{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2472", "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": 2472, "subject": "Someday They'll Want Us : Who are \"they\"? Who are \"us\"?", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2000-11-20T06:19:21+00:00", "last": "2000-11-20T06:19:21+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Talarican", "address": "exultnttalarican at mindspring.com" }, "date": "2000-11-20T06:19:21+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Someday They'll Want Us : Who are \"they\"? Who are \"us\"?", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\n...\"disturbing\"...Number 5 has become his own father... he has become the\nthing he hates. Loss of the Self is, perhaps, the ultimate horror.\n\n\nThat certainly fits nicely with the theme of Identity, and its discovery and\nloss, which underlies all of 5HC. Clearly, this is correct. When exactly did\nNumber Five become Maitre, though? I am again crippled by not having a copy\nof the book with me to consult. I know Number Five plotted to kill and\nsupplant Maitre, but was it motivated from the start by a conscious desire\nto supplant his 'father', or by self-preservation,\nkill-him-before-he-kills-me, followed by masquerading as Maitre out of\nnecessity?\n\n\n... the ends justifies the means. ...Think of Number Five as Josef Mengele\nhere...someday he'll be lauded for the sacrifices he's made in the name of\nscience, medicine and personal growth.\n\n\nthe Mengelesque mad scientist certainly seems to be a favorite character for\nWolfe! As much as the \"mad scientist\" turns up in science fiction and\nhorror, Wolfe is one of the few who undertake to examine the scientist and\nthe madness, rather than only the products.\n\nSpeaking of \"personal growth\", let's go intertextual with Maitre's New Sun\ncounterpart, Baldanders. (in fact, now that I bring it up, could Baldanders\nbe Wolfe's walking pun-parody of that somewhat cliched phrase?)\nDr. Talos, in his audience with Autarch Severian (Citadel XXXVI), expounds\nquite frankly on his then-lost master's means and motives: \"...Baldanders\nwas more monster ... he had built himself. It's a law of nature, and what is\nhigher than nature, that each creature must have a creator. But Baldanders\nwas his own creation; he stood behind himself, and cut himself off from the\nline linking the rest of us with the Increate.\"\nThis maxim certainly seems to aptly characterize the Cave Canem clan, as\nwell. They have separated themselves from their creator, and thereby have\ndamned themselves.\n\n\nThe tyrants, oppressive slavers, of No. 5's planet are intent on conquering\nand wiping out the abos, instead of joining with them in a new community.\n...Meanwhile, to survive, the abos have to give up their own ways and try to\npass as human. All of this is culturally stifling and destructive.\n\n\nNutria's point is well taken. And were the precolonial abos, real or not, as\nperceived by the interested humans, truly free? They had no slave drivers,\nno secret police, no armies, no attorneys or courts. Yet they were at the\nmercy of Nature, feast or famine, and were obliged to take ruthless\nadvantage of any opportunity merely to eat which came their way, including\nabos of other nations and tribes. The impersonal forces of nature become the\nharshest tyranny of all, and people who never invented the spear nonetheless\nestablished theocracies and ecclesiastical law in the service of those\npowers which deign to allow them to barely survive. Recall David's statement\nabout their hypothetical attachment to their culture and religion.The\nfolklore holds that abos, in spite of genocidal persecution, found life\n\"passing\" in the human cities and villages much easier than hunting and\ngathering in back of beyond, especially in winter. The issue of \"cultural\ngenocide\" is a bit more complex than it appears at first blush.\n\nMy pedestrian alter ego, a year and a half ago, as well as myself, have\nalways held that Wolfe never intended to objectively answer whether the\nAnnese abos in fact actually \"exist\" within their story context/subcreation\n(as opposed to the inhumi or the Beautiful Ones, which unquestionably do),\never, or as of the time in which \"Fifth Head\" and \"V.R.T.\" are set. (attn\nthose urthlings who have been in touch with Mr. Wolfe or keep close track of\nhis published interviews: has he ever commented upon this issue?) My\nimpression has always been that the governments and the influential, on both\nworlds, do not officially believe in the reality of Annese \"abos\", not that\nthat is conclusive, of course! And, if we accept Victor Trenchard as an\nauthority, the abos, real or not, even had their own elusive dubious faery\nneighbors, the Shadow Children. 5HC turns the Area 51 / UFO conspiracy\nlegends on their head: WE are the invaders, but were aliens already there,\nand if so, what happened to them? And is the government covering it up?\nWolfe may tease us with sly clues and red herrings, but I don't believe\nthere actually is an answer there to find.\n\nIn my view, given my theory, the most valid interpretations of 5HC are those\nwhich stand independent of any one or another particular answer to the \"abo\nquestion\". Accordingly, we need to look at the cases where the abos are\nextinct, or, better yet, never existed. In that case, we may well ask what\nwas in the culture and collective psychology of the human colonists that\nsuch folklore would become so widely told and believed, to the point some\nindividuals not only impersonate \"abos\" with some degree of perceived\nauthenticity, but some, such as Victor Trenchard, actually believe\nthemselves to be such? What does it say about people to believe in such\nscenarios as that of Veil's Hypothesis?\n\nOne obvious answer presents itself immediately: the bulk of the human\npopulation of both planets are descendants of the conquerors and/or the\nconquered in a terrible war fought by previous generations. The social/legal\nstructures and classes of both worlds were determined, albeit in divergent\nways, by that war and its outcome. The Trenchards may or may not be abo, but\nthey certainly identify themselves as being of the defeated French\nunderclass. An oppressed underclass will generally cling to and seek comfort\nin its folklore and religion, just as do the primitives.\n\nThe questions of Self and Identity certainly are at least partly functions\nof culture and class, and of the status of being victor or conquered,\nslave, master, or free. (Or, ultimately, real or legendary!) That, I\nbelieve, is why all these ingredients appear somewhere in 5HC for due\nconsideration.\n\nTalarican" } ] } ] }