume that the endieva wands (which seem like super-cattle\nprods----actually there may not be more than one of them) are a human\nartifact and belong to the dogs because of the dogs' proximity to humans\nlong ago. \"Someone\" hits Fishcatcher across the face with an endieva wand,\nCim takes him to the Great Sleigh and grovels and they heal him not for his\nsake (noninterference) but for hers, because their presence has given her\nhope she wouldn't otherwise have. He gets well almost imediately, and when\nhe gets stronger still, \"I struck him again\"---do we infer that it was she\nwho struck him the first time?---and he dies. Now she wants only to serve\nthe Great Sleigh.\n\nThat's a very odd story, and may need a mantic interpretation.\n\nI don't understand why she turns back, either. You'd think a dog would\nremain faithful, and would continue to want to be with people and serve\nthem, as she did before. She does make rather a big deal of the lakes and\nrivers though, doesn't she? Maybe she's an otterhound? (joke) A Sealyham?\n\nMoving on: the cubes are space food, more nourishing than bouillon but the\nsame idea. \"Kluy\" is a rather Lindsaysounding name, isn't it? The big\nwarehouse-cave filled with junk actualy reminds me of those\nsub-sub-sub-sub-cellars in C. Smith (see, I couldn't even get through this\npost without mentioning him?)\n\nAnd no, how could I do a NYRSF piece on all this when it's you who, like\nAdam, named the animals? Why don't you? Of course it's 17 years after\npublication, but they're a little slow!!\n\nSaving the Min, the robots, the dwarf, the staffs for another post.\n\n-alga-" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice Turner", "address": "al at ny.playboy.com" }, "date": "1997-08-07T12:56:07+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Digest urth.v003.n009", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "My second try with this one:\n\nWhoa, mantis, you're going too fast, especially since one of my posts\ndidn't get there in sequence. You can't get that mantic that fast, without\neven discussing the cave.\n\nFirst, we don't know that all the Great Sleighers are \"angels\" or\nhierodules. Cutthroat sees only one with wings---and he is in a possibly\nhallucinatory state. He himself seems human enough, and you'd think that\nmembers of the three tribes that saw the Sleighers would have mentioned\nfeathery types. Second, although it's true that Wolfe would have drafted\nthe whole of TBOTNS (according to the Hartwell scenario) at the time that\nhe wrote this, I think it's wrong to interpret one in the light of the\nother. Cutthroat is no Green Man, he's delirious from pain, exertion *and*\nlack of food, having shared his last cubes with Whiteapple and Crookedleg.\n\nWhat is more, bloodshed really is not sinful in an aminal world. And these\nare animals, to themselves, and even to Cutthroat, unless he is lying to\nthe Min (he might be). They seem human to him, so he cannot eat them\n(eventually, anyway), but one tribe does not seem human to another. (Of\ncourse this is true of the Tutsi and the Hutu apparently, too.) \n\nThis terraforming doesn't really compare with the coming of the New Sun\neither. That destroyed everything, to make a new beginning, a terrible act.\nThis brings spring to a wintry planet. And Mantru certainly isn't analagous\nto the Autarch. That whole scene is quite wonderfully out of one of the\npre-Golden Age pulps, oh, I don't know, Merrit or someone. Or Rider\nHaggard. One of those ones where the males are always dwarfs or some such\nand the females look like She, and there are deformed slaves and strange\nweapons, and the hero has a native sidekick and a beautiful native princess\nthat he is rescuing.....whoops, did I just do a summary?\n\nOkay, I'll be serious. On the night of the sixth day, Cim is kidnapped by\nfour of the Min, on the chance that she might be a human woman. Cutthroat\nis injured with a weapon he doesn't see, and that remains in his body. He\ndestroys his sail to bind his wound. With Cim's wand, he sets out after\nthem. camping out overnight again. \n\nHe enters the Min cave on the eighth day and walks a long way, having an\nirrational feeling of getting nearer the Great Sleigh, and another that his\nwound is not so serious. At last he sees light, but when he gets to it, he\nencounters a warren of vicious humanoid vampires who attack him. He beats\nthem off with the wand, then watches them from a elevated crevice where he\nsleeps.