{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3410",
    "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": 3410,
    "subject": "\"The Changeling\" solution? [spoilers]",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-08-18T19:35:20+00:00",
    "last": "2002-08-18T19:35:20+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0208-1571@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com"
      },
      "date": "2002-08-18T19:35:20+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) \"The Changeling\" solution? [spoilers]",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "An early Wolfe story (collected in CASTLE OF DAYS), \"The Changeling,\" is\nset in the same town that the later novel PEACE is set in.\n\nWhile I've always been a big fan of the story, it has also been one of the\nmost baffling to me.  Damon Knight somewhere made a comment that \"The\nChangeling\" was about a guy who is dead (the story appeared in one of\nKnight's ORBIT anthologies), and while that may be true for the story, it\nis certainly true for the novel, so maybe Knight was mixing them up.\n\nMy own thinking on the story had to do with figuring out the hidden name of\nthe strange fairy boy, which I think is \"Peter Pan.\"  Beyond that I became\nlost in the maze of how an American man was made an unperson: birth\ncertificate lost in fire, school photographs forged, personal history\nobscured to the point of erasure, etc.\n\nI knew quite well what a changeling is: an infant is snatched by fairies\nwho put a fey substitute, the changeling, in the cradle, and use the human\ninfant for whatever weirdness the fairies have.  So the fairy boy I call\nPeter Pan is clearly the changeling of the title, but traditionally: the\nswitch is done in infancy; the changeling is usually deformed or weird,\nsometimes it dies young (otoh it can be hundreds of years old); etc.  There\nis no question that the protagonist of the story is the human victim, but\nthere is enough weirdness in his story that he is himself something of a\nchangeling, too; which caused me some confusion.\n\nAnyway, today it finally occured to me this morning in an idle moment.\nPeter Pan of the story is a =serial= changeling, and our unpersoned\nprotagonist is only =one= of the fellows he has erased.  I had never made\nthat connection, focusing only on the one-to-one ratio of\nchangeling:infant.\n\nSuch serial behavior makes perfect sense with creatures that live hundreds\nof years without visibly aging.  The fairy boy has displaced many human\nboys, and each time they are joined to fey families that wander America\nlike displaced persons or carnies, and the fey parents die-off rather early\n(like the changelings of tradition often do), leaving their young man\n\"offspring\" in scattered towns.  Our protag is likely the only one to find\nhis way back to the town of his birth, and notice how he fits in: as a\n\"crazy\" hermit on the island.\n\nThat is: the protagonist was born as Peter Palmieri, second child of Mama\nand Papa Palmieri (first child Maria is three years older than Peter; third\nchild Paul is six years younger).  He grew up in town and went to school up\nto grade 4.  Then on that fateful summer day in 1945 with the frog (or\nshortly thereafter), Peter Pan took Peter Palmieri's place =retroactively=,\nbecoming first Maria Palmieri's big brother (when Maria is age 1-7; circa\n1932-39), then twin brother (when Maria is 8-10; 1940-42), then Maria's\nlittle brother (when Maria is 11-19; 1943-51), then Paul's little brother\n(when Paul is 11+ and Mama Palmieri is 60+).  \"Pete Palmer\" left town with\nhis fey father after his fey mother died, and they went to Buffalo;\npresumably at the same time the Palmieris (with Peter Pan as Peter\nPalmieri) moved from the house on Front Street to the place they live now,\nwhere they run the motel.  Then Pete joined the Army, went to fight in\nKorea, was a P.O.W., refused to repatriate at first, then came back later,\nserved time in military prison, and finally returned to the town.\n\nAnyway, either Peter Pan was already in town, living with another family\nwhose time had run out (i.e., the mother was in her 60s and it was time to\nswitch) and is the serial changeling I thought of this morning, or Peter\nPan was summoned to town somehow and took up residence by taking Peter\nPalmieri's identity from a few years before Peter Palmieri was even born.\n\nOr, if Peter Pan is not really time traveling (which causes all sorts of\nproblems), he might be just generating false memories for his pre-1945\nPalmieri presence.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}