{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3333", "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": 3333, "subject": "Victor's parents, abos, Liev's postpostulate, and more", "messages": 4, "voices": 3, "first": "2002-07-04T01:28:31+00:00", "last": "2002-07-06T02:15:32+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "StoneOx17", "address": "stoneox17 at aol.com" }, "date": "2002-07-04T01:28:31+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Victor's parents, abos, Liev's postpostulate, and more", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "One of the interesting questions in 5HC is whether humans and abos are\ntwo, or one peoples, and whether they can interbreed.\n\nJeff Wilson speculates" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The diminutive Shadow Children and the full statured abos are two\nbranches of descent from an original group that arrived at the twin\nplanets. This group lost or cut contact with Earth, which proceeded to\ndevelop more distant colonies that were more reliable investments in\nthat ships or at least information came back. The forgotten colonists\nlargely descend into savagery while some imbibe the native vegetation\nand change themselves with it, like some kind of pseudo-evolutional\ncatalyst, gaining small bodies that are easier to keep fed on the scarce\ngame and forage, and possibly some kind of biofeedback control, that\nwould account for the age-changing and shape-changing abilities. The\ntelepathy might be a real ability granted by the plant, but might just\nas well be an artifact of the need to explain why the Frenchmen came\nwhen they did. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I have another take on this question. I think the above scenario was \nessentially manufactured by Victor (for reasons described later), and \npresented in \"A Story\" as a myth of the Free People. As I remarked here a \nwhile ago, the main evidence that humans and abos can interbreed is the \nexistence of Victor, who is apparently half-abo. Marsch writes in his diary:\n\n\"This morning we even passed through a tiny settlement the boy called \n'Frogtown,' a name I suppose would not much recommend itself to the \ninhabitants. I asked if he weren't ashamed to use a name like that when he is \nof French descent, and he told me with great seriousness that, no, he was \nhalf of the blood of the Free People (his name for the Annese) and that it \nwas with them that his loyalties lie. He believes his father, in short, \nthough he is perhaps the only person in the world who does. Yet he\nis a bright boy; such is the power of parental teaching.\"\n\nMarsch is, of course, wrong about which of Victor's parents was of the blood \nof the Free People. And the following passage casts doubt upon whether Roy \nis truly Victor's father in blood:\n\nR. T: \"... And you may forget what you have heard! My son is legitimate; we \nwere married by the priest at the church of St. Madeleine.\"\n\nI believe that Roy is misunderstanding the rumors; that these rumors doubt \nnot whether Victor's parents were married, but whether Roy was really his \nfather. If abos and humans can't interbreed (and if Victor's mother is \nreally abo) Roy can't be Victor's father. But what are we to make of Dollo's \nlaw, Liev's postpostulate, and everything the Old Wise One says in \"A Story\" \nabout a pre-French wave of human colonization originating in Atlantis, Mu, \nGondwanaland or Africa? One important thing to note is that these \nspeculations are all due to Victor (either in his notes written in prison or \nin \"A Story\"). I think he is basing all his speculations on the (false) \nassumption that humans and the Free People can interbreed, and thus must \noriginally be of one stock. Victor may be aware of the problem (the \nfollowing quote is somewhat ambiguous). In describing a dream, he says \n\n\"... I looked at my father, who seemed a red-bearded giant, and knew what \nwould happen to his hands so that he could no longer follow his trade. My \nmother--yes, I am sure it was she, though I have never understood how one of \nthe Free People could bear a child to my father ...\"\n\nHe may have thus invented Liev's Postpostulate in order to avoid facing the \nfact that his blood father is not Roy, but some abo. As Marsch says (even \nthough, ironically, he misunderstands everything), \"such is the power of \nparental teaching.\"\n\nIndeed, Marsch has a different explanation, namely convergent evolution, for \nthe existence of two peoples almost identical (even to foreskins!) except for \nopposable thumbs. He writes in his diary:\n\n\"Certainly some of the more fantastic [stories] must be pure myth, but there \nremain a great many reports of a native race so similar to human beings that \nthey might almost have been the descendants of an earlier wave of \ncolonization. So similar, in fact, that old Trenchard can deceive the \ncredulous with his claim to be Annese, and on a planet where we find plants, \nbirds, and mammals so near the Terrestial types, a form strikingly like man \nis surely not impossible--the manlike form may be optimal for this biosphere.\"\n\nI have a few more questions and observations about 5HC.\n \nHas anybody noticed the number of times numbers are used instead of names in \n5HC? In VRT, Victor's school notebook is inscribed:\n\nname: Rm E2S14 Seat 18\nschool: Armstrong School\ncity: Frenchman's Landing\n\nFrom an interrogation of VRT, we have:\nQ: Who are you?\nA: I am the prisoner in cell 143.\n\nFrom the interview with Mrs. Blount: \"The ship we come on was the \nnine-eight-six, which was not the first one, but one of the more earlier of \nthem. I've heard that before they used to have names for them, which I think \nwould be prettier.\n\nAnd in the archetypical instance of this, the narrator of the first novella \nis called Number Five by his father. This is an interesting theme, even if I \ndon't entirely know what to make of it.