{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3105", "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": 3105, "subject": "eating trees", "messages": 4, "voices": 4, "first": "2002-03-29T17:05:46+00:00", "last": "2002-04-03T23:50:29+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "maa32", "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu" }, "date": "2002-03-29T17:05:46+00:00", "subject": "(urth) eating trees", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is primarly for Blattid ( or whoever asked me about \"sentience\" in \nconjunction with the trees).In response to proof that the trees eat things: I \ncan't find it right now (my notes are not with me) but there is a scene in On \nBlue's Water where Horn is talking about green and says that the trees eat \nother trees, then he says the strangling female lianas are the scariest things \non Green. It's in the first book. I'll keep looking for the exact quote. \nI'm sure some other people remember it.\n\nThe trees are in cahoots with Horn, and therefore empathize with his goal and \nwant to help him liberate Silk's psyche. One of the scenes that argues \nagainst Babbie being Horn is the Horn claims he is sentient:\n\"ONCE, when Seawrack and I were on the riverbank, I felt that there were three \nof us . ... after an hour or more of this uneasiness, I realized that the \nthird person I sensed was merely Babbie, whom I had by a species of mental \nmisstep ceased to consider an animal.\" SFBC BOTSS 79 Immediately after this, \nBabbie comes tooling around:\n\"In half an hour [Babbie] was back, still swimming strongly but not making \nanything like the progress he had earlier becuase he was pushing a SMALL TREE \nahead of him , roots and all\" ...\"For a moment there I thought I saw somebody \n... a face, very pale, down under the water. It was probably a fish, really, \nor just a piece of waterlogged wood.\" (80) The tree can be used to explain the \nsentience of that the narrator senses - the tree is the other presence he \nfeels just that \"ONCE\":\nIn this same scene, the song of the mother starts, and he says\" there was that \nin it that sounded very far away indeed. I have since that that the distance \nwas perhaps of time, that we heard a song on that warm, calm evening that was \nnot merely hundreds but thousands of years old, sung as it had been sung when \nthe Short Sun of Blue was yet young, and floating to us across that lonely sea \nwith a pain of loss and longing that my poor words cannot express\" (81). This \nis the scene where we have Babbie as sentient, and a tree, roots and all, \nshows up, and this transtemporal song starts playing. All in one scene in \nChapter 5: The Thing on the Green Plain. Indeed, at the end of the previous \nsection, Horn makes a point of pointing out that there was a bunch of weed, \nbut absolutely no driftwood in the water. In the next section he says:\n\n\"and yet it seemed irrational that so vast a quantity of vegetable matter \nshould go to waste. Pas, who built the Whorl, would have arranged things \nbetter, I felt, litlle knowing that I would soon encounter one of the gods of \nthis whorl of Blue that we call ours in spite of the fact that it existed \nwhole ages before we did, and that it had been only a scant generation since \nwe came to it.\" (82). Vegetable matter is always on his mind. All the time.\n\nHorn also comments about ways of killing the inhumu in Chapter 4: the Tale of \nPajarocu, and he states that they decay very rapidly: \"These people, like \npeople everywhere here, seem to fear than an inhumu may live on even with its \nhead severed. That is not the case, of course; but I cannot help wondering \nhow the superstition originated and became o widespread. Certainly inhumi \nhave no bones as we understand them. POSSIBLY their skeletons are cartilage, \nas those of some sea-creatures are. On Green, Geier maintained that the \ninhumi are akin to slugs and leeches. No one, I believe, took him seriously; \nyet it is certain that once dead they decay very quickly, though they are \ndifficult to kill and can survive for weeks and even months without the blood \nthat is their ONLY food.\"(62) Doesn't this schema of the inhumu seem \nderivative of a hardy vegetable system: survive wihtout all their limbs, need \nfood every couple of months, may have a keratin cell wall, and decay very \nquickly? Perhaps at one time the early inhumu could survive if you cut off \ntheir heads: and plants can certainly do that if their upper extremities are \nremoved. Another argument for low-g is that the inhumu have weak, weak legs. \nWhich is why I see them as vines rather than the trees: those vines probably \ndon't have extensively branching or strong roots.\nLeeches are like those liana vines; only animal rather than vegetable.