# Liev's Postpostulate

*The Urth list — 22 messages, 9 voices, 10 May 2002*

<https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3248>

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### Adam Stephanides
*10 May 2002, 00:55*

On p. 255 of the Ace edition, Victor in his cell writes "I know who I
believe the Free People to be: I call it Liev's Postpostulate"; but he never
says what Liev's Postpostulate is.  Somebody once suggested, iirc, that it
was "the humans killed the abos."  After reading the book again, I now think
this is only half the story.  Veil's Hypothesis is "the abos killed the
humans and took their places"; so logically Liev's Postpostulate should be
"the humans killed the abos and took their places."  That is, the people who
now call themselves the "Free People," among whom are Victor's mother and
Victor himself, are not the descendants of the original Annese.  Rather,
they are descendants of French colonists who had given up "civilization" to
live in the "back of beyond" (as some North American colonists joined the
Indians), and these descendants have come to believe that they are actually
indigenous Annese.  Victor shared this belief until sometime between
Marsch's death and the writing of those words.

In addition to being logical, this interpretation ties in with Victor's
remark just before he mentions Liev's Postpostulate: "The question is not,
as I once thought, how much the thoughts of the Shadow children influence
reality; but how much our own do."  (I admit I don't know how Mrs. Blount's
interview fits into this.)  It also is the only way I can think of to
account for Victor's statement to Number Five: "'The abos are gone.'" (75)
You could argue that this is just Victor's way of rejecting Number Five's
charge that he is an abo; but if he believes the Free People are abos, then
not only does his statement to Victor contradict the story he tells his
interrogator, but it leaves him having done three years of fieldwork with
nothing to show for it.

So Victor believes that the Free People are not Annese, but humans believing
themselves to be Annese.  But is it true?  I don't know, but I suggest it's
quite possible.

Pro: It's certainly more plausible than either prehistoric waves of
colonization (in either direction) or genetically unrelated Annese who can
interbreed with humans.

Pro: For those into this sort of thing, "Liev" can be unpacked as "unveil,"
though I don't put too much weight on this argument.

Con: Wolfe's interview, quoted by Borski.  But it's clear that Victor is not
actually a Shadow child; and if Wolfe mistakenly referred to an Annese as a
Shadow child, he could have mistakenly referred to a human believing himself
Annese as a Shadow child.  And, as I said before, the interview was
twenty-six years after the books were published, so his memory may not be
completely accurate.

(It may seem that I'm being hypocritical, since I've declared myself an
intentionalist.  But I never said this meant that whatever an author says
about his or her work must be taken as gospel, which is obviously an
untenable position.)

--Adam

---

### Michael Straight
*10 May 2002, 03:05 · follows Adam Stephanides*

This theory would also account for the difficulty we've been having
pinning down how much manual dexterity the abos have.  As much or as
little as the person thinks an abo would have.  If a pseudo-abo really
wants to write or shoot or cook, he can convince himself that an abo could
do it, but with lousy handwriting or poor aim.  And at the same time
believe himself unable to use a shovel.

-Rostrum

---

### Andy Robertson
*10 May 2002, 07:24 · follows Michael Straight*

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

> From: "Michael Straight" <straight at email.unc.edu>
> This theory would also account for the difficulty we've been having
> pinning down how much manual dexterity the abos have.  As much or as
> little as the person thinks an abo would have.  If a pseudo-abo really
> wants to write or shoot or cook, he can convince himself that an abo could
> do it, but with lousy handwriting or poor aim.  And at the same time
> believe himself unable to use a shovel.

Just a simple point.   Abo lack of dexterity might be due to lack of
practice, nothing else.

The abos have a largely tool-less culture.     If they do come from
prehistoric drifts, from early Starcrossers flung through Shadow Child space
warps and back in time,  or from hapless humans sucked through Dreamspace
from early Europe,  it is quite possible that they would lose their
technology entirely.

    hartshorn

---

### Adam Stephanides
*10 May 2002, 13:46 · follows Andy Robertson*

> on 5/10/02 2:24 AM, Andy Robertson at andywrobertson at clara.co.uk wrote:
> Just a simple point.   Abo lack of dexterity might be due to lack of
> practice, nothing else.
> 
> The abos have a largely tool-less culture.     If they do come from
> prehistoric drifts, from early Starcrossers flung through Shadow Child space
> warps and back in time,  or from hapless humans sucked through Dreamspace
> from early Europe,  it is quite possible that they would lose their
> technology entirely.

