{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3630", "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": 3630, "subject": "FLF: Q & A", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2002-12-01T04:50:22+00:00", "last": "2002-12-01T04:50:22+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2002-12-01T04:50:22+00:00", "subject": "(urth) FLF: Q & A", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I originally posted the following about twelve hours ago, but it never\nshowed up. My apologies if it should now turn up twice on the list.\n--------------------------------" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "mantis wrote:\n1. The nature of the house: what year is it in that final kitchen? If it\nis 1982, then Ben Free has not died yet! Talk about complicated\ntime-travel paradoxes. (Or is it really so complicated, given that we know\nthat Free's doctrine is to \"go along\" and repeat history?)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "When Barnes and his son came down the alley, it was sometime after Jan. 22,\n1983, but not too long after (still snow on the ground). Barnes mentions\nthat the back of the house hadn't been fenced off (as it was in front),\nreferring to the way the house was left after the partial demolition of Jan.\n20. Free is dead. As he told the four on the plane, he knew both when and\nhow he would die. He hadn't the will to try to escape his fate, even if that\nhad been possible.\n\nThere's no way to tell what year it is after Barnes stepped through the\nbackdoor gizmo and entered the kitchen; we are given no clues, beyond the\nimproved Candy and Stubb. (Who adjusted the controls of the gizmo in the\nwall, set it to jump how far in which direction?)\n\nThe plot is full of unavoidable logical holes, no matter how hard Wolfe\ntried to plug them. He avoided one time-travel complication by not allowing\ntwo versions of Free to exist simultaneously, but allows two instances of\nthe same portable gizmo at the same time. The one in the backdoor is the\nsame one Whitten took with him when he deserted on Jan. 24, using the\nbackdoor gizmo, that he later used (while bringing it with him) to get back\nto the future when he left the frontier for good, then concealed in the wall\nin the backdoor." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "2. The nature of the world of that house. Candy is wearing a shimmering\ndress, what's that all about? I remember 16 years ago one reader who was\nonline was really bugged by that dress -- it seemed to signify something,\nbut what was it? At one level it certainly reminds me of the Arthurian\nLady of the Lake. But with time-travel involved, that is, a sfnal\nexplanation for everything (even supernatural events become \"psionic\" or\nwhathaveyou), then it seems as though the trio has been travelling through\ntime and \"fixing\" things, just as the General had travelled past the 1950s\nto get tape recorders and other off-the-shelf wonders from later decades.\nOTOH, the trio might be limited in what they can accomplish in short time:\nas I understand it, the trio opted for the gizmo door on High Country and\nOzzie elected to go back by the B-17, in order to find his son and then try\nto find their way together through the gizmo door on the ground. Has it\nbeen a week, a month, or just a few days?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It had never occurred to me before that Barnes might have left the _High\nCountry_ via the B-17, but you may be right. I had always assumed that he\nwas just the last to show up for a scheduled meeting of the quadrumvirate in\nFree's kitchen. In fact, you must be right, because both he and the boy are\nstill ragged. And that answers your question: it's after daylight on the\nsame day as the predawn talk in the cockpit. Barnes just collected his kid\nfrom Sandy Duck before going to the house." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In any case, while Candy's\nslimness might be due to simple amphetemines , Stubb's increased height\nis presumably more than inner-shoe lifters could provide . . . other than\nthe results of being alloyed (which might cover everything by itself),\nmaybe they have additional genetic therapy?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The trio who left the _High Country_ together went somewhen together and\nhave had time to meld differing versions of themselves into improved models." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "3. But is that final house really part of the mundane world, or is it\n\"Oz,\" a bubble universe separate from the mundane world as Oz is separate\nfrom Kansas? That is, at the end of the first Oz book, the heroine Dorothy\ngets to go home, the semi-hero/semi-villain Oz is last seen in a balloon in\nthe sky (like Free/Whitten in High Country) and the four helper-heroes each\nget one of the four subject-kingdoms of Oz (I'm simplifying a bit, but bear\nwith), forming a sort of quadrumvirate. This quadrumvirate is a good thing\nfor the land of Oz (simplifying, but bear with), since each individual\nrecognized that he was lacking something and has been made complete. Being\nthe lords of the Land of Oz is different than being the Gang of Four. (But\nI agree the possibility that the four are remaking the external world is a\nfairly strong one.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I never read the OZ books, and I'm not going to, but I've seen the old\nmovie. In an earlier post you mentioned the movie, the classic one, but I\ndon't think that's the same movie Candy is referring to on the last page of\nchapter 57, with her remark about \"Whores of a different color, remember?\" I\ndidn't see that version, so I'll refrain from comment. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Time to point out that Free is looking for a better world that he =doesn't=\nfind in the Old Frontier: he, too, is looking for something, but it seems\nto be something more than just bringing \"little house on the prairie\"\nvalues into the inner city (i.e., bringing the best of the frontier life\nback to homestead the urban jungle). With this in mind, it seems as though\nhis quest is completed by having the four living in his house, which has\nbecome him (to a greater or lesser degree)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't know about Free being or becoming in some sense his house; after\nall, the four couldn't save it, it was partially demolished, and has no real\nfuture. You can't stop \"progress\", and that freeway isn't going to move\nsomewhere else. Free got his greatest desire when he went to the frontier,\nsort of, just as the four got theirs, sort of. It just turned out that what\nthey got didn't turn out to be quite what they wanted or needed, sort of.\nCandy and Stubb, at least, in the epilogue, got some degree of personal,\nphysical benefit from their \"second chances\". What did Free get? He was too\nold to get the most out of his frontier days by the time he got there. When\nhe spoke to the four in the cockpit he told them that he didn't \"know who\nyou four are\", but that he knew he would let them live with him at the end\nof his life. He knew because Kip reported to him after she killed him. So\nwhat? They were still strangers to him, who did nothing for him. The crisis\nabout demolishing the house was contrived. Free's apparent poverty wasn't\nreal. (He told them he used time travel to make plenty of money.) All\nhe had to do was move to another house and take the gizmo with him. Buy\nhimself a pair of glasses; have his cataracts removed. But he didn't do any\nof those things, whether because he was a fatalist who didn't think he could\n(or should) avoid death in the basement, or because he didn't care.\n\n-Roy" } ] } ] }