Subject: (urth) Quetzal On Urth?

From: Charles Reed <cmreed at link.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 17:15:48 +0000

Howdy everyone.

I have some thoughts that I'd like to share regarding when Quetzal came 
on board the Whorl, especially in regard to how Gene Wolfe seems to 
approach his writing.

Last week, Crush posited the following:

 > ... even if Typhon did not know the target
 > planets were full of blood-sucking monsters
 > (and I never imagined he did) it does not mean
 > he wasn't manipulated by Quetzal on Urth.  And
 > based on Quetzal's statements in LS3:1 (Slaves
 > of Scylla) that still seems probable to me.

Further, Don Doggett added the following:

 > The thirty years bits all refer to things that
 > have happened inside the Whorl and they all
 > hinge on one idea, namely that Quetzal somehow
 > entered the Whorl from Green or Blue thirty
 > years ago. An easy way around that is to say
 > that Quetzal has been on the Whorl from the
 > start. Nowhere, to the best of my knowledge, is
 > the lifespan of an Inhumu given in the text.
 > For goodness sake, Jahlee was buried underground
 > for months without nourishment . . .

I guess the idea of Quetzal being on board the Whorl from the beginning 
bugs me more than it should.  There are other theories floating around 
that I don't agree with but that I can stomach because they at least 
seem to be within the realm of possibility because their positions can 
be argued from the *text*.  Examples of such theories include the Blue = 
Ushas theory, and the theory that it was Severian who appeared to Horn 
in the pit.  

But the Quetzal-on-board-from-the-beginning theory is different.  

I see how the text doesn't refute such a possibility -- and I've looked 
for something to refute it with -- but that's not the same thing as 
support.  As much as I would like to avoid extra-textual support for my 
ideas, I'm going to offer as back-door evidence the following quote from 
the Nick Gevers interview with Gene Wolfe ( 
http://www.sfsite.com/03b/gw124.htm ):

--------------------
Q:  Why did you choose in Short Sun to have your characters cross over 
into the milieu of New Sun?  In particular, do the meetings of Horn/Silk 
and Severian have a decisive impact on the destinies of both?

A:  Because the books would have been lame if they had not.  Once you 
see that Pas is or was Typhon, and know the Rajan can travel by astral 
projection, he's got to do that.  There's a wonderful bit in the Roger 
Rabbit movie nobody seems to get.  Roger goes around with handcuffs on 
his wrists for half an hour.  Then he pulls one hand out of the cuffs 
and does something with it, and sticks it back in.  Bob says, "You mean 
to tell me you could get out of those whenever you wanted to?"  And 
Roger says, "No, only when it's funny."  That is a profound expression 
of the the law that governs all writers and performers.  The audience 
doesn't have to think about that, but writers are bound by it.  If 
there's a gun on the wall in Act I, it must be fired before the end of 
the play. Etc.
--------------------

OK.  Think about this.  If Quetzal or other inhumi had been on Urth 
influencing Typhon or other government officials, I think Gene Wolfe 
would have let us know.  More than that, according to the above quote, I 
think he would have felt bound -- at least artistically but perhaps 
morally as well -- to let something of such a relationship be seen.  In 
other words, if the inhumi can travel to Urth (as has been suggested of 
Quetzal) then they've *got* to do that.  We would hear stories of them 
on Urth, see one flying in the distance, observe people who don't eat, 
can't run, and lick their chops when someone mentions blood.  Something. 
 Some indication.  But there's nothing.  No indication whatsoever that 
any of the inhumi have ever been on Urth.  (The SS astral-projections 
don't count because, for one, they're not physically there and for two, 
they're not inhumi when they're there -- they're fully and completely 
human.)

Further, if it's only one single inhumu (Quetzal) that made it to Urth, 
how did he get there and why can't others come too?   He has to have 
been there physically -- not astrally.  That is, he had to have traveled 
there on some kind of ship.  So who built and launched such a ship and 
where is it now?  If Quetzal was slick enough to influence Typhon about 
where to point the Whorl, surely he would would have been slick enough 
to redirect the hypothetical Urth-bound ship to Green (with it's 
"cargo") thereby avoiding the need to go to Urth at all.

I feel like I'm ranting, and I apologize.  I just can't see any textual 
support (which again is not the same as the lack of refutation) for the 
idea that any inhumi ever visited Urth.  Is there any?