This wouldn't account for Victor's "inability" to hold a pen correctly,
though, since he received the same instruction all the other children did.

Were the Australian aborigines, or other hunter-gathererers, ever believed
to be unable to use tools?

--Adam

---

### Tony Ellis
*10 May 2002, 15:31 · follows Adam Stephanides*

Sorry to seem at loggerheads with you again, Adam, but a few quibbles spring
immediately to mind:

If Victor thinks he is descended from French settlers gone native, why, when
he thinks no one is reading what he writes any more, does he cite Dollo's
Law as the reason for his bad penmanship? We can't be expected to believe
that the French all unevolved the ability to use tools in a few generations.

How come all the people we think of as Annese seem to have the ability to
change how they appear? Cassilla seems to have it, Victor's mother had it,
and Victor writes that he has "the same ability, though not to the extent
she did." I've never been able to come up with a satisfactory reason why the
descendants of prehistoric humans should have this ability either, but at
least they had the time period in which to evolve it. And why the green eyes
thing?


'Liev' implies a reversal of Veil's Postulate, it's true, but it's possible
Wolfe only used Liev so that he could work in the pun "I am Liev and I have
left." 'Postpostulate' suggests, at least to me, something that goes
_beyond_ Veil's Postulate, rather than reversing it.

> I admit I don't know how Mrs. Blount's
> interview fits into this.

Mrs Blount doesn't just talk about the Annese or Shadow Children her father
shot. She also says:

"When I was growing up those little French girls that had been too small to
fight was growing up too, and weren't they the cutest things? They got most
of the handsome boys, you know, and all of the rich ones. You could go to a
dance in your prettiest dress, and one of those Frenchies would come in,
just in rags, you know, but with a ribbon and a flower in her hair, and
every boy's head would turn."

That has always sounded to me like another example of the Annese ability to
look more attractive at will. When I read it and then flip back to the
passage that sent me there -- "I have read the interview with Mrs Blount - a
hundred times when I was in the hills - and I know who I believe the Free
People to be," -- the implication seems pretty strong that he means the Free
People are, or are now, human-Annese half-breeds like himself. The 'French'
girls were either Annese or, which seems more likely to me, themselves the
children of Annese-settler interbreeding.

Possibly we're supposed to read the Mrs Blount passage as meaning that the
little French girls are French settlers who went native and are now coming
in from the cold again, but I can't really see how we or Victor are supposed
to draw that conclusion from what is said.

---

### Andy Robertson
*10 May 2002, 18:11 · follows Tony Ellis*

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

> From: "Tony Ellis" <LittleSense at necronomicon.co.uk>
> Sorry to seem at loggerheads with you again, Adam, but a few quibbles
> spring
> immediately to mind:
> 
> If Victor thinks he is descended from French settlers gone native, why,
> when
> he thinks no one is reading what he writes any more, does he cite Dollo's
> Law as the reason for his bad penmanship?

Note, Dollo's law is about degeneration: the way an evolutionary talent,
once lost, is never regained.

This tells us something Victor at any rate believes.

The abos once had human manual dexterity and then lost it.   They lost it
*genetically* - for some unknown reason - in the same way they gained their
odd talents of mimicry.

Possibly they were an ancient human colony or abductee group that went
through a evolutionary bottleneck.   Or possibly Victor merely believes
this.

    hartshorn

---

### Jeff Wilson
*11 May 2002, 04:58 · follows Andy Robertson*

>      From: 
>           "Andy Robertson" <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>

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

>> Sorry to seem at loggerheads with you again, Adam, but a few quibbles
>> spring
>> immediately to mind:
>> 
>> If Victor thinks he is descended from French settlers gone native, why,
>> when
>> he thinks no one is reading what he writes any more, does he cite Dollo's
>> Law as the reason for his bad penmanship?

