Subject: (urth) 5HC: Shadow Children in the Lupiverse?

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 23:26:20 +0000

Okay, I'm dumb and I admit it; I hadn't remembered that the Shadow
Children actually _call_ themselves humans. Now I do. But are they
really? And if they are, _who_ are they?

You're going to think about halfway through this message that I am
making another really dumb mistake. Maybe I am, but not the one you
think I'm making, as you'll see.

The most-relevant quotes are as follows.

Ace pb p. 95; the Old Wise One talking:

	"You would say that these sing. There is the Song of 
	Many Mouths and All Full, The Bending Sky-Paths Song 
	that none may come, The Hunting Song, The Song of Ancient
	Sorrows we sing when the Fighting Lizard is high in the
	summer sky and we see our old home as a little yellow 
	gem in his tail...
		"...when _we_ sing, it is not the air that shakes. 
	We shake extension, and I am the song all the Shadow 
	children sing, their thought when they sing as one. Hold
	your hands before you thus, not touching. Now think of
	your hands gone. That is what we shake."
		Sandwalker said, "That is nothing."
		"That which you call nothing is what holds all
	worlds apart. When it is gone, all the worlds will be
	born."

Well, now. That last sounds just a teeny weeny bit like the cyclical 
universe Wolfe talked about in Nutria's interview selection, 
doesn't it? H'mmm ... 
	Anyway, what I got when I was this far was that they were
colonists who'd been there some time, and came from a world with a
yellow sun, and so were, in all probability, humans or human-
descended. 
Anyway, then on to pages 125ff; again the (or an) Old Wise
One to Sandwalker:

	"Now humans - my race - actually travelled in 
	[starcrossers], cruising among the stars before the
	long dreaming days. We came here that way.
		"... We either came recently or a long, long
	time ago. I'm not sure which.
		"... We had no songs when we came here - that
	was one of the reasons we stayed, and why we lost the
	starcrosser."
		"You coulcn't have gone back in it anyway..."
		"We know. We've changed too much ... we once
	looked as you do now."

It is in this passage also that the Old Wise One informs
Sandwalker that "You come of a race of shapechangers -- like
those we called werewolves in our old home." [127]

One more observation on why the Shadow children stayed: "For 
this we have given up everything, because this is more than 
everything, though it is only an herb of this world...Long
ago in our home, before a fool struck fire, we were so -- 
roaming without whatever might be named save the sun, the night,
and each other. Now we are so again, for we are gods, and things 
made by hands do not concern us." [129-31]

Okay, so what's going on here?

Possible explanations exfoliate:  It's _fairly_ clear, though,
that the Shadow children are the first, French, colonists. They 
came to Ste-Anne, and found the godleaf, which

a) gave them Amazing Psychic Powers[tm]
b) are way cool hallucinogens that made them _think_ they had
   Amazing Psychic Powers.

They also 

x) found the abos
y) hallucinated the abos

Annoyingly, almost any combination of these is possible, as is
the somewhat vaguer possibility that the Shadow children are not
the French at all but a much earlier round of colonists -- among
the names the great WOO remembers for their ancient home are 
"Atlantis or Mu -- or Gondwanaland, Africa, Poictesme, or the
Country of Friends."  

The one good thing to emerge so far is that Ste-Anne & Ste-Croix 
clearly can _not_ be Urth and Lune, thank the Increate!, because
people come and go between them and Earth fairly regularly without
any apparent time travel.

Well, anyway. I'm jiggy with this so far, but then I remember:
hey, this is all something Victor/"Marsch" wrote, and it's not 
at all clear that we have _any_ reason to trust him. Another 
possibility occurs to me -- perhaps the abos are not shapeshifters
at all, but humans, either the French or someone earlier, who
-- under the influence of the godleaf -- have gone totally native,
forgotten technology (and thus the ability to use tools is not
physiological but simple unfamiliarity), and generally become
_different_ by Lamarckian evolution.

This is still more like a bunch of questions than it is like a
model, but at least I think they're starting to be coherent
questions...

PS: Are there any other Cabell references in Lupine texts...?)

--

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From: Tony Ellis <littlesense at necronomicon.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 09:17:49 +0000

> really? And if they are, _who_ are they?

This is a question I've come back to and come back to over the years. You
can find a rather-too-condensed synopsis of what I understand to be the
truth in a post I made called '5HC: a timeline without dates', back in 2000:
http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0030/0152.shtml

> that the Shadow children are the first, French, colonists.