Charles

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 17:39:18 +0000

Charles Reed inquires:
I just can't see any textual support (which again is not the same as the
lack of refutation) for the idea that any inhumi ever visited Urth.  Is
there any?

I haven't finished the BotSS yet, so someone may offer textual evidence
shoots my theories completely full of hole. The fact is that I've yet to see
any textual evidence for how or when Quetzal got on the Whorl. There is (I
believe) thematic evidence however to which I've already referred:
http://gene-wolfe.tripod.com/midas.htm (note the http? Mr. Ansely?)

In the above referred story we have the answers to a couple unresolved
questions:
1. How long do inhumi live? Very long.
2. How did Quetzal get on the Whorl? It was Quetzal who instigated the Whorl
project.

Now as to how he arrived at Urth that is also per speculation. I presume he
hitched a ride with a ship that visited Green. He fed on the crew on the way
to Urth and acquired technological knowledge which he shared with Typhon to
get himself back.

If one chooses to associate Quetzal with Noah, the thematic tendency
increases for the Whorl to be (in a sense) Quetzal's ship.

-- Crush

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From: cilluff1 at optonline.net <cilluff1 at optonline.net>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 18:02:17 +0000

Charles wrote:

<>

Let me start by saying that I agree with your points, and generally don't
think the inhumi were on Urth.  But just to put forth one possible textual
reference, when I first starting reading Blue the inhumi reminded me of the
bloodbats that bite Jolenta and Severian.  Perhaps these were the
pre-evolved inhumi?  Jolenta's reaction to the bite were reminiscent of the
child who was bitten that Silk attended to (the name slips my mind).

- Joe

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From: cilluff1 at optonline.net <cilluff1 at optonline.net>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 18:10:59 +0000

One more piece of textual evidence is Quetzal's knowledge of Allah (or Ah
Lah).  True, I'm working backward from this, but he seems to know a lot
about an Urth deity who is not worshipped on the Whorl.  Of course, I would
refute this argument by noting that apparently Remora knows about Allah,
too, and he has never been on Urth.

Original Message:
-----------------
From: cilluff1 at optonline.net cilluff1 at optonline.net
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 13:02:17 -0500
To: urth at urth.net
Subject: RE: (urth) Quetzal On Urth?

Charles wrote:

<>

- Joe

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From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 18:02:51 +0000

On 25/11/2002 18:02:17 cilluff1 wrote:

>other words, if the inhumi can travel to Urth (as has been suggested
of >
>Quetzal) then they've *got* to do that.  We would hear stories of
them >
>can't run, and lick their chops when someone mentions blood.
Something.> 
> Some indication.  But there's nothing.  No indication whatsoever
that> 
>any of the inhumi have ever been on Urth.>>

I dislike the inhumi on earth theory.  Dislike it a great deal.

However there is no necesity for inhumi to travel to earth by their own
means.  Think apports, ships and mirrors.

Matthew

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From: Charles Reed <cmreed at link.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 18:44:23 +0000

cilluff1 at optonline.net wrote:

>Charles wrote:
>
><bugs me more than it should.  There are other theories floating around 
>in the pit.......  
>In other words, if the inhumi can travel to Urth (as has been suggested of 

I always took the blood-bats to be actual bats, similar to South 
American vampire bats except larger and less afraid of attacking people 
than those we have on our "Earth."  Also, the physical reactions of 
anybody that loses a lot blood -- whether to a vampire bat, an inhumu, 
or a cut on the wrist -- would be the same, although the emotional 
reactions might quite different.

And as for some other creature evolving into the inhumi:  this could 
only happen if Urth somehow became . . . Green? . . . since that's the 
only place the inhumi can breed.  

By the way, I think the child's name was Teasel.

Charles

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From: Charles Reed <cmreed at link.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 19:30:18 +0000

matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk wrote:

 >> other words, if the inhumi can travel to Urth (as has been
 >> suggested off Quetzal) then they've *got* to do that
 >> We would hear stories of them them on Urth, see one
 >> flying in the distance, observe people who don't eat,
 >> can't run, and lick their chops when someone mentions
 >> blood.  Something.  Some indication.  But there's
 >> nothing.  No indication whatsoever that any of the
 >> inhumi have ever been on Urth.
 >

OK.  That would mean that there are (or were) such devices on Green (or 
Blue).  And again, we're thrown into the realm of having no evidence of 
any kind -- that I'm aware of, that is -- to suggest such a thing.  And 
it's this kind of thing that bugs me.  