> Note, Dollo's law is about degeneration: the way an evolutionary talent,
> once lost, is never regained.
> 
> This tells us something Victor at any rate believes.
> 
> The abos once had human manual dexterity and then lost it.   They lost it
> *genetically* - for some unknown reason - in the same way they gained their
> odd talents of mimicry.
> 
> Possibly they were an ancient human colony or abductee group that went
> through a evolutionary bottleneck.   Or possibly Victor merely believes
> this.

But Dollo's law is crap; it's violated by marine mammals, and moths that
alight on trees in once-polluted areas.

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


-- 
```

---

### Andy Robertson
*11 May 2002, 07:49 · follows Jeff Wilson*

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Wilson" <

>> Possibly they were an ancient human colony or abductee group that went
>> through a evolutionary bottleneck.   Or possibly Victor merely believes
>> this.

> But Dollo's law is crap; it's violated by marine mammals, and moths that
> alight on trees in once-polluted areas.

No, it's not crap, but like most things about biology it is a rule rather
than a law.   But of course this is significant for what it tells us about
Victor's assumptions, not the ficticious real biology of Saint Anne


    hartshorn

---

### Jerry Friedman
*13 May 2002, 21:58 · follows Andy Robertson*

> --- Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jeff Wilson" <
> Possibly they were an ancient human colony or abductee group that
> went
> through a evolutionary bottleneck.   Or possibly Victor merely
> believes
> this.

>> But Dollo's law is crap; it's violated by marine mammals, and moths
>> that
>> alight on trees in once-polluted areas.

> No, it's not crap, but like most things about biology it is a rule
> rather
> than a law.   But of course this is significant for what it tells us
> about
> Victor's assumptions, not the ficticious real biology of Saint Anne

Indeed, Victor could be telling us the story of his own writing
career: for some reason he lost the opportunity to write the normal
way, and once he learned to hold the pen the wrong way, he could
never regain the normal function.

Jerry Friedman

---

### Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
*15 May 2002, 16:08 · follows Jerry Friedman*

Jeff Wilson claims that

> Dollo's law is crap; it's violated by marine mammals, and 
> moths that alight on trees in once-polluted areas.

...well, no; it isn't. 

In the case of peppered moths, no lost organs are reappearing; 
the a:A balance of certain alleles is shifting due to natural
(or, I suppose, semi-artificial) selection. The "dark" genes
had always been present as a minority in the "gene pool," became 
a far more prominent proportion of the gene pool when industrial 
pollution caused the trees they sit on to become darker in color, 
and once again became less common as pollution control allowed
the trees to regain their former light color. The basic papers
on this, by Kettlewell's and Haldane, are both easily available
in the Oxford reader on "Evolution," edited by Mark Ridley.

In the case of marine mammals, what has happened is that the
lost organs have exactly failed to reappear -- all marine 
mammals still must come to the surface to breathe; no gills 
have reappeared. And, while the modified fins we call legs have
re-modified themselves to a more fin-like structure, this isn't
a case of anything lost reappearing. The only thing that might 
be considered as a reappearance is the dorsal fin on some marine
mammals; I don't know enough about how those evolved to give a
legitimate answer to this.

---

### Mark Millman
*15 May 2002, 17:47 · follows Dan'l Danehy-Oakes*

Blattid,

In sharks and bony fish the dorsal fin is part of the
skeleton, while the dorsal fins of cetaceans (and, for
that matter, of their reptile analogues the ichthyosaurs)
are not.  That fact alone is sufficient to demonstrate
that the cetacean dorsal fin is not a reappearance of a
previously lost organ.

But now we're straying off-topic; my apologies.

Mark Millman
(Nacre)

> On Wed, 15 May 2002, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes (Blattid) wrote:
> Jeff Wilson claims that

>> Dollo's law is crap;
>> it's violated by marine
>> mammals, and moths that
>> alight on trees in once-
>> polluted areas.

> ...well, no; it isn't.
> 
> [snip re:  peppered moths]
> 
> In the case of marine mammals, what has happened is
> that the lost organs have exactly failed to reappear
> -- all marine mammals still must come to the surface
> to breathe; no gills have reappeared. And, while the
> modified fins we call legs have re-modified themselves
> to a more fin-like structure, this isn't a case of
> anything lost reappearing. The only thing that might
> be considered as a reappearance is the dorsal fin on
> some marine mammals; I don't know enough about how
> those evolved to give a legitimate answer to this.
> 
> --Blattid

---

### Adam Stephanides
*20 May 2002, 01:14 · follows Mark Millman*

> on 5/10/02 3:31 PM, Tony Ellis at LittleSense at necronomicon.co.uk wrote:
> If Victor thinks he is descended from French settlers gone native, why, when
> he thinks no one is reading what he writes any more, does he cite Dollo's
> Law as the reason for his bad penmanship?

I never bought the theory that Dollo's Law is a coded reference to either
the abo's shapeshifting or the prehistoric colonists' evolution.  As Jerry
Friedman suggested, he only means to say that having learned to write