They can't be. 'A Story' ends with the arrival of the French colonists.

That leaves us with two possibilities that I can see. Either the Shadow
Children are indigenous or, as you say there is
> "Atlantis or Mu -- or Gondwanaland, Africa, Poictesme, or the

This is the explanation we are set up to believe for most of the story.
But - and it's a very big but - toward the end the Old Wise One does a
complete about-face, and admits that his race was already here when the
first, prehistoric Earth colonists came:
"Now I am half a man, and know that we were always here..."

> Another

Heh. I've been saying this for years: the abos are -not- shapeshifters.
There's not a scrap of evidence to suggest that they are, and a big heap of
evidence to suggest that they have simply been mythologised by the
colonists. They are gifted mimics, certainly, but not supernaturally so.

> at all, but humans, either the French or someone earlier, who

The French, no. Someone earlier, absolutely. The prehistoric humans the Old
Wise One refers to.

If I sound a little cocksure, forgive me, but as I say I've been banging on
about 5HC for years in this list, to the extent that I'm pretty confident
about this stuff. If you want me to back any of it up with solid evidence,
just ask.

--

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 15:26:51 +0000

>http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0030/0152.shtml

I gather that Tony Ellis has no interest in including the notion that
Sainte Anne/Sainte Croix (or one or the other) constitute Eden, or the
origin point for human beings, such that the waves of "discoverers" from
Earth are in reality returning to a dimly remembered ancestral home.

(Which is fine!  Nobody says you must--I certainly don't say you must.)

I brought it up most recently in Feb 2002:
http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0202/114.txt.shtml

As far as I can tell it originated with prion, Sean Whalen, in 1998:
http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0015/0057.shtml

And I thought it was pretty neat at the time:
http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0015/0068.shtml

=mantis=

SIRIUS FICTION
booklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley
36 Lexicons left until OP!
http://www.siriusfiction.com/

--

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From: Tony Ellis <littlesense at necronomicon.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 08:58:58 +0000

> Earth are in reality returning to a dimly remembered ancestral home.
...
> As far as I can tell it originated with prion, Sean Whalen, in 1998:

And prion, very commendably, includes his own refutation of the idea. He
says that there are too many holes and that it requires adding too much to
the story, and I agree.

The dimly remembered ancestral home described in 5HC has a yellow sun and an
Earth name. And appears, in any case, to have been telepathically lifted by
the Shadow Children from the minds of passing starcrosser crews. And there's
no dim memory at all of people ever leaving St Anne - only of them arriving.

If there's any actual evidence in 5HC to back up this theory I'm genuinely
interested to hear it - but I can't think of any.

--

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 16:21:12 +0000

> They can't be. 'A Story' ends with the arrival of the French colonists.

Why, yes; so it does (or seems to -- certainly, it ends with the arrival
of _some_ colonists). But how much of 'A Story' should we take literally?
Even the title is reversed: it isn't really "A Story" by John V. Marsch;
it is a story by "John V. Marsch." All in Part 2 of 5HC is shadows and/or
reflections, and all is told by Victor for some specific purpose. Find
(in part 3) his purpose for telling the story, and learn what to believe.

And, no, I haven't found his purpose yet.

> This is the explanation we are set up to believe for most of the
> story. But - and it's a very big but - toward the end the Old Wise
> One does a complete about-face, 

... the reversal of the reflection of the Shadows ...

> and admits that his race was already here when the first,
> prehistoric Earth colonists came:

So why does Victor tell us this? What is -his- reason? What does
he hope to gain?

(We don't even know whether he wrote "A Story" before or after 
he was arrested!)

> > Another possibility occurs to me -- perhaps the abos are not
> > shapeshifters

> There's not a scrap of evidence to suggest that they are, 

Here I must disagree. The direct evidence is the ability of Victor's
mother to become young or old at will. 

Actually, I suspect the truth of being more complex than that. 

(Complexity? In a Wolfe text? Say it ain't so!) 

Proposal:

Long ago, as in your timeline, Ste-Anne was inhabited by the 
ancestors of the Shadow children: psionically gifted shapeshifters,
less intelligent than humans as individuals but capable of producing
a group mind (the Wise Old Ones). 

The early human colonists came. Their arrival was utterly traumatic
for the Shadow children, who chose to distort space so no _more_
colonists could come. 