I know there are different schools of thought in how to "criticize" 
literature.  One such school of thought, sometimes referred to as 
"Formalism," holds that a work of literature should be judged solely on 
what is in the text itself -- not the author's background or religious 
beliefs, not the historical context in which the author wrote, not the 
unspoken, underlying psychology motivating the characters, etc. 
 Obviously, few people who post to this list (including me) subscribe to 
this school of thought since we all tend to make use of the fact that 
Wolfe is a Roman Catholic, that he has said this or that in certain 
interviews, etc.  In fact, it severely limits a person's ability to 
evaluate a work because it fails to account for allusions and resonances 
with other works.

Still, I believe that any theory of what a text means has to be 
supported in some discernible way by the text itself.  To do otherwise, 
I think, is merely to play games -- to build a house of cards that has 
no firm foundation in the bedrock text.  (e.g., the "Frodo and Sam were 
gay lovers" nonsense).

Charles

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From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at cox.net>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 23:25:55 +0000

> >> inhumi have ever been on Urth.

         I would be kind of weirded out to discover that Gene Wolfe had 
already thought up the whole Long Sun and New Sun and inhumi businesses at 
the time he wrote New Sun. I mean, gimmeabreak! It's a bit much to ask to 
find inhumi in the New Sun quartet/quintet.
         But I think your argument is sound. Once Wolfe came up with the 
Long Sun and the inhumi, if he were going to put Quetzal on Urth during the 
time Typhon was abuilding his ark, there'd be some allusion that would 
point in that direction. Where is it? Nowhere that has been found.
         And there is a perfect place for such a revelation: when Silk 
travels to Urth in the days of Severian's childhood. Plenty of opportunity 
for Wolfe to add in an inhumi attack or some other hint of Urthly inhumi. 
But he doesn't.
         And hey, Allah is just the arabic word for "God." Christians in 
Arab lands call God "Allah." It's the arabic form of "El" or "Elohim" found 
in the Hebrew Bible. "Allah" was doubtless a word for God found in some of 
the other cities, and Quetzal chooses to use it. Maybe even found in the 
Chrasmological Writings, since they were cobbled from all over the place. 
No need to think Quetzal had to have been on Urth to pick up this word.
         As for how Quetzal got on Starcrosser, we are TOLD that Neighbors 
seeded the ship with inhumi. Lacking any other indication, surely that's 
what we are to understand about how Quetzal got there. How he rose to such 
preeminence in the "church" is another question, and has been discussed 
here. (Hey, a very thin, wizened "man," an "ascetic," might be just the 
kind of "man" to catch the eye of "church" superiors and be promoted 
rapidly. Add to this Quetzal's cunning, and the clearly corrupt nature of 
the "church," and you have all you need to imagine a rapid rise to eminence.)
         Wolfe says that if a gun appears in the first act, it has to be 
fired later on. Clearly the reverse is also true. If Quetzal was on 
Starcrosser from the beginning, then there is going to be something to 
indicate this. Nothing proffered thus far fits the bill.

Nutria

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From: Don Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 04:25:17 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Reed" <cmreed at link.com>
> idea that any inhumi ever visited Urth.  Is there any?

No need at all to apologize.  These texts can be maddening if you're looking
for conclusive evidence for anything.  I think there is incidental support
for the inhumi on Urth, but I also think that Wolfe shoehorned it in after
the fact.  Near the end of Claw, Jolenta is bitten by something (a blood
bat?) and the bleeding won't stop.  Immediately after, they meet the Cumaen
and Merryn in the ruined town of Apu Punchau.  This doesn't have any
relevance by itself, but in Return to the Whorl, Silkhorn and Jahlee (and
whoever else) encounter Merryn on Urth and Jahlee seems to intimate that
Merryn is an inhuma (at least that's one way to interpret it).

Don

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From: William Ansley <wansley at warwick.net>
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 04:43:57 +0000

At 11:39 AM -0600 11/25/02, James Wynn wrote:
>(note the http? Mr. Ansely?)

Crush,

Thank you for the complete URL. It may just be my Macintosh email 
client (Eudora 5.1) that has a problem when you leave off the 
http://, so I may be the only one with a problem here, but I do 
appreciate it.