holding the pen the wrong way, he now cannot write holding it the right way.

> We can't be expected to believe
> that the French all unevolved the ability to use tools in a few generations.
> 
> How come all the people we think of as Annese seem to have the ability to
> change how they appear? Cassilla seems to have it

I vaguely recall something like this being discussed, but don't recall any
of the arguments for it.  The only thing I can find which could even be
thought to suggest that she is either Annese or can change her appearance is
the statement "In the bright daylight he could see fine wrinkles near her
eyes; the girl was aging" (267), and to me it seems far more likely that
this means no more than what it says.

> Victor's mother had it,
> and Victor writes that he has "the same ability, though not to the extent
> she did."

That leaves only two people with the ability, and from the way Victor and
his father describe it, it doesn't seem beyond human capacities.

> And why the green eyes
> thing?

I don't know, but recall that Marsch had them too.  I don't know if we can
be sure whether the Free People really all had green eyes, or whether that
was Victor's extrapolation from himself and his mother; but if they did, it
could have arisen from genetic drift (far more plausibly than descendants of
human colonists losing the ability to lose tools).

>> I admit I don't know how Mrs. Blount's
>> interview fits into this.

> Mrs Blount doesn't just talk about the Annese or Shadow Children her father
> shot. She also says:
> 
> "When I was growing up those little French girls that had been too small to
> fight was growing up too, and weren't they the cutest things? They got most
> of the handsome boys, you know, and all of the rich ones. You could go to a
> dance in your prettiest dress, and one of those Frenchies would come in,
> just in rags, you know, but with a ribbon and a flower in her hair, and
> every boy's head would turn."
> 
> That has always sounded to me like another example of the Annese ability to
> look more attractive at will.

I don't think so.

> When I read it and then flip back to the
> passage that sent me there -- "I have read the interview with Mrs Blount - a
> hundred times when I was in the hills - and I know who I believe the Free
> People to be," -- the implication seems pretty strong that he means the Free
> People are, or are now, human-Annese half-breeds like himself. The 'French'
> girls were either Annese or, which seems more likely to me, themselves the
> children of Annese-settler interbreeding.

Even if we're supposed to take the "French" girls to be Annese, I don't see
how it would follow that the Free People are human-Annese hybrids.  It would
be the descendents of the English colonists and "French" girls--i. e.
today's "civilized" settlers--who would be hybrids, not the Free People.

A more plausible guess at the interview's significance for Victor is that
the difference between the settlers and the Free People is one of behavior,
not appearance or genetics.  Mrs. Blount was in no position to know whether
the "abos" were really human or not; nor, presumably, was her father (unless
he had dissected one of them).  The "abos" looked just like the French, and
the French were also poor and landless, but because they behaved like
animals (from the settlers' perspective), they were considered to be animals
and treated as such.

If this is correct, it could explain something that had been bothering me:
why Victor tells Number Five that the abos are all dead, but later in his
cell states that he is an animal and doesn't really speak: it is his
"animal" behavior, not his genes, that makes him an animal in his own eyes.

--Adam

---

### Jeff Wilson
*20 May 2002, 06:03 · follows Adam Stephanides*

>      From: 
>           "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com>

> Jeff Wilson claims that

>> Dollo's law is crap; it's violated by marine mammals, and 
>> moths that alight on trees in once-polluted areas.

> ...well, no; it isn't. 
> 
> In the case of peppered moths, no lost organs are reappearing; 
> the a:A balance of certain alleles is shifting due to natural
> (or, I suppose, semi-artificial) selection. The "dark" genes
> had always been present as a minority in the "gene pool," became 
> a far more prominent proportion of the gene pool when industrial 
> pollution caused the trees they sit on to become darker in color, 
> and once again became less common as pollution control allowed
> the trees to regain their former light color. The basic papers
> on this, by Kettlewell's and Haldane, are both easily available
> in the Oxford reader on "Evolution," edited by Mark Ridley.
> 
> In the case of marine mammals, what has happened is that the
> lost organs have exactly failed to reappear -- all marine 
> mammals still must come to the surface to breathe; no gills 
> have reappeared. And, while the modified fins we call legs have
> re-modified themselves to a more fin-like structure, this isn't
> a case of anything lost reappearing. The only thing that might 
> be considered as a reappearance is the dorsal fin on some marine
> mammals; I don't know enough about how those evolved to give a
> legitimate answer to this.

In that case, I sit corrected but I don't see the relevance; the
function returns even if the anatomical detail doesn't. The Frenchmen
don't give the suspected abos a medical exam, they test their limbs'
function. Human hand or polymorphed pseudopod, if it can make nets it
ought to be able to work a shovel.

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


-- 
```

