{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1512", "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": 1512, "subject": "...Abos are the Natives", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1999-04-10T13:52:59+00:00", "last": "1999-04-10T22:34:53+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "1999-04-10T13:52:59+00:00", "subject": "(urth) re: ...Abos are the Natives", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Mitchell A. Bailey wrote:\nTony, we might just have to agree to disagree here," }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yup, we're getting beyond textual analysis and into personal\ninterpretation now, alas. But see my final point in this post, which I\nreally should have remembered earlier." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "...but thanks for your interest and thought-provoking debate." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Likewise! Glad to meet someone who's worried this little matter over as\nmuch as I have. I can't quite resist quibbling a couple of your\nquibbles, but I freely admit I'm not really solving anything:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "First, could the OWO be mixed up again? He concluded that little\nsoliloquy with \"Once, I was sure I knew who the first were, and the\nsecond; now I am no longer sure.\" That statement could be construed to\nmean the SC can't even be sure whether the natives first heard the\nspacefarers or vice versa, as well as which ones the SC were." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, he is saying he doesn't know \"who\" the two races were, which is an\nissue of identity, rather than, say, \"Once, I was sure which was the\nrace that heard the songs of the other\". But even if we say, for the\nsake of argument, that the spacefarers -were- the ones with the\ntelepathic ability, then by process of elimination the indigenous,\nshapechanging creatures were the ones that as a result felt their -own-\nsongs \"more strongly in all their bones\". And that doesn't sound like\nthe recipe for suddenly wanting to become something different. If you're\nlong and live between the roots of trees, you'll want to stay that way." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Second, notice Sandwalker \"hears\" the song of Many Mouths and All Full\nafter the Shadow Children band capture his tick-deer. Now maybe they\nalso sing in the conventional sense, but based on what the OWO, at that\ntime serene and sure, explains to him regarding the nature of their\nsinging, they almost certainly did not. Sandwalker at least must be\ntelepathic also [perhaps that is what makes him special], and many of\nthe other abos are said to be able to detect Shadow Child singing in\ntheir dreams. So the question of \"who was which\" doesn't seem to have\nbeen conclusively answered." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You don't have to -be- telepathic to \"hear\" the telepathy of others.\nDon't forget that the SC have been hiding St Anne from Earth ships all\nthis time by their mental powers, and the crew of those ships are just\ndull old non-telepathic Earth people." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Bottom line:\nWe agree that OWO is so flakey, at least after the capture by the\nwetlanders, that we can't draw a reliable conclusion based on his\nstatements." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, almost. I would argue that OWO is also flaky -before- the capture,\nbecause then he is made up from the minds of the Shadow Children, who\nare all as mad as a box of monkeys. After the capture, when he is half\nmade up from Sandwalker's mind, I think he has returned to his senses." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I based my conclusion on other evidence as well, particularly my\nreasoning that the race which exhibits even residual shape-changing\nability is the better candidate for native pleiomorph. Otherwise, we end\nup making the further stretch that the _\"atlantean\" humans_ somehow\nacquired this shape changing ability or an approximation of it. Not\nutterly impossible, I'll admit, but in my view less likely." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It depends how seriously you take the famed Annese shape-changing\nability. We are never, not ever, not once, shown anyone actually\nchanging shape or admitting to such an ability. VRT and his mum seem to\nhave great skill as mimics, but it's sufficiently minor that both\nTrenchard and Marsch - rightly or wrongly - see it as a human skill,\nrather than superhuman. I freely admit that it seems obvious to regard\nthis ability as vestigial of an old, now lost, shape-changing ability,\nbut for me it feels -too- obvious. A red herring. A recurring them in\nthe book is the way the colonials have never really understood the\naborigines: either ascribing them fabulous, fairy-tale powers, or seeing\nthem as animals. Wolfe loves a bad joke, and the joke that the human\ncolonists are unknowingly displacing their own kind is the worse joke of\nall.\n\nFinal Point: I've only just remembered that, years ago, the thing that\nactually made me start to think that the Free People must be human was\nthe fact that Victor himself is only half-Annese. If humans can breed\nwith Free People, they -must- be human." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Mitchell A. Bailey", "address": "mab at lindau.net" }, "date": "1999-04-10T22:34:53+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) re: ...Abos are the Natives", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Tony Ellis wrote:\n..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Final Point: I've only just remembered that, years ago, the thing that\nactually made me start to think that the Free People must be human was\nthe fact that Victor himself is only half-Annese. If humans can breed\nwith Free People, they -must- be human." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, yes, valid point based on the assumption. \n\nBut then again, there may not have been any such thing as abo's in the\nsense of a native race, and the Trenchards are con artists or even\ndeluded.\n\nOn the other hand, Robert Borski has made a pretty solid case that not\nonly is Vic's vanished mother of the Free People of the hills, but Roy\nTrenchard is actually an abo also, specifically of the marshmen,\ntherefore no Terran/Annese crossbreeding is necessary (leave that kind\nof scenario for Star Trek). Check out the essay entitled \"Roy Trenchard,\nHomeboy\". If it's not in the Urth archives, it's on RB's Cave Canem\nwebsite." } ] } ] }