\n\nI was puzzling over the \"sometimes like a man, sometimes like old wood,\" \nquote, and noticed that if you look at the previous conversation, it appears \nthat M. Culot's grandfather said it in French (possibly \"... parfois comme le \nbois vieux\"?) Could it be a bilingual pun somehow? I don't know enough \nFrench to answer this.\n\nFinally, describing his communications with his fellow prisoner, Victor says\n\n\"I have filled in the punctuation myself. Forty-seven does not use \npunctuation, and if I have misrepresented his intention, I hope he will \nforgive me.\"\n\nThis seemed like a clue to me, so I looked at all of Forty-seven's \nconversations. It seems impossible to repunctuate any of them and obtain a \ndifferent meaning. Then I realized that the punctuation has been filled in \nnot only in all of Forty-seven's conversations, but in all of the interviews \nMarsch conducted, as well as the prison interviews of Victor. This is too \nmuch material for me to enjoy reading through, while looking for ways to \nrepunctuate, but I would encourage anybody on this mailing list who enjoys \nthis sort of thing to try it. \n\n-Stone Ox-" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice K. Turner", "address": "aturner6 at nyc.rr.com" }, "date": "2002-07-04T11:31:46+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Victor's parents, abos, Liev's postpostulate, and more", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "----- Original Message -----" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \n\nname: Rm E2S14 Seat 18\nschool: Armstrong School\ncity: Frenchman's Landing" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I suppose that\"s Neil Armstrong the school is named after, just as he shows\nup in Ultan's library.\n\n-alga" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "littlesense at necronomicon.co.uk" }, "date": "2002-07-04T14:20:25+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Victor's parents, abos, Liev's postpostulate, and more", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "While there's nothing in 5HC that lets us say for certain Roy Trenchard is\nVictor's biological father, that I'm aware of, I can think of several subtle\nindicators. One is that Victor's Annese traits seem to be diluted: he can't\nalter his appearance as well as his mother, he tells us, and he's\nsufficiently dextrous to have mastered basic penmanship.\n\nHowever, my real problem with the idea of Victor inventing a human origin\nmyth for the Annese to explain how Roy could be his father is this: why on\nEarth should he? He hates his father. He venerates his Annese mother,\nvenerates the Free People. He would love to think that his 'real' father was\nAnnese. Surely, if Victor was going to invent anything about the Free\nPeople, he would invent absolute genetic incompatibility with humans, to\nreinforce a cosy fantasy that the man he calls a \"dirty, drunken beggar\"\ncouldn't possibly be his true parent.\n\nThe fact that Victor instead puts all the prehistoric-colonists-from-Earth\nstuff into 'A Story', no matter how it might grate, seems to me further\nconfirmation that he's not making the whole thing up." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "StoneOx17", "address": "stoneox17 at aol.com" }, "date": "2002-07-06T02:15:32+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Victor's parents, abos, Liev's postpostulate, and more", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I proposed that Victor has invented the pre-French wave of Earth colonization,\nand included it in \"A Story,\" in part to explain the fact that he is an \nabo-human\ncrossbreed, despite the fact (as I believe is hinted in the text) that Roy \nTrenchard isn't in fact his biological father.\n\nTony Ellis objects:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "While there's nothing in 5HC that lets us say for certain Roy Trenchard is\nVictor's biological father, that I'm aware of, I can think of several subtle\nindicators. One is that Victor's Annese traits seem to be diluted: he can't\nalter his appearance as well as his mother, he tells us, and he's\nsufficiently dextrous to have mastered basic penmanship." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "If he thinks he's only half-abo, that itself could explain his lesser ability \nto \nalter his appearance, and the abo officer appears to have mastered basic \npenmanship as well." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "However, my real problem with the idea of Victor inventing a human origin\nmyth for the Annese to explain how Roy could be his father is this: why on\nEarth should he? He hates his father. He venerates his Annese mother,\nvenerates the Free People. He would love to think that his 'real' father was\nAnnese. Surely, if Victor was going to invent anything about the Free\nPeople, he would invent absolute genetic incompatibility with humans, to\nreinforce a cosy fantasy that the man he calls a \"dirty, drunken beggar\"\ncouldn't possibly be his true parent." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is a good point. However, I don't believe he's doing it consiously, and \nthe \nsubconsious works in mysterious ways." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The fact that Victor instead puts all the prehistoric-colonists-from-Earth\nstuff into 'A Story', no matter how it might grate, seems to me further\nconfirmation that he's not making the whole thing up." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Maybe this would be a valid objection if 5HC were by a different author, but \nin\nWolfe novels, a story is hardly ever just a story. For all of the tales in \nthe \nstory contest in Citadel, the tellers had ulterior motives, and I would expect\nVictor to as well. \n\n-Stone Ox" } ] } ] }