Thousands(?) of years pass after the arrival of the "Free People."
Some genetic(?) exchange takes place between them. The Shadow
children become more intelligent and more human-like in many ways.
The "Free People" gain some limited ability to change, not their
shape properly speaking, but their appearance.

Does this work?  I think it does.

--

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 14:14:33 +0000

on 4/22/02 11:21 AM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes at ddanehy at siebel.com wrote:

> All in Part 2 of 5HC is shadows and/or

Or else Wolfe, in expanding the 5HC novella, wanted to write a story about
the Shadow Children, and decided to tie it in to parts 1 and 3 by having it
be written by "John V. Marsch."  (If I sound a bit cynical, forgive me.)

--Adam

--

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From: Tony Ellis <littlesense at necronomicon.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 17:21:08 +0000

>of _some_ colonists). But how much of 'A Story' should we take literally?

Personally I feel all of 'A Story' should be taken literally, but that's a
whole debate in itself! I think there's enough material in 'V.R.T' to argue
that the Shadow Children can't be the French Colonists.

For one thing, the timescale is just too short. St Anne has only been
colonised for a couple of hundred years, and most sightings took place in
the first of those. I don't think we're expected to believe that French
colonists devolved into the gnarled, pygmy race we know as Shadow Children
in such a short space of time.

Trenchard tells Marsch that when the boats of the first starcrosser came
ashore, they found a man floating on his face, "beaten until dead with
scourges of little shells tied together" - just the way 'A Story' tells it.
We have no reason to think he's lying. Victor, who functions throughout the
novella as a touchstone to the validity of his father's stories, doesn't
demur. It could be argued that Victor has woven this detail into an
otherwise entirely fictitious narrative, but that feels a little
bloody-minded to me. Especially as this is not the only time that Wolfe goes
out of his way to show that parts of 'A Story' are externally verifiable.

>So why does Victor tell us this? What is -his- reason? What does

Personally, I have never felt that Victor had any sort of hidden agenda for
writing 'A Story'. Making him the author always seemed to me to be simply a
framing device, of which Wolfe is inordinately fond. Like Latro's scrolls,
or Cutthroat's recording gadget, or making Horn the author of the Book of
the Long Sun.  But if you want a reason, how about this:

Victor is an anthropologist. Yes, he's a half-Annese impostor, but he's
still an anthropologist by both nature and profession. He has inherited
Marsch's great, unfinished work on the nature of the Annese, and with the
lore and stories passed onto him by his Annese mother he is in a unique
position to continue it. He also has an awful lot of spare time to fill. I
think 'A Story' is meant to be his informed musing about what the Annese
were like and where they came from, written to please himself. I also think
we're supposed to believe he got it right.

>mother to become young or old at will.

Looking more or less haggard is not, by my definition, shapeshifting.
Trenchard, who has witnessed this ability firsthand, does not even believe
it is in any way superhuman: "A matter of the voice, you understand, and the
muscles of the face." There's a hint that there may be more to it than that
in the way Victor interjects "Everything!" at this point, and I've suggested
before now that it could be partially telepathic. But it's not the
transformation of a human being into a "household utensil" as Dr Hagsmith
puts it.

--

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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 00:10:19 +0000

> From: "Tony Ellis" <LittleSense at necronomicon.co.uk>

> colonists. They are gifted mimics, certainly, but not supernaturally so.

	How do you explain the remarkable similarity of form and the ability to
interbreed, then?

-- 
Jeff Wilson
How Am I Posting? 1-800-555-6789
"If your SecOp can see you, so can the enemy." -Cpt Law

--

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From: Alice K. Turner <aturner6 at nyc.rr.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 04:11:31 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Adam Stephanides" <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
To: <urth at urth.net>
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 10:14 AM
Subject: Re: (urth) 5HC: Shadow Children in the Lupiverse?

--

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 14:21:34 +0000

on 4/23/02 12:21 PM, Tony Ellis at LittleSense at necronomicon.co.uk wrote:

> bloody-minded to me.

But that's what writers of fiction do.  The Soldier series must contain
dozens of "externally verifiable" details, but we don't conclude that Latro
existed.

Even if we accept that "A Story" is based on Annese oral traditions, there's
no reason to think that the events in it actually took place, let alone that
the OWO's stories are true.  The story is a myth: a myth of the coming of
the French as a Fall, which also incorporates an origin myth (or several
different origin myths).  Or else it's Victor's imaginative reconstruction
of how such a myth might have run.  But in either case, there's no need to
believe in prehistoric starcrossers, or in Shadow Children telepathically
shooing away spaceships.