You did misspell my last name, but you can call me William.

William Insanely

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From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 11:03:25 +0000

>it's this kind of thing that bugs me.

No need for devices, or not on Blue/Green.  The sails of The Ship
transport things by chance and the ship travels time.

Although I've no interest in pressing the matter as inhumi on Earth isn't
something I've any wish to promote.

Matthew

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From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 11:34:44 +0000

On 26/11/2002 04:43:57 William Ansley wrote:

>http://, so I may be the only one with a problem here,

Nope, the mail clients I use also appreciate complete URL's

Matthew

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From: Charles Reed <cmreed at link.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 14:38:05 +0000

Don Doggett wrote:

>for conclusive evidence for anything.  
>

I have to disagree.  I think they're only maddening when you're looking 
for conclusive evidence to support incorrect theories.  :-)

>I think there is incidental support
>bat?) and the bleeding won't stop.  
>

But inhumu "bites" don't cause bleeding in their victims.  People that 
are "bitten" feel the way that they do simply because they've lost blood 
-- by having it sucked out of them, not by bleeding externally.  In 
fact, a lot of the victims don't even know that they've been attacked 
(see Inclito's mother as just one of many examples).  This certainly 
wouldn't be the case if the attack resulted in bleeding of any kind, 
much less uncontrollable bleeding.

>Immediately after, they meet the Cumaen

Can you quote the passage in RttW that "Jahlee seems to intimate that Merryn
is an inhuma" ?

Again, I hate to use "extra-textual" sources to support my idea (or to attack your idea), but I'm afraid I'm going to.  In the same Nick Gevers interview in which Wolfe explained his ideas about the g

Q:  Are the Cumaen and/or Merryn inhumi?  Possibly, or definitely?
A:  No.  The Cumaean is an alien but not an inhuma.  Merryn is a human 
being.

Take that for what it's worth.  I've not known Gene Wolfe to lie about 
anything in an interview.  He doesn't always answer the question that is 
asked, but when he does, I  believe what he says.

Charles

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From: Charles Reed <cmreed at link.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 19:29:59 +0000

Hello again.  Just replying to my own message here.

Yesterday I asked if anybody had a transcript of the Gene Wolfe People 
Online transcript, and Roy Lackey was kind enough to e-mail it to me. 
 (Thanks, Roy!)  Here's a quote of interest from that transcript for 
everybody that's been following this Quetzal-on-Urth discussion:

   Question:  In the Long Sun books, is Quetzal the only
   one of his kind on the Whorl?  Was he an original
   passenger or a late arrival?

   Gene Wolfe:  He was a late arrival.  He is not the only
   one of his kind, but the Inhumi are rare on the Whorl.

I still believe it to be relatively clear from the text that Quetzal is 
a late boarder, but maybe this will convince some of the doubters. 
 Crush, don't you have to give in now?  Or do you believe Gene Wolfe to 
be so sadistic as to outright lie about his own books?

Charles

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 20:00:01 +0000

Charles brings the tablets from the mountain:
   Question:  In the Long Sun books, is Quetzal the only
   one of his kind on the Whorl?  Was he an original
   passenger or a late arrival?

Crush concedes:
Sadistic, yes. But not in that way. I can hardly argue with the author. And
with this light thrown on the subject, I cannot divine any consistent
narrative value to Quetzal's story of A-man and Wo-man.

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From: Bratt Ian <ian.bratt at colorado.edu>
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 07:38:24 +0000

> be so sadistic as to outright lie about his own books?
Just for clarity I wanted to point out a few lines from RTTW that support
this.

RTTW pg 235:

"To Viron, yes, mysire.  Also to Grotestad.  To go to the Long sun Whorl I
would like..."
I told her it was possible she would.
"There the Vanished People went?"
I nodded.
"To greet us it was?"
"You might put it so, though they were sensible enough to find out a good
deal about us--and infect us with inhumi--"
"Bad thing!"
"Before they ventured to greet even a few of us."
"Bad it was," Vadsig agreed with Oreb.
"To leave inhumi among us?"  I shook my head. "It was a small price to pay
for two whorls, and it enabled the Neighbors to gauge much more accurately
the differences between our race and their own."
"Because our blood they drink, mysire?"

-ian

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