# Greenhourse Effect (was Rajan and Food) *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 29 Apr 2009* > 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. --- ### Brian Lovely *29 Apr 2009, 15:40* I'm with ya about it being a stretch from polyploidy to multiple limbs. Still, with alien biologies.... Has anyone ever had any solid theories about the greenhouses? Seawrack says she's seen similar things on the ocean floor, so the one with the broken dome that she and Horn find may have been pushed up by volcanic action at some point. Plus one of Horn's sons looks through one of the rings associated with the Neighbors (can't remember which one) and sees a Neighbor sitting on a tree sticking up out of the ocean. Is this somehow a vision of Neighbors crossbreeding themselves into dryads in underwater domes? Inhumi breed and lay their eggs in the water, but can they survive in salt water? Maybe the domes are the only place proof against the Inhumi. A theme in the books is about growth through change, and often that change comes about through physical hybridization (even just the consuming of blood...the blood IS the life, you know), or imitation. I guess the process would be a sustained effort at close imitation actually triggers a change to become more like the model. The gods of the Whorl are capable of becoming divine over time. The Inhumi are capable of becoming human over time. Humans are capable of... I don't think the Neighbors have gone to another whorl circling another sun, as Horn thinks (or was it SilkHorn, or Rajan, or Incanto?). I think they've gone into the "spaces between" to use a Lovecraftian term. If they're someplace physical, they're in the trees or in the undersea domes. However I think the undersea domes have something to do with an alteration performed on someone by someone. Maybe the Neighbors performed it on themselves to make themselves less susceptible to the Inhumi. Perhaps they're in the trees as dryads now because of some modification performed on themselves in the domes. Or they were treelike and/or dryadic before and the modification was to allow themselves to survive away from the trees. Does anyone have any theories about what the greenhouses are for? -----Original Message----- From: urth-bounces at lists.urth.net [mailto:urth-bounces at lists.urth.net] On Behalf Of urth-request at lists.urth.net Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 11:40 PM To: urth at lists.urth.net Subject: Urth Digest, Vol 56, Issue 59 Send Urth mailing list submissions to urth at lists.urth.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.urth.net/listinfo.cgi/urth-urth.net or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to urth-request at lists.urth.net You can reach the person managing the list at urth-owner at lists.urth.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Urth digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Urth Digest, Vol 56, Issue 58 (Robin Dunn) 2. Rajan and Food (Brian Lovely) 3. Re: Rajan and Food (David Stockhoff) 4. Re: Rajan and Food (Matthew Groves) 5. Re: Rajan and Food (Jerry Friedman) 6. Re: Rajan and Food (Matthew Groves) > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:19:22 -0700 > From: Robin Dunn > Subject: Re: