{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3197", "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": 3197, "subject": "Tony's Ellis Island", "messages": 7, "voices": 3, "first": "2002-04-24T13:29:17+00:00", "last": "2002-04-26T11:17:19+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-04-24T13:29:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Tony's Ellis Island", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Tony Ellis wrote:\nRemarkable similarity of form to, and ability to interbreed with, human\nbeings, you mean? The explanation is that abos -are- human beings. They are\nthe descendants of prehistoric colonists from Earth. Wolfe goes out of his\nway to prime us with this idea in all three novellas in 5HC, and that's good\nenough for me." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "When you write \"prehistoric,\" do you mean \"from Gondwonaland\"? If so, the\nadjective form is \"Gondwonan\"; this might help telegraph your position with\ngreater precision. If you don't mean \"Gondwonan,\" then I'm not at all sure\nwhat you are referring to.\n\n=mantis=\n\n\nSIRIUS FICTION\nbooklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley\n51 Snake's-hands left until OP!\nhttp://www.siriusfiction.com/" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "littlesense at necronomicon.co.uk" }, "date": "2002-04-24T17:25:49+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Tony's Ellis Island", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Mantis wrote:\nWhen you write \"prehistoric,\" do you mean \"from Gondwonaland\"? If so, the\nadjective form is \"Gondwonan\"; this might help telegraph your position with\ngreater precision. If you don't mean \"Gondwonan,\" then I'm not at all sure\nwhat you are referring to." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I mean \"from the period of humanity's development predating recorded\nhistory.\" 5000BC or older, I suppose. Not \"predating recent Annese colonial\nhistory\" if that's what you thought.\n\nGondwanaland is never mentioned in isolation in the novellas, but always in\nthe same breath as Atlantis, Africa, Mu, and other places quite separate in\nterms of geography and the time at which they existed or are supposed to\nhave existed. Since it is never established which, if any, of these is the\nhome the ancient colonists came from, picking the one with the most\nscientific name isn't really being any more precise." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-04-24T18:54:56+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re: Tony's Ellis Island", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Tony Ellis wrote:\nGondwanaland is never mentioned in isolation in the novellas, but always in\nthe same breath as Atlantis, Africa, Mu, and other places quite separate in\nterms of geography and the time at which they existed or are supposed to\nhave existed. Since it is never established which, if any, of these is the\nhome the ancient colonists came from, picking the one with the most\nscientific name isn't really being any more precise." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well no, \"scientific name\" isn't what I'm looking at--it is the \"date\nstamp\" that each one carries.\n\nGranted, the list which you allude to is a mixed bag of real and legendary\nplaces. But it seems to me that each, even the legendary ones, has a date\nassociated with it.\n\nBasically I wonder how your reading has accomodated Gondwanaland. There\nmust be a hundred ways, or at least a few dozen. Rather than I list a few,\nI would rather you just tell me.\n\nYour message above suggests you are looking at/for a single wave of\ncolonization? Another interesting datapoint in reconstructing the mosaic\nof your personal reading.\n\n=mantis=\n\n\nSirius Fiction\nbooklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley\nPEACE: a timeline WITH dates! Come see!\nhttp://www.siriusfiction.com/" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "littlesense at necronomicon.co.uk" }, "date": "2002-04-25T13:29:49+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re: Tony's Ellis Island", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Mantis wrote:\nBasically I wonder how your reading has accomodated Gondwanaland. There\nmust be a hundred ways, or at least a few dozen. Rather than I list a few,\nI would rather you just tell me." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "My reading is that at some era predating all known civilisations on Earth, a\n(now long-dead) civilisation arose on Earth that developed space travel,\ncolonised St Anne, and became the 'abos'. Gondwanaland is one place, among\nothers, where that civilisation may have arisen.\n\nAnd that's it. I don't think we're given enough information to draw any\nfurther conclusions, so I don't try. I don't think we're meant to read\nanything into the specific names given or into any dates that can be\nattached to them, they're just another way of saying \"On Earth, a very long\ntime ago.