\n\nAlso, Brother and Sister at the end of On Blue's Waters see the Vanished \npeople sometimes, and they talk about the vanished Gods, at which point the \nnarrator tells them about \"the one\" in the forest. Read this next passage \ncarefully:\n\"Another halt, and this one must be for the night - a hollow among the roots \nof (what I will say is) just such a tree as we had on Green. It is what we \ncall a very big tree here, in other words.\" (222). He knows about the god \nthere because he slept under it.\n\nLater there is a scene in In Green's Jungles, Chapter 25: The God of Blue:\n\"I don't see how I would be harmed by knowing whoyour gods were, unless you \nmena that it would be better for me to work it out for myself.\" (464). These \n\"gods\" have previously been discussed in a purely Christian context - but they \nare the trees who control everything going on (perhaps the agents of God, but \nthe trees none the less).\n\nThe narrative differences between On Blue's Waters and In Green's Jungles are \nobvious. A shift to the present rather than the past as the primary tense \nSilk writes in, a sudden shift into third person to describe his old \nexperiences on Green as a \"tale\", and a much, much, much more cheerful and \nconservative outlook on life and violence. Horn was a violent man; Silk \nreally isn't. You must recognize that the narrators of the two are almost \ncompletely different; this is obvious from the end of ON Blue's waters where \nSilk re-reads what Horn has written and says he starts talking about the \nthings he should have written more about: Hari-Mau's smile and other cheerful \ndetails that Horn would never think of. Also, this is where the narrator \nclaims \"I should have lived my lives differently\" and claims that he caught \nthe ball and one the game. Clearly, Silk is in control now. Part of Horn is \nstill there, but the majority of his essence has fled into Babbie because Horn \nWANTS to. He says goodbye to his family and the trees help him out.\n\nI could pull out a million quotes that support where vegetable matter is \npersonified with human qualities, but over and over you could say that was \nsimply \"symbolic\" language. Next time you read through the text, pay \nattention to how vegetable matter is described. It's quite consistent and \nenlightening.\nAnd you could say that all this psuedo-religion actually refers back to God \nand his angels rather than the trees. Now I have accounted for BAbbie's early \nhumanity with the presence of a living tree: roots and all. How many times do \nI have to set up scenarios in parallel? Wolfe doesn't always include \nexposition; he sets up an almost infinite series in a metonymic relationship \nand you have to infer the paradigmatic conclusions to make sense of the text. \nOf course, this brings in interpretive relativism: I may interpret all the \nseries in one way, you in another. But I don't think you can argue against \nthe textual basis for the sentience of the trees, or their relationship to the \nvanished people. We don't see them spit out copies - that is my own inference \nbased on the importance of hybridization in the text - I am \"applying\" the \nhybrids, just as someone could apply the color schema set up by Olivia when \nshe wraps her little coffin basket in a blue ribbon and you can infer that \nPeacock is going to kill her because his name is associated with Blue. It \ndoesn't directly say Peacock kills her - you have to put it together.\n\nMarc Aramini" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2002-03-29T17:18:27+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) eating trees", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Marc,\n\nYour argument (deleted) has convinced me that your theories regarding\nthe trees are worth serious attention. I will make this one of my foci\nin my next reading of the \"Short Sun\" books.\n\nWhat I'd still like is some explanation of why any of this leads to\nthe conclusion that Blue is a future Urth/Ushas. It seems quite \nconsistent without that.\n\n--Dan'l" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2002-03-30T18:17:08+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) eating trees", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Date: Friday, March 29, 2002 11:06 AM\nMarc wrote, in part:\n---------------------------------------------\nThe trees are in cahoots with Horn, and therefore empathize with his goal\nand want to help him liberate Silk's psyche. One of the scenes that argues\nagainst Babbie being Horn is the Horn claims he is sentient:\n\"ONCE, when Seawrack and I were on the riverbank, I felt that there were\nthree of us . ... after an hour or more of this uneasiness, I realized that\nthe third person I sensed was merely Babbie, whom I had by a species of\nmental misstep ceased to consider an animal.\" SFBC BOTSS 79 Immediately\nafter this, Babbie comes tooling around:\n\"In half an hour [Babbie] was back, still swimming strongly but not making\nanything like the progress he had earlier becuase he was pushing a SMALL\nTREE ahead of him , roots and all\" ...\"For a moment there I thought I saw\nsomebody ... a face, very pale, down under the water. It was probably a\nfish, really, or just a piece of waterlogged wood.