> Especially as this is not the only time that Wolfe goes

Later, Tony wrote:

> But there's nothing internal to 'A Story' to suggest that it is unreliable

Well, there's the title itself: a person writing what they believed to be a
factual account of the arrival of the French colonists would be unlikely to
title it just "A Story."  And there are the implausibilities I mentioned
above.

--Adam

--

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From: Tony Ellis <littlesense at necronomicon.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 21:17:46 +0000

>dozens of "externally verifiable" details, but we don't conclude that Latro

That's not the same thing. When Wolfe weaves the siege of Sestos into
Soldier of the Mist, he's using a real historical fact. When Victor weaves
the pit seen in 'V.R.T.' into 'A Story', that's Wolfe using a 'fact' in one
story that he has himself created in another story.

Instead of the Soldier series, consider the Long Sun books. We don't believe
Silk exists any more than we do Latro, but we accept that, within the
context of that fictional world, Horn is writing an account of a real
person. I see 'A Story' in the same light.

>But in either case, there's no need to

Well, there's no need for Wolfe to have made the Croix\Anne system remain
unknown "when planets more distant from Earth had been colonized for
 decades" either. Having the system so mysteriously overlooked doesn't
contribute anything important to 'V.R.T.' (that I can think of). But it is
another way of indicating that the events portrayed in 'A Story' really
happened.

As for prehistoric starcrossers: if they don't exist we either have to
either find another way for human beings to have got to St Anne and become
the abos, or we have to say that abos are truly indigenous and therefore can
't breed with the settlers. It is just about possible to say the latter, but
to my mind it's a reading that greatly weakens the impact of the story.
Plus, having Victor a half-breed also explains why he doesn't seem to be
100% as hamfisted as an abo should be. And why he isn't as good at mimicry
as his mother.

The other thing about the prehistoric colonisation idea is that it gets
raised in all three novellas. That makes me feel it's an idea we're supposed
to consider seriously.

--

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 21:24:07 +0000

----- Original Message -----
> raised in all three novellas. That makes me feel it's an idea we're
supposed

I suggest that T5HOC is a book with a lot to say about Colonialism and its
aftermath.      The Abos have to be there because they are Wolfe's major
theme.   They have to be near-identical with the colonists so that the minor
theme of identity and subversion can be invoked.   ((Their "white" phenotype
and such minor consequences of that as the "pink" sun follow.))

I suggest that Wolfe was driven by this and threw in the stuff about
prehistoric Starcrossers as persiflage and tergiverseration.   There is
actually no solution, he wanted it left a mystery.

    hartshorn

--

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From: Phoebe Davis <meezer_gal at yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 23:02:24 +0000

I have just reread (since their publication mind you) 12 books by Wolfe - from Shadow of
the Torturer through the final SS.  It was overdue and entirely enjoyable, but I find
that simple reality is no longer quite sufficient for me.  Be that as it may, I am in awe
that this gentleman, Tony Ellis, used a word that I had to look up.  Thank you for
tergiverseration. 

I will point out that in my years in book selling (let me seize this opportunity to
remind the list that I not only had my own SF & Mystery bookstore for 6 years, but toiled
as well for B. Dalton for 8 long years before that) the single most common complaint by
the masses, the great unwashed, the un/non/anti-literati as it were, about Wolfe is that
"he uses words I don't understand".  It is Wolfe's very use and choice of words -
obscure, obfuscatory, adumbrate they may be -- that attracts me to his work. 

Bravo!  

I am currently reading 5HoC - it seems I have not read this before despite having a
signed first (typed in a gloating manner I'm ashamed to admit) in order to try to keep up
with this list. Perhaps I will have a comment later, perhaps not, but the posts have been
fascinating.  

Phoebe

> actually no solution, he wanted it left a mystery.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness
http://health.yahoo.com

--

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Sun, 05 May 2002 14:12:36 +0000

> story that he has himself created in another story.
 
But what Victor is doing within the world of 5HC is analogous to what Wolfe
did in Soldier.

> person. I see 'A Story' in the same light.

There is nothing to suggest that Silk is a fictional character invented by
Horn, and such a reading would contribute nothing to the interpretation of
the Long Sun books: all we would be able to say is that a person about whom
we know nothing wrote a novel for some reason.  Neither of these is true for
"A Story."