---

### Tony Ellis
*20 May 2002, 10:49 · follows Jeff Wilson*

> Adam Stephanides wrote:
> I never bought the theory that Dollo's Law is a coded reference to either
> the abo's shapeshifting or the prehistoric colonists' evolution. As Jerry
> Friedman suggested, he only means to say that having learned to write
> holding the pen the wrong way, he now cannot write holding it the right
> way.

Then why not say that, using just those simple words? Why instead cite, at
length, a specifically evolutionary process?

In any case, this is the answer which Victor has already dismissed as "an
explanation that does not explain," because it doesn't tell us why he was
unable to write by holding the pen the right way in the first place. Wolfe
goes out of his way to show us that Victor was beaten until he bled for
getting it wrong: that's a pretty powerful incentive for getting something
right if it is physically possible to do so.

I find it hard to believe that, in a story where tool-use is of crucial
significance, Wolfe has devoted a whole page to the phenomenon of Victor's
bad handwriting, and topped it off with a paragraph-long definition of Dollo
's Law, in italics yet, just to say "Victor's poor handwriting was a bad
habit."

>> How come all the people we think of as Annese seem to have the ability to
>> change how they appear? Cassilla seems to have it

> I vaguely recall something like this being discussed, but don't recall any
> of the arguments for it. The only thing I can find which could even be
> thought to suggest that she is either Annese or can change her appearance
> is
> the statement "In the bright daylight he could see fine wrinkles near her
> eyes; the girl was aging" (267), and to me it seems far more likely that
> this means no more than what it says.

In a different story, perhaps. But in one where a key theme is
spot-the-alien, and where we've already been given the example of  Victor's
supposedly Annese mother making herself look older to avoid sleeping with
men she didn't like, it's a detail that assumes far greater significance.

---

### Roy C. Lackey
*21 May 2002, 05:48 · follows Tony Ellis*

Adam Stephanides quoted:

> on 5/10/02 3:31 PM, Tony Ellis at LittleSense at necronomicon.co.uk wrote:

>> If Victor thinks he is descended from French settlers gone native, why,
>> when
>> he thinks no one is reading what he writes any more, does he cite Dollo's
>> Law as the reason for his bad penmanship?

> Adam then wrote:
> I never bought the theory that Dollo's Law is a coded reference to either
> the abo's shapeshifting or the prehistoric colonists' evolution.  As Jerry
> Friedman suggested, he only means to say that having learned to write
> holding the pen the wrong way, he now cannot write holding it the right
> way.

What Jerry wrote was:

> Indeed, Victor could be telling us the story of his own writing
> career: for some reason he lost the opportunity to write the normal
> way, and once he learned to hold the pen the wrong way, he could
> never regain the normal function.