\" (80) The tree can be\nused to explain the sentience of that the narrator senses - the tree is the\nother presence he feels just that \"ONCE\":\nIn this same scene, the song of the mother starts, and he says\" there was\nthat in it that sounded very far away indeed. I have since that that the\ndistance was perhaps of time, that we heard a song on that warm, calm\nevening that was not merely hundreds but thousands of years old, sung as it\nhad been sung when the Short Sun of Blue was yet young, and floating to us\nacross that lonely sea with a pain of loss and longing that my poor words\ncannot express\" (81). This is the scene where we have Babbie as sentient,\nand a tree, roots and all, shows up, and this transtemporal song starts\nplaying. All in one scene in Chapter 5: The Thing on the Green Plain. [snip]\n----------------------------------------------------------\n\nUh, what I have quoted from Marc's post, above, is somewhat of a\nmisrepresentation of the text. The pagination of the SFBC edition apparently\ndiffers quite a bit from that of the original OBW, where the pages in\nquestion range from 137-140.\n\nFirst of all, what is described above is not all in one scene. The scene on\nthe riverbank is a flashforward to a time after, obviously, Horn had met\nSeawrack, who he had yet to even lay eyes on. Second, Babbie's return to\nthe sloop after a half hour did not follow the scene on the riverbank, as\nimplied above, \"immediately\" or at all in the sequence of events. Third, the\npale face Horn thought he saw underwater was very likely that of Seawrack,\nwho had already lost her arm to Babbie, who was clearly hanging around the\nboat, and who would make her appearance the next day. Finally, the two ONCE\nstatements emphasized and linked above are unrelated; they refer to two\ndifferent events in the narrative, one before and one after Horn met\nSeawrack.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jerry Friedman", "address": "jerry_friedman at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2002-04-03T23:50:29+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) eating trees", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- maa32 wrote:\nThis is primarly for Blattid ( or whoever asked me about \"sentience\" in \nconjunction with the trees).In response to proof that the trees eat\nthings: I \ncan't find it right now (my notes are not with me) but there is a scene\nin On \nBlue's Water where Horn is talking about green and says that the trees\neat \nother trees, then he says the strangling female lianas are the scariest\nthings \non Green. It's in the first book. I'll keep looking for the exact\nquote. \nI'm sure some other people remember it." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This proves that the trees on Green are herbivorous, not carnivorous.\n\n..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Horn also comments about ways of killing the inhumu in Chapter 4: the\nTale of \nPajarocu, and he states that they decay very rapidly: \"These people,\nlike \npeople everywhere here, seem to fear than an inhumu may live on even\nwith its \nhead severed. That is not the case, of course; but I cannot help\nwondering \nhow the superstition originated and became o widespread. Certainly\ninhumi \nhave no bones as we understand them. POSSIBLY their skeletons are\ncartilage, \nas those of some sea-creatures are. On Green, Geier maintained that the\n\ninhumi are akin to slugs and leeches. No one, I believe, took him\nseriously; \nyet it is certain that once dead they decay very quickly, though they\nare \ndifficult to kill and can survive for weeks and even months without the\nblood \nthat is their ONLY food.\"(62)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Interesting. Horn himself told us about Patera Quetzal's eating or \ndrinking beef tea. Was it just for comfort, not nutrition?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Doesn't this schema of the inhumu seem \nderivative of a hardy vegetable system: survive wihtout all their limbs,\nneed \nfood every couple of months, may have a keratin cell wall, and decay\nvery \nquickly?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "There's nothing about suriving without all of their limbs unless\nyou believe that Silkhorn is mistaken. Also, keratin is an animal\nprotein--the one fingernails, hair, and Horn are made of, but not\nthe one cartilage is made of--and quite different from cellulose,\nthe carbohydrate that plants' cell walls are made of." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Perhaps at one time the early inhumu could survive if you cut off \ntheir heads: and plants can certainly do that if their upper extremities\nare \nremoved. Another argument for low-g is that the inhumu have weak, weak\nlegs." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I believe flying animals often have weaker legs than non-flying\nanimals.\n...\n\nJerry Friedman" } ] } ] }