> contribute anything important to 'V.R.T.' (that I can think of).

It's not so mysterious.  Exploration need not have proceeded in neat
concentric spheres.  Croix/Anne might have been ignored because distant
observation made it seem an undesirable spot for colonization.  (Mantis,
iirc, suggested that the pink sun and longer year could indicate that the
twin planets were on the edge of the life-supporting zone.)

And the overlooking reinforces the picture of Croix/Anne as a backwater
colony, which adds to the book's political dimension and helps to explain
Number Five's father's frustration and Victor's interrogator's inferiority
complex and over-compensatory bluster vis-a-vis Earth.

> raised in all three novellas. That makes me feel it's an idea we're supposed

Note, though, that the OWO's list begins with two "homelands" which are at
least literarily plausible, and proceeds to three which aren't: either too
old, too known, or fictional (and then we have the enigmatic Country of
Friends).  It seems to me that the list is in this order to undercut the
idea of prehistoric colonization: "Yeah, the Annese came from Atlantis--or
was it Never-Never Land?"

I'd suggest that the idea is repeatedly brought up, not because we're
supposed to consider it seriously, but because it's one way the
colonists/Annese are trying to fabricate a distinguished history for
themselves and their system (like Rome's invented descent from the Trojans).
It's another instance of the theme of self-delusion which runs through the
books.

--Adam

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From: Tony Ellis <littlesense at necronomicon.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 05 May 2002 18:20:43 +0000

Phoebe Davis wrote:
>.I am in awe

That was Andy Roberston. And it's 'tergiversation', I believe. :-)

>But what Victor is doing within the world of 5HC is analogous to what Wolfe

Only if you assume Victor is writing fiction. And if Wolfe wants us to
assume that, why go to the bother of making Victor write a piece of fiction
that has so many externally verifiable details in it? Why not put some
obvious internal inconsistencies in it, the way he does with Victor's
genuinely fictitious writing in 'V.R.T.'?

"A Story."

So what _does_ the reading that 'A Story' is pure fiction contribute to 5HC?
I'm open to persuasion, but I have yet to hear anyone come up with a
plausible explanation as to why Wolfe should want to waste one third of a
novel with a section in which we are expected to understand that nothing we
are told happens actually happens.

>complex and over-compensatory bluster vis-a-vis Earth.

The picture of Croix\Anne as a backwater colony hardly needs reinforcing.
And why reinforce it with a fact that by a million-to-one chance just
happens to reinforce a key incident in 'A Story'?

>themselves and their system (like Rome's invented descent from the
Trojans).

Number Five brings it up because he is under pressure from Mr Million to
answer, and to wind up David who is sneakily reading 'Tales from the Odyssey
'. Dr Marsch, who brings it up in 'V.R.T.', is neither a colonist nor
Annese.

--

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 05 May 2002 17:35:59 +0000

----- Original Message -----

> That was Andy Roberston. And it's 'tergiversation', I believe. :-)

For what it's worth - if you want to find a writer who uses
"tergiversation", you must read Patrick O'Brien . . .    almost as good as
Gene Wolfe, but very different.

    hartshorn

--

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Mon, 06 May 2002 03:33:16 +0000

on 5/5/02 1:20 PM, Tony Ellis at LittleSense at necronomicon.co.uk wrote:

> that has so many externally verifiable details in it?

Because that is what Victor would naturally do if he were writing a fiction
about the Annese.

> Why not put some

Presumably because he wants to portray Victor as a good writer of fiction,
though a bad liar.

> are told happens actually happens.

Assuming "A Story" is fiction, it serves several purposes.  It contributes
to the picture of Victor trying to "know himself" and to the theme of
mythmaking.  It may, as others have suggested, be a disguised autobiography.
It certainly reinforces a number of themes found in other parts of the book.

But I don't claim to fully understand 5HC or "A Story's" place in it.  My
point above was simply that reading the Long Sun books as fictions by Horn
is obviously a sterile reading, while the same is not true for reading "A
Story" as a fiction.

I can turn the question around, though: why, if Wolfe wants us to believe in
prehistoric starcrossers and Shadow Children telepathically hiding the St.
Anne, does he put this information in a document entitled simply "A Story"
whose purpose is unknown, and which is mostly fictional in any case (unless
you believe that the oral tradition preserved all Sandwalker's words and
thoughts)?

> happens to reinforce a key incident in 'A Story'?