Victor never "lost the opportunity to write the normal way"; he had the
opportunity and was even punished for not doing it the normal way. He didn't
do it the normal way because he _couldn't_. The "normal way" of writing
involves using the opposable thumb to grip, support, and guide the pencil.
Without an opposable thumb, it is impossible to control the pencil while
attempting to write in the normal way, resulting in "weak and wiggling
lines", and that only by moving the pencil using the whole arm, rather than
the muscles of the hand. The best way that Victor found to hold the pencil
was to clamp it between his second and third fingers "with my thumb quite
free to do whatever it wishes".

Wolfe doesn't make many things any clearer than that. Victor is well aware
that it is his inability to control his thumb as a human does that is the
cause of his poor penmanship. It is also why Dollo's Law was cited
immediately after relating his writing woes. Dollo's Law does not address
recalcitrance or bad habits; it addresses lost function and the inability to
regain it. The Annese, though otherwise quite human, somehow lost the normal
human usage of their thumbs. It's that simple.

The story of the cat bite affecting his ability to write well is just a
piss-poor excuse for a scholar from Earth not being able to write worth a
damn; Victor needed some excuse for his poor handwriting once he assumed
Marsch's identity. The real cause is the same as for all the other lack of
manual dexterity attributed to the Annese--their thumbs are all but useless.

-Roy

---

### Jeff Wilson
*22 May 2002, 05:15 · follows Roy C. Lackey*

>      From: 
>           "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net>

> Wolfe doesn't make many things any clearer than that. Victor is well aware
> that it is his inability to control his thumb as a human does that is the
> cause of his poor penmanship. It is also why Dollo's Law was cited
> immediately after relating his writing woes. Dollo's Law does not address
> recalcitrance or bad habits; it addresses lost function and the inability to
> regain it. The Annese, though otherwise quite human, somehow lost the normal
> human usage of their thumbs. It's that simple.

I thought we just worked out that Dollo's Law is =not= about function;
dolphins swim just as good as fish if not better.

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


-- 
```

---

### Roy C. Lackey
*22 May 2002, 07:12 · follows Jeff Wilson*

>>  Jeff Wilson quoted and wrote:
>> Wolfe doesn't make many things any clearer than that. Victor is well
>> aware
>> that it is his inability to control his thumb as a human does that is the
>> cause of his poor penmanship. It is also why Dollo's Law was cited
>> immediately after relating his writing woes. Dollo's Law does not address
>> recalcitrance or bad habits; it addresses lost function and the inability
>> to
>> regain it. The Annese, though otherwise quite human, somehow lost the
>> normal
>> human usage of their thumbs. It's that simple.

> I thought we just worked out that Dollo's Law is =not= about function;
> dolphins swim just as good as fish if not better.

"if the offspring return to a mode of life in which the vestigial organ had
an important function, the organ does not return to its original state, but
the organism develops a substitute." (Ace, 231)

I wasn't really debating Dollo's Law but, yes, it is about function. An
organ which loses a function never regains that function. The organism may
develop another organ, or adapt an existing organ to compensate for the lost
functionality of the original organ, but once an organ loses a function it
is lost to that organ forever. The ability of a mammal to return to the sea
and thrive there does not contravene the law.

-Roy

---

### Jeff Wilson
*23 May 2002, 05:29 · follows Roy C. Lackey*

>      From: 
>           "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net>
> 
>  Jeff Wilson quoted and wrote:

>>> Wolfe doesn't make many things any clearer than that. Victor is well
>>> aware
>>> that it is his inability to control his thumb as a human does that is the
>>> cause of his poor penmanship. It is also why Dollo's Law was cited
>>> immediately after relating his writing woes. Dollo's Law does not address
>>> recalcitrance or bad habits; it addresses lost function and the inability
>>> to
>>> regain it. The Annese, though otherwise quite human, somehow lost the
>>> normal
>>> human usage of their thumbs. It's that simple.

>> I thought we just worked out that Dollo's Law is =not= about function;
>> dolphins swim just as good as fish if not better.

> "if the offspring return to a mode of life in which the vestigial organ had
> an important function, the organ does not return to its original state, but
> the organism develops a substitute." (Ace, 231)
> 
> I wasn't really debating Dollo's Law but, yes, it is about function. An
> organ which loses a function never regains that function. The organism may
> develop another organ, or adapt an existing organ to compensate for the lost
> functionality of the original organ, but once an organ loses a function it
> is lost to that organ forever. The ability of a mammal to return to the sea
> and thrive there does not contravene the law.

The mammal's return shows that the function can return, even if the
original organ does not. The dolphin's dorsal serves in place of a
fish's, even though the original bony structures are long gone. So why
can't a shapeshifting abo likewise manifest new appendages to do the
work of human hands it may have had long ago?