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Your message above suggests you are looking at/for a single wave of\ncolonization?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A single (pre 5000BC) wave is all that is needed to get a human race on St\nAnne that can one day interbreed with French colonists, so yes. Except.\n\nExcept that the Old Wise One does say that \"it may be that all are one\n stock\" - in other words, as I understand it, that the Shadow Children may\nbe humans too. This would require an even earlier wave of colonisation from\nEarth, or perhaps prion's theory that St Anne is where humanity originated.\nThe trouble is, making the Shadow Children human contradicts the picture\npainstaklingly painted throughout the rest of the story of a non-sentient,\nindigenous, telepathic life-form that is awakened to sentience by man's\narrival. \"'We had no names before men came out of the sky,' the Old Wise One\nsaid dreamily. 'We were mostly long, and lived in holes between the roots of\ntrees.'\"\n\nNever able to reconcile \"it may be that all are one stock\" with the rest of\nthe story, I've reluctantly assumed that this is just idle speculation on\nthe Old Wise One's part. But I keep trying." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2002-04-25T15:17:13+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Re: Tony's Ellis Island", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Tony Ellis wrote:\nMy reading is that at some era predating all known civilisations on\nEarth, a (now long-dead) civilisation arose on Earth that developed\nspace travel, colonised St Anne, and became the 'abos'. Gondwanaland\nis one place, among others, where that civilisation may have arisen." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "H'mmmm. While interesting, this ignores two things.\n\nFirst, that _all_ the names in the list are of mythical or fictional\nplaces. (Yes, I know: Gondwanaland is a geological hypothesis. And I\nsay, and believe Wolfe would say, that this is just another kind of\nmythical or fictional place.)\n\nSecond, that all the names in question were coined in the last three\nthousand years or so.\n\nOkay, you can fudge the latter by supposing that the OWO doesn't \nactually say \"Atlantis\" but the real Atlantean name for Atlantis -- \nor whatever ... though this doesn't help with (for example) \n\"Poictesme,\" which was the invention of a specific human being \n(James Branch Cabell) in the early Twentieth Century and not a\n\"myth\" in the sense of, say, Atlantis at all.\n\nOne could, of course, postulate that the Shadow Children, or\nperhaps the abos, came from _all_ these places -- that there \nwere repeated waves of migration, running from the time of\nGondwanaland right up to medieval France (which is the locus\nof Poictesme); somehow this just doesn't seem right. \n\nThis is an example of my \"Why does VRT tell this story?\" question. \nFrankly, there's no way I can believe that, if it's a true story, \nthe OWW actually used those names. VRT uses names that mean something \nto _him_. So (first) why does he use those particular names, why does \nhe suggest that the original home of the abos (or perhaps the Shadow \nchildren) is _mythical_? And (second) how much else in \"A Story\" is \nsuch VRT-added detail? Alternatively: how much of \"A Story\" is \nfictional?\" I believe I have established right here that _some_ is; \nthere is thus a greater-than-zero lower limit. Is there an upper \nlimit short of \"he made the whole thing up?\" What, if anything, in\n\"A Story\" can we consider verified or verifiable, within the context\nof the whole 5HC?\n\nTony, I'm sorry, I don't think we can reasonably assume that it's\nall basically true. Not just in niggling little details like that;\nit just doesn't fit Wolfe's general pattern for \"A Story\" to be \nfully true -- or fully false. Wolfe's concern with the frame of\nnarration isn't just a personal quirk; it's fundamental to the way\nWolfe approaches narrative. Every story is told _by_ someone _for_\nsome reason. Example: Severian (at least in tBotNS) is writing his \nofficial Autarchial memoir; we must assume, even though he is so\noften self-critical, that he will tend to justify himself. Latro is\nnot writing for a future audience, but to create for himself a kind\nof substitute for the continuity from day to day he has lost, and \nwill write what he thinks he needs to remember, not what makes a\nconnected narrative. Horn writes (tBotLS) to persuade everyone that \nSilk is the Good Man, and so his accounts of Silk's goodness has to \nbe taken with a small grain of salt. Etc., etc., etc.\n\nThis flies flagrantly in the face of the usual SF convention of a\nneutral narrator. Even first-person narrators in SF are usually \npresumed to relate events more or less as they actually saw them.\nWolfe is saying, in effect, \"Nobody ever does that,\" and his fictions\ngive us example after example of who give us what they need us to\nhear instead of what we, perhaps, think we need to hear; but we,\nif not cautious, think we've heard what we need to hear.\n\nThis may seem a belaboring of the point that \"Gene Wolfe uses\nunreliable narrators,\" but it isn't. It's saying, rather, that\nWolfe's narrators _can_ be relied upon, but not for a straightforward\nfactual account; and it places directly in your court, or the court \nof anyone who wishes to say (as you did on Tuesday)that \"all of 'A \nStory' should be taken literally,\" the question of _why_ we should\nconsider VRT in this account any more literal than any other Wolfe\nnarrator?\n\nSome thoughts on the telling, if not its reasons: I think it \nreasonable to suppose (as you suggest) that VRT is retelling some\n\"lore and stories passed onto him by his Annese mother.\" But why?\nEven if we accept your idea that he's telling them to please himself,\nwhat about such a story would most please him? We don't even actually\nknow whether he wrote it in his cell -- it is equally plausible to \nsuppose that this was part of the anthropological work he was doing\nfor the University. (Clearly the University places _some_ value on \nhim, or his work; we learn near the end of part 3 that someone at the \nUniversity is agitating for his release.) Could \"A Story\" in fact be\nhis major publication prior to his arrest? And, if so, was gaining\nposition at the University -- recall his failure at the University on\nSte-Anne -- (one of) his motivation(s) in writing it?\n\nDismissing it as a story told to please himself and scratch an\nanthropological itch, while simultaneously assuming that it's a\nliterally true story, is just, well, too simple. In my opinion.\n\n--Dan'l" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-04-25T16:34:24+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re: Tony's Ellis Island", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Tony Ellis wrote:\nMy reading is that at some era predating all known civilisations on Earth, a\n(now long-dead) civilisation arose on Earth that developed space travel,\ncolonised St Anne, and became the 'abos'. Gondwanaland is one place, among\nothers, where that civilisation may have arisen.\n\nAnd that's it. I don't think we're given enough information to draw any\nfurther conclusions, so I don't try. I don't think we're meant to read\nanything into the specific names given or into any dates that can be\nattached to them, they're just another way of saying \"On Earth, a very long\ntime ago.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Okay, so basically ala Howard's Hyperboria and/or the world of Moorcock's\nElric. That is, homo sapiens sapiens from between 125,000 to 5,000 years\nago. I can grasp that.\n\n\"Mu\" (sometimes also known as Lemuria) is a term that was originally\nscientific (well, \"Lemuria\" was . . . putting the Roman May festival aside\n. . .), then picked up by mystics, and then dropped by science. It has to\ndo with Lemurs (the marsupials, not the ghosts), and the\ndistribution/isolation of marsupials from placential mammals (something\nlike 90 million years ago). This \"waves of colonization/isolation\" and\nevolutionary competition plays very well with a few of the themes in 5HC.\n(For example, the struggle between the Annese and the recent people from\nEarth might look like marsupials vs. placental mammals.)\n\nGondwanaland hasn't been \"mysticized,\" to the best of my knowledge, and\nrepresents a period so far in the past (circa 300 million years ago) that\nit predates mammals. And that is what makes it a different one in the\nlist--there is nothing fuzzy about it.\n\nBecause it is lumped together with places that are obviously myths and\nlegends, one might suspect that the students and/or Wolfe were casting the\nsupercontinent as a \"myth\" of the evolutionists. Yet this is clearly not\nthe case, since the three novellas are almost fervently pro-evolution: the\nmysteries of evolution provide a great depth to the drama.\n\nSo it is much better to see the use of the term Gondwanda as being childish\npretense for \"on Earth, a very long time ago.\"\n\nTo take the term literally means to consider pseudo-science notions of\neither homo sapiens sapiens evolving on Earth before mammals (\"cavemen and\ndinosaurs\" material, with the humans subsequently dying off and\nevolving/emerging again 300 million years later), or extra-solar homo\nsapiens sapiens arriving on Earth before mammals (and then dying off,\nrather like the Norse colonies in Greenland). Either one threatens\nevolutionary theory: the first because there is no fossil record suggesting\nit is even remotely possible; the second because it transplants the entire\n\"human evolution\" model with an outside source, making human evolution as\nwe know it a lie, a picture from a jigsaw puzzle where the crucial pieces\nare all in another box all together. Again, because the novellas are so\npro-evolution, these options represent quite a twist.\n\nI wouldn't want to argue \"extra-terrestrial humans colonized Earth\" as the\nOfficial Strong Case, but I do think it amounts to an Official Weak Case.\nThe text seems to allow for it, but yes, it puts a further twist on things\nfar more tangential than, for example, the twist of having VRT write \"A\nStory,\" which is really quite central to my appreciation of the book as a\nwhole (because it unambiguously changes the entire framing context of \"A\nStory,\" turning a simple romance into a complex tangle of\nhistory/autobiography/confession)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Except that the Old Wise One does say that \"it may be that all are one\nstock\" - in other words, as I understand it, that the Shadow Children may\nbe humans too. This would require an even earlier wave of colonisation from\nEarth, or perhaps prion's theory that St Anne is where humanity originated.\nThe trouble is, making the Shadow Children human contradicts the picture\npainstaklingly painted throughout the rest of the story of a non-sentient,\nindigenous, telepathic life-form that is awakened to sentience by man's\narrival. \"'We had no names before men came out of the sky,' the Old Wise One\nsaid dreamily. 'We were mostly long, and lived in holes between the roots of\ntrees.'\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This detail from the text reminds me of the weird Edenic world at the end\nof Wolfe's online story \"Copperhead,\" as well as Lotus Land, and Jack\nVance's alien race of Star Kings (from novel THE STAR KING) and their weird\nEdenic world.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "littlesense at necronomicon.co.uk" }, "date": "2002-04-26T11:17:19+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Re: Tony's Ellis Island", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Dan'l wrote:\nH'mmmm. While interesting, this ignores two things.\n\nFirst, that _all_ the names in the list are of mythical or fictional\nplaces." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Only if you ignore something yourself: the not-insubstantial continent of\nAfrica, which is also in the list the Old Wise One gives." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Second, that all the names in question were coined in the last three\nthousand years or so." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The Old Wise One has pulled these names out of the minds of passing starship\ncrews. Check out the speech preceding the list of names, which begins \"We\ncame here either recently or a long, long time ago.\" He says that when the\nShadow Children try to remember the name of 'their' home, they \"hear also\nthe mind-singing\", ie pick up the thoughts of, passing starship crews, and\n\"these thoughts come into our songs.\" The next sentence is the list of\nnames.\n\nSo. The Shadow Children know that 'their' home is somewhere long ago and far\naway. They find some pretty names for places long ago and far away in the\nminds of passing starship crews that seem to strike a chord, so these are\nthe ones they come up with." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": ".it places directly in your court, or the court\nof anyone who wishes to say (as you did on Tuesday)that \"all of 'A\nStory' should be taken literally,\" the question of _why_ we should\nconsider VRT in this account any more literal than any other Wolfe\nnarrator?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Because, m'lud, VRT isn't telling his own story.\n\nWe can suspect the narratives of Latro and Severian, because it is the story\nof their own lives that they are telling. They have a vested interest. Horn\nmay or may not have fibbed in TBOTLS, but it is in TBOTSS, where he is\ntelling his own story, that Wolfe makes it blindingly obvious that he is\nediting the truth.\n\nIt is in 'V.R.T.' that Victor tells his own story, it is there that he\nactually plays the role of a Wolfe narrator, and it is there, sure enough,\nthat he lies like a trooper. But in 'A Story' he doesn't have the Wolfe\nnarrator's motivation to lie, because he isn't telling his own story.\nTelling the story of Sandwalker falsely won't get him out of gaol, and we\nhave no reason in any case to believe that it was written with his gaolers\nin mind.\n\nSomething that reinforces my belief is the fact that when his narratives are\nsuspect, Wolfe makes this quite obvious. Horn and the narrator of Seven\nAmerican Nights openly confess to lying. In 'V.R.T.' we have whopping great\nbig clues like a change of handwriting. But there's nothing internal to 'A\nStory' to suggest that it is unreliable (that I'm aware of), and externally,\nin the other novellas, we get the confirmation of many places and events,\nsuggesting that, instead, we should view this as a story that really\nhappened." } ] } ] }