Why a million-to-one chance?  It's one of the facts Victor has incorporated
into his story.

--Adam 

--

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From: Tony Ellis <littlesense at necronomicon.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 06 May 2002 16:20:15 +0000

Adam Stephanides wrote:
>reading the Long Sun books as fictions by Horn

No? :-) I find the idea of 'A Story' as fiction incredibly sterile. Saying
that Victor was trying to "know himself" may tell us why Victor wrote it,
but it doesn't tell us why Wolfe did. Why waste his time and ours encoding
all that information about which was the indigenous race and which the
alien, and keep coming back to it and coming back to it throughout the
story, and make us work so hard to piece it all together, if we're not
supposed to take it seriously? There are better and easier ways to pad out
two novellas to paperback size.

>Why a million-to-one chance? It's one of the facts Victor has incorporated

A million-to-one chance because if all Wolfe wanted to do was reinforce the
idea of the colony as a backwater -- which, as I say, is redundant anyway --
there were any number of ways to do it. Yet he chose one which implies that
a key moment in 'A Story' actually happened.

And it's not Victor incorporating these external facts into 'A Story', it's
Wolfe. He's the one actually choosing what words go in and what words are
left out. And I can't believe he would put in elements that suggest 'A Story
' really happened if we weren't supposed to entertain that idea - not when
it's such a large part of the book, with so much important stuff said in it.

--

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Mon, 06 May 2002 16:28:42 +0000

Tony E. wrote:

> I find the idea of 'A Story' as fiction incredibly sterile. 

<Shrug>. Wolfe uses fiction in his fiction all the time, Tony -- all
the stuff from the "brown book," the story of Doctor Death, etc., etc.
The puzzle is only to figure out what it's doing in this place. It's
pretty clear why the story of Dr. Death is present in "The Island of
Doctor Death and Other Stories"; it's a little less clear why the
"brown book" stories are present in tBotNS, but there's no doubt in
anyone's mind that they're fiction and that they're there for a good
and sufficient reason. A Story by "John V. Marsch" is hard, hard, but
I think it reasonable to suppose it may be fiction and there for a
purpose.

Note I'm not saying it _is_ fiction, just that, _if_ it is, that's
not a basically or inherently sterile concept.

--

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From: Josh Geller <dclxvi at dclxvi.best.vwh.net>
Date: Mon, 06 May 2002 17:02:27 +0000

On Mon, 6 May 2002, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

>                                                            ... It's
> and sufficient reason.

They are not just fiction: they are myth. They express patterns of history
in easily understood and transmissible terms.

'The Story Of The Student And His Son' is (among many other things) the
story of the Monitor and the Virginia (the Merrimac: from the US civil
conflict of the 1860's) overlaid upon the story of Theseus.

The one about the wolves and 'Fish and Frog' is (again, among many other
things) an interplanetary war overlaid on the founding myth of Rome.

And in what we are please to call 'our world' the story of Alexander gets
overlaid upon the story of Gilgamesh.

Wolfe is one of the very few modern writers who really understands the
process by which this happens. Jack Vance is another.

They are both very much aware of how ancient the human species is, how far
back its memories go.

--

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Mon, 06 May 2002 17:25:24 +0000

Josh G. points out that the "brown book" stories...

> ... are not just fiction: they are myth. They express patterns
> of history in easily understood and transmissible terms.

Well, yeah. I guess my point is that they are not _factual_ within
the universe-of-discourse. And, naturally, one of the running 
theories regarding "A Story by 'John V. Marsch'" is that it's a
mythic account of the coming of the settlers, from an Annese
point of view. 

With an ambiguity fairly typical of the book, the story, seen as a 
myth, credits non-human (non-abo) local beings - the Shadow Children 
- with having caused the settlers to find and arrive at Ste-Anne; 
but such myths frequently provide some culturally meaningful 
explanations for events and objects otherwise incomprehensible from 
within the cultural context. We cannot know whether the Shadow 
Children ever actually existed on Ste-Anne; nor, if they did, 
whether they were responsible for the non-discovery of the two worlds
until that time; nor whether this is a 'real' Annese myth of the
invasion, or something "John V. Marsch"/VRT has made up from whole
cloth, or some combination; nor, whatever it is, why he's done it.
This list has by now offered any number of speculations as to why
VRT might have written a mythologized autobiography, transcribed a 
real myth, or created a synthetic myth; each explanation creates
further problems with other aspects of 5HC. 