```
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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### Roy C. Lackey
*23 May 2002, 07:04 · follows Jeff Wilson*

>> Jeff Wilson quoted and wrote:
>> I wasn't really debating Dollo's Law but, yes, it is about function. An
>> organ which loses a function never regains that function. The organism
>> may
>> develop another organ, or adapt an existing organ to compensate for the
>> lost
>> functionality of the original organ, but once an organ loses a function
>> it
>> is lost to that organ forever. The ability of a mammal to return to the
>> sea
>> and thrive there does not contravene the law.

> The mammal's return shows that the function can return, even if the
> original organ does not. The dolphin's dorsal serves in place of a
> fish's, even though the original bony structures are long gone. So why
> can't a shapeshifting abo likewise manifest new appendages to do the
> work of human hands it may have had long ago?

Given time (it's been less than 200 years since the French landing), and a
new need to handle tools, the abos might well evolve other means of handling
them. But, in terms of evolutionary time spans, the abos haven't had time to
adapt, even if they needed to. Also, there is no evidence presented in the
text of abos actually being able to shapeshift. I suspect that if they
really could morph into another shape that their genetic makeup would be so
different from that of humans as to make interbreeding impossible.

-Roy

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### Adam Stephanides
*23 May 2002, 14:30 · follows Roy C. Lackey*

> on 5/20/02 5:49 AM, Tony Ellis at LittleSense at necronomicon.co.uk wrote:
> Wolfe
> goes out of his way to show us that Victor was beaten until he bled for
> getting it wrong: that's a pretty powerful incentive for getting something
> right if it is physically possible to do so.

A psychological inability to do something can be just as real, and just as
resistant to being overcome by force, as a physical inability.

> I find it hard to believe that, in a story where tool-use is of crucial
> significance, Wolfe has devoted a whole page to the phenomenon of Victor's
> bad handwriting, and topped it off with a paragraph-long definition of Dollo
> 's Law, in italics yet, just to say "Victor's poor handwriting was a bad
> habit."

In fact Dollo's law refers not to organs that have lost their function, but
to organs that have physically shrunk or disappeared.  Presumably you aren't
going to argue that the prehistoric colonists went through a stage when they
had tiny or no hands.

I think you're right, though, that there must be a larger reason why Victor
cites Dollo's law.  I'd suggest that it's connected to his statements that
he is an animal and does not really speak: having raised (he thinks) as an
animal, he now cannot become a human, but can only imitate a human.  Or
perhaps at this point he still believes himself an aborigine.  But in any
case, I don't think he's referring to the evolution of the Annese' hands.

>> I vaguely recall something like this being discussed, but don't recall any
>> of the arguments for it. The only thing I can find which could even be
>> thought to suggest that she is either Annese or can change her appearance
>> is
>> the statement "In the bright daylight he could see fine wrinkles near her
>> eyes; the girl was aging" (267), and to me it seems far more likely that
>> this means no more than what it says.

> In a different story, perhaps. But in one where a key theme is
> spot-the-alien

It's a key theme on this list; I'm not convinced it's a key theme in the
book itself.  The only "alien" whom there's much evidence for is Victor; the
other alien candidates have been extrapolated based on one or two tiny
details.

> and where we've already been given the example of  Victor's
> supposedly Annese mother making herself look older to avoid sleeping with
> men she didn't like, it's a detail that assumes far greater significance.

