Fascinating discussion of the moral parts the Neighbors play vis a vis human settlement on Blue--
One thought I had is that it can be counterproductive to some extent to expect that every creature we find in Wolfe fits into a detailed bestiary that he had planned.
Severian narrates at some point in Thrax that he rarely reads tales where strangers are encountered, no dialogue results, but some nameless hatred is still there between men. As I recall Severian has this thought when he passes some guy that glares at him, without any explanation.
Part of what I always liked about Wolfe is that he's willing to have so many loose ends, and he's willing to introduce incredibly complex ideas and characters almost as side-gags, before moving on to something completely different.
I guess what I'm saying is, sometimes the crazy shit goes down, and we stay in the dark ;)
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Today's Topics:
? 1. ?Rajan and Food (Brian Lovely)
? 2. Re: ?Rajan and Food (James Wynn)
? 3. Re: ?Rajan and Food (Jordon Flato)
? 4. Re: ?Rajan and Food (Jordon Flato)
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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 06:58:32 -0400
From: "Brian Lovely" <brian at studiobl.com>
Subject: (urth) Rajan and Food
To: <urth at lists.urth.net>
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He's a tree, he's a tree! Neighbors are trees, Inhumi are parasitic vines. .or something. ?Not sure what the Neighbor-version of Inhumi are-maybe the vine with a face that is cut for Incanto's staff. ?Except that seems so quiescent. ?You'd think the Neighbor-Inhumi would be a bit more active. ?The Inhumi are somehow about sacrifice and one race raising up another. ?The Neighbors infected humans with Inhumi to see what human-Inhumi would be like.not sure where I'm going with this, but there's something here about being willing to suffer for the betterment of the Inhumi. ?So, a) the crossbreed would be a "higher" being than the pure Inhumi, and b) you'd rid yourself of them by being so passive.they'd take on your Christ-like willingness to sacrifice yourself.
"James Wynn" crushtv at gmail.com wrote:
Granted, but when it is combined with the onset of ravenous hunger in the Spring, we know more is going on here (incidentally, this is more of that Tree-Neighbor connection that I still don't understand). I do not recall an instance of LS Silk pretending to eat food set before him. He fasts, but when there is not a lot of food available anyway, it is easy to be holy in that way. Not the same thing as what happens in SS, I think.
--Brian Lovely
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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 07:04:11 -0500
From: "James Wynn" <crushtv at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Rajan and Food
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Message-ID: <AC78EFE1A7F440FFB9604C769FE6EB1D at eMachinePC> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; ? ? ? ?reply-type=original
He's a tree, he's a tree! Neighbors are trees,
Inhumi are parasitic vines. ?.or something.
Not sure what the Neighbor-version of Inhumi
are-maybe the vine with a face that is cut for Incanto's staff.
Brian, let's posit that the Neighbors are dryads--that their steady physical form is one of the "sleepy trees" in the forests of Blue. How do the inhumi make the jump to become vines? Or how do they transform back to winged/clawed vampiric reptiles? That is the fundamental problem with any "tree/vine theory" regarding the Neighbors and inhumi.
J.
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Message: 3
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:00:10 -0700
From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Rajan and Food