Subject: (urth) PEACE: What happened to everybody else?

From: Jeff Veyera <teflon93 at cox.net>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 23:35:41 +0000

The recent thread on Mr Tilly and the discoveries made regarding oranges
(especially his propensity for injecting oranges with drugs) have made me
wonder again what real or perceived calamity befell humanity in Weer's
present.  This is referred to consistently throughout, and buttressed
perhaps by the Irish folktale at the very end of the novel.  What is Wolfe's
game here?

There seems to be a lot more going on in that plant than meets the eye, what
with the very odd treatment of the reporter and that ghost story.

I was also struck by the comment that the plant opening caused a glut in the
potato market in the area.  Aside from using potatoes to make vodka (a key
component in the screwdrivers Weer favors) and the potential that the plant
is also a distillery, why should this be?  Is a key juice ingredient
extracted from potatoes?

--

---

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 00:00:38 +0000

>perhaps by the Irish folktale at the very end of the novel.  What is Wolfe's

In the AD 2274 timeframe, all the Americans have died out.  Throughout
PEACE there is a sense of "decline and fall," like that of the Roman
Empire, with Weer being something like a provincial big man who sees it
crumbling away.  One reason given for the fall of the Roman Empire is the
lead in the water -- the Romans were accidentally poisoning themselves by
using lead pipes.  This single point seems to be a compelling answer for
the soft-apocalypse that happens offstage in PEACE: the citizens have been
poisoned by the fake orange drink, turned into sterile workers or freakish
mutants (sideshow freaks who have to live nomadic lifestyles).  As per
Olivia and Weer's vision of the relatively near future, the continent is
likely peopled by new species of humankind, with tribal organization being
the highest level.  Weer wasn't alive past 1974, so he doesn't have the
details for the last two centuries, but it was all falling action from the
trends he could see.

Weer isn't the "last American," since he is dead, but he might well be
among the last American ghosts (delayed by that elm tree, in his case).
Very much like the goose sidhe in the story you mentioned, who have
survived past the death of their species.

[snip]

>is also a distillery, why should this be?  Is a key juice ingredient

Whole potatoes are used up to make the ersatz orange beverage, or so it
seems to me.

=mantis=

--

---

From: Jeff Veyera <teflon93 at cox.net>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 00:23:19 +0000

Thanks for your reply, Mantis. I thoroughly enjoyed GURPS New Sun, btw.

[snip]

Mantis wrote:

So may we assume PEACE and "Seven American Nights" are related?

[snip]
Mantis wrote:

[snip]

Might that not explain the letter nailed down?  If Weer is a ghost, perhaps
he kept moving that letter, and someone among the living nailed it down so
that it would stop moving.

--

--

---

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 01:11:59 +0000

>So may we assume PEACE and "Seven American Nights" are related?

Well they have always seemed thematically related, but I don't recall
anyone trying to make a stronger case.  Interesting thought, to arrange all
the tales of America declining and falling, from "Hour of Trust" and "The
Blue Mouse" onward . . . well, I don't know about all that.  But 7AN seems
like a plausible nesting inside the PEACE timeline, what with its mutants
and tumble-down monuments.

>that it would stop moving.

It might, indeed.  I'm still not sure exactly what happened with Weer's
wandering essence =before= the elm fell, but now my sense is that the thing
was more like a mere shade, possessing only lower intelligence.  When the
elm fell another piece was released and the essence graduated up to being a
ghost, a step higher than a gibbering shade.

The shade, if I may use that term to denote "Weer's essence prior to elm
fall," seems to have not left the "room" with the fireplace near the elm.
(I use quotes because there is reason to believe that the memory mansion
has no physical presence at all.)  When Weer's ghost ventures out into the
other rooms and eventually finds the president's room (which has the nailed
letter you are referring to), it seems to be for the first time (as opposed
to those actions which seem like repetitions of actions that the shade went
through, like maybe questioning the doctors about his stroke).

How many categories of spirit are there?  I don't know, but Weer's aunt
Bella knew!

=mantis=

--