 
But Cassilla looks worn after she's slept with two men, not before.  If she
were able to make herself look unattractive at will, like Victor's mother,
she presumably wouldn't be exploited as much as she is.

The theme of slavery and exploitation is far more prominent in 5HC than is
"spot-the-alien," and my reading of the quote fits this theme very well,
indicating that Cassilla is worn out by her abuse.

--Adam

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### Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
*23 May 2002, 19:36 · follows Adam Stephanides*

Roy C. Lackey wrote...

> Given time (it's been less than 200 years since the French 
> landing), and a new need to handle tools, the abos might
> well evolve other means of handling them. But, in terms of
> evolutionary time spans, the abos haven't had time to adapt,
> even if they needed to. 

Let's be a bit more quantitative about this ... 

"Evolutionary time" isn't really measured in hours, days, or 
years, but in a combination of generations, selection pressure, 
and rates of mutation, which can then be translated into a
timeframe. 

Assuming the abos to be humans or human-descended, and to have
human generation times, 200 years is _at most_ about 15 generations 
... which would be insignificant even with high mutation rates and 
strong selection pressure. The only way you could expect anything 
significant in 15 gens would be if the favorable mutation(s) were 
already present in the population (which eliminates mutation rate
entirely as a factor) _and_ the selection pressure was simply 
overwhelming.

Now, on the hypothesis, it is quite possible that genes for manual 
dexterity of the tool-using variety would not have been entirely 
extincted in the abos. In fact, there is no plausible reason to 
assume that they would have been: it's hard to imagine evolutionary 
pressures which would select _against_ manual dexterity. Then the 
best case to be made for actual extinction would be a complete lack 
of selection in either direction, combined with "neutral drift;" 
which only becomes plausible if we assume a very small population 
... not actually all that improbable on the face of it ... 

Similarly, if the "shovel test" shibboleth story is accepted as 
true and taken at face value, then there was in fact an overwhelming 
pressure -- use a shovel or die! --  favoring tool-using dexterity. 
(This would be a clear case of artificial selection...)

Making matters somewhat more complicated, we're also probably 
talking about several genes rather than one, and all of them would 
have to be coselected in order for tool-using dexterity to reappear 
in any significant way, which greatly adds to the most-probable 
timeframe...

(This discussion, by the way, entirely ignores the question of 
adaptationism, which -- pace and RIP Steven Jay Gould -- I would 
just as soon ignore.)

> Also, there is no evidence presented in the text of abos 
> actually being able to shapeshift. I suspect that if they
> really could morph into another shape that their genetic 
> makeup would be so different from that of humans as to make
> interbreeding impossible.

You'd think so, wouldn't you? But in a universe where you can
gain a person's memories by eating his brains, or her personality
by drinking her blood, well. Besides, if we can accept a crossing 
with cuproglobous Vulcans... well... It's probably best to just
assume that the abos _are_ human-descended. Probably from a colony 
planted during the Monarchal age, long before the New Sun came and 
created the continents we know today. 8*)

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### Tony Ellis
*23 May 2002, 17:40 · follows Dan'l Danehy-Oakes*

> Adam Stephanides wrote:
> I think you're right, though, that there must be a larger reason why Victor
> cites Dollo's law. I'd suggest that it's connected to his statements that
> he is an animal and does not really speak: having raised (he thinks) as an
> animal, he now cannot become a human, but can only imitate a human.

That's Nurture. The law he is citing concerns Nature, or heredity.

> But in any
> case, I don't think he's referring to the evolution of the Annese' hands.

Neither do I. He's talking about why he could never  write when he held a
pen properly. I think he is either citing Dollo's Law as an analogy for what
has happened, i.e.: 'just as an organ can atrophy during evolution, so can a
higher, human, capability', or the 'organ' he is thinking of is the human
brain (or some tool-coordinating part thereof).

Either way, having spent the best part of a page begging the question 'why
can't I write when I hold a pen conventionally?' Victor concludes with a law
which specifically concerns evolution.


Of the spot-the-alien theme:

> It's a key theme on this list; I'm not convinced it's a key theme in the
> book itself.

In the story we are discussing it is precisely what Marsch has come to St
Anne to do.

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