\n\nTwo or three kilometers further, on the ninth day, he comes to what we\nlater learn is an ancient underground warehouse. Machines stand around, and\none speaks to him, then shows him food, carrying him on its head.\n\nOn the morning of the tenth day, a Min attacks him, but he uses the wand on\nits flesh part and disables it. He then notices that the street is\ndamp--has it been washed? (Other streets are not damp.) Jeweled kluy\nflowers lead toward the center of the city, so thickly that they force him\nto the center of the road. A Min places a horned pole (covered with\nunreadable script) upright before him, and he grasps it. If he had dropped\nit, he thinks he would have been killed---but Min appear from everywhere\nand prostrate themselves before him. (Query: I take it this staff can be\nheld only by a real human [the Min presumably held it in a non-felsh hand]\nbut it certainly seems to be evil; what does that mean?) They lead him to a\nmonstrous ramshackle palace---to \"the place of judgment,\" \"the abode of\npurity,\" because he is perfect, as they are not.\n\nIn a cushioned room is the fat dwarf Mantru (True Man) with a naked Cim\nGlowing chained to his chair (why do I think of Jabba the Hutt?) The dwarf\nsays he will die. The Min want to repair his damaged lung, but he does not\nwant to \"be like you\"---i.e. patched with machine parts. The Min, amused,\nsays that is not what they are (Query: does this mean that, like Jonas,\nthey are machines patched with human parts? Where did they get the parts\nfrom?) Cim thinks that they were flesh but multiplied their number by\ndividing their bodies and adding machinery, but the Min says no. The dwarf\nmakes an analogy to a child who had entered a theater \"half a minute before\nthe final curtain\" and understands nothing of what he sees. (Hey, me too,\nMantru!)\n\nNext there is the Ishi dialogue with the Min, which concludes, \"Now you are\nhappy because you see no difference between the beasts and yourself. But we\nwill make you whole again.\" Cutthroat indicates where his choice lies by\ngiving the wand to Cim. The Min speaks of \"moral force,\" then of \"various\ntypes of healing...Physical, mental, moral.\" Then he locks them into the\nroom under the throneroom and lets Ketin in.\n\nI'm going to skip a bit, since I noted before that Cutthroat is obviously\nmaking some moral choices here wrt Cim and Ketin. He is also, for the first\ntime, acting like a real leader (could this---horrid thought---have\nsomething to do with the staff?) He says, pretty firmly that the dwarf did\nnot order the Ketin scenario. Why did the vizier, then? And why don't the\nMin pursue them?\n\n(Oh, here's something that belonged in the Cim post: when he asks her if\nMantru was cruel, she says, \"Not like Fishcatcher would have been,\" and\nKetin says, \"I think you deceive me--or are deceived yourself.\" What the\nhell does that mean?)\n\nThey escape, the machines begin to dismantle the palace. (The machines obey\nonly real men, Cutthroat and the dwarf.) The Min pour out; one lays his\nweapon at Cutthroat's feet, they bargain, dwarf comes out. The dwarf\nspeaks of his hunt for a human woman, and that as the beasts become more\nmanlike his servants make mistakes that they would not \"had they the\nradiations of my own mind for comparison.\" Cutthroat indicated that he is\nlying (or being evasive). (Query: What did Mantru really mean to say?)\n\nThen Mantru has his line about human beings returning to \"crush the beasts\nas we did of old and raise new cities to the stars.\" And C. says, \"I\nunderstand, but we are leaving.\" And pulls on his tunic, prompting the\ndwarf to attack him with the staff.\n\nStaff battle, which Cim and Ketin cannot see, \"taking place outside the\nordinary world.\" These are nasty staffs of human manufacture. I think that\nthe reason C. wins is that he is more human than the dwarf, and the reason\nhe gets rid of it later is that he doesn't want to be that kind of human.\nHe'd rather die...and maybe he does die.\n\nAnd they leave and close the cave, sealing off the Min for a time at least. \n\nSo what does it mean? True Man has degenerated into a dwarf surrounded by\ncyborg servants, and holding a horrid staff of power? Is that what In the\nWake of Man conjures up for Wolfe. (It seems increadingly neat that he has\nan animal name!) What's all that Min moral force stuff? What about the\nvampires, if not just for scenery? \n\nI'm beat---hop to it, mantis. And where is Nutria? It's no fun bashing him\nif he's not around to snap back.\n\n-alga- \n\n " } ] } ] }