Subject: (urth) AEG spoilers - Gid as Timelord?

From: Mr Thalassocrat <thalassocrat08 at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:20:57 +0000

Or something.

- The only time discrepancies we get told about explicitly involve him:
messages around his birth, and his ethermail message to Cassie.
- He wears a watch but doesn't need to look at it.
- The only RC we know about in this story is his father Bob. Did HPL give
the watch to Bob, ~150 years ago?
- Gid seems too old. Bob was the first ambassador to Woldercon;  then
Klausner; then Bill, up until a couple of years ago.  Gid was born on
Woldercon, and left when he was a child. Say he was five at the time, and
say Sharon is right and he's around 35 now. That means say 28 years total
for the ambassadorships of Klausner and Bill. But Bill's service was during
the two terms of Ingstrup's presidency, so around 8 years. That makes
Klausner ambassador for 20 years - how likely?
- How long is it between the time he gts his leg cut off and the time he
reappears as Gil, prancing around on his peg-leg with a dancing demi-goddess
on stage? Three months or so? How likely? (But Gid is surely half-human at
most, so maybe he has superior recuperation powers or something.)
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From: Dave Tallman <davetallman at msn.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:01:18 +0000

> messages around his birth, and his ethermail message to Cassie.
If the birth announcement message was treated like Cassie's ethermail 
(sent in order to avoid time complications) then it's possible that 
there was no child at all and that Gid is an imposter. On the other 
hand, the President treats him as the genuine son of the ambassador (p )

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From: Dave Tallman <davetallman at msn.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:07:38 +0000

Gid cannot be too powerful. A time-traveler with the ability to freely
change the past would not allow himself to be shot and lose a leg, for
example. I don't think he can consciously warp reality enough to account for
Cassie's address changes, for the same reason.  Still, he is very capable:

1) He's strong, since he can break through a door with one lunge (p. 82).
2) He's agile, since he can do professional-level dancing even after losing
a leg.
3) He has a time-sense, though there are places it doesn't work (p. 75).
Perhaps when he's in space?
4) He may have matured more quickly than usual, allowing him to appear older
than he really is.
5) He has a remarkable range of knowledge, including physics, Earth arcana,
and old sea shanties.
6) He can enter a locked room through a one-foot-square hole.

I think these can be accounted for by two factors: his biological father and
his adoptive father. I think we should believe he was born on Woldercan.
Ambassador Klauser saw him there as a young boy (p. 297). Klauser also says
that Wolder males try to seduce Earth females, and Chase tells us that they
can reproduce with other species. This probably accounts for his physicial
traits.

His adoptive father is Robert Chase, who seems to have known Lovecraft (p.
75). If Lovecraft used him as the basis for his stories of Randolph Carter,
we know that he is an "old dreamer" (Dream Quest of the Unknown Kadath) who
is well-aquainted with the mysterious beings of Earth (who are aliens, at
least in this novel). Bob Chase was either an old wizard who had some means
of prolonging his life, or a time-traveler. He probably taught his son a
great deal.

There is also the connection to Charles Finney and the "Circus of Dr. Lao"
to account for. Bob Chase became the first ambassador to Woldercan. Is it
too much to speculate that he used some knowlege he gained through his
arcane research to get a clue to the planet's location from the old
space-faring races that are hidden on Earth? He may have collaborated with
Chuck Finney, a descendant of the Charles Finney who wrote a novel based on
his encounter with Dr. Lao and his circus, in order to get the planet
discovered. Lao himself may have come from the planet Woldercan, and brought
some of the humanoid-animal crossbreed monsters from there (there was a
centaur in his circus, for example).
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From: Adam Thornton <adam at io.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:18:39 +0000

On Oct 28, 2008, at 10:07 AM, Dave Tallman wrote:

> His adoptive father is Robert Chase, who seems to have known  
> Lovecraft (p. 75). If Lovecraft used him as the basis for his  
> stories of Randolph Carter, we know that he is an "old  
> dreamer" (Dream Quest of the Unknown Kadath) who is well-aquainted  
> with the mysterious beings of Earth (who are aliens, at least in  
> this novel). Bob Chase was either an old wizard who had some means  
> of prolonging his life, or a time-traveler. He probably taught his  
> son a great deal.

Oh, there's a whole Lovecraftian thread on how Old Wizards Never  
Die...see "The Thing on the Doorstep," for example.

But it wouldn't be exactly a shock to find that Gideon was a Son Of  
Yog-Sothoth (or whatever they call him on Woldercan) either (cf. "The  
Dunwich Horror").

Adam
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