The Le Guin "uncertainty" analogy is good. I think an even better
analogy might be to Godel ... any reasonably consistent set of 
postulates you come up with regarding 5HC will leave some "unprovable 
truths," i.e., aspects of the book that you can't explain without
invoking further postulates, and ultimately you need to bring in 
postulates inconsistent with ones already in place.

> 'The Story Of The Student And His Son' is (among many other
> things) the story of the Monitor and the Virginia (the Merrimac:
> from the US civil conflict of the 1860's) overlaid upon the story
> of Theseus.

Yes, we discussed this a few weeks ago. I observed that the loser
ruled over a Land of Virgins, i.e., Virginia.

> The one about the wolves and 'Fish and Frog' is (again, among many
> other things) an interplanetary war overlaid on the founding myth
> of Rome.

Not to mention the stories of Mowgli (whose name, Kipling tells us,
means "naked frog") and Moses...

> And in what we are please to call 'our world' the story of
> Alexander gets overlaid upon the story of Gilgamesh.

I'm afraid I'm blanking on this.

--

---

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Mon, 06 May 2002 19:30:27 +0000

On Sun, 5 May 2002, Tony Ellis wrote:

> So what _does_ the reading that 'A Story' is pure fiction contribute
> to 5HC? I'm open to persuasion, but I have yet to hear anyone come up
> with a plausible explanation as to why Wolfe should want to waste one
> third of a novel with a section in which we are expected to understand
> that nothing we are told happens actually happens.

I'm undecided about whether 'A Story' is "true," but I'd like to take
issue with your idea that it would be a waste if it weren't.

1.  It's an entertaining novella on its own.  Maybe not the best Wolfe
ever wrote, but it could have been published by itself, and then the
question of how it fits with the rest of 5HC would be moot.  It wouldn't
be any more fictional than anything else Wolfe has written.

2.  If it's meant to be a fabrication of one of the characters in 5HC,
then that should tell us something about the character who wrote it and
perhaps something about others in the novel.  Wolfe is often much more
interested in getting inside the heads and hearts of his characters than
he is in satisfying our curiosity about events.  To Wolfe, the question,
"What sort of story would this character make up?" might be much more
interesting than the question "What really happened in the past on these
planets?"  If you were an alien wanting to understand humanity, would you
rather read all of our history books, or all of our works of fiction?

See also the storytelling contest in _Citadel_.

-Rostrum

--

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 02:02:54 +0000

on 5/6/02 11:20 AM, Tony Ellis at LittleSense at necronomicon.co.uk wrote:

> but it doesn't tell us why Wolfe did.

To indicate something about Victor's character, perhaps?

If the only purpose of "A Story" is to tell us about the prehistoric
colonizations and the Shadow Children's shield, then having it take up sixty
pages is a waste of space, whether it's true or not.

> Why waste his time and ours encoding
> supposed to take it seriously?

To say that we're not supposed to believe it is not to say that it doesn't
play an important role in the novel, either as Victor's invention or as an
Annese myth.  Ambiguity over who is human and who isn't is a major theme of
5HC.

--Adam

--

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From: Tony Ellis <littlesense at necronomicon.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 18:58:59 +0000

>pages is a waste of space, whether it's true or not.

Why yes, it would be, but then I don't think that is the only purpose of  'A
Story'. It also serves to tell us a lot about Annese culture, among other
things, and on top of that it's a rattling good yarn in its own right. But
too great a proportion of it is taken up with the mystery of  where the
Annese came from and how they got here for me not take that element
seriously.

This is also my problem with the perfectly valid point made by both Dan'l
and Michael Straight, that Wolfe uses stories within his bigger stories all
the time. My immediate response is "yes, but why _this_ story?" Why, out of
all the stories he could have written, write one that worries and worries
away so specifically at the idea of an ancient, star-faring race of humans?
It's not as if 'A Story' needs this subplot to be good fiction: take out the
Old Wise One's tales, or make him talk about something else, and you would
still have a fine Wolfean story-within-a-story.

Another issue is that ordinarily, Wolfean stories-within-stories only take
up a fraction of the larger narrative: the fact that they are not in the
same sense 'real' doesn't dilute that larger narrative. Writing 'A Story' as
fiction, however, leaves a proportionally far larger chunk of 5HC with only
an indirect and tenuous contribution to make to the whole. That doesn't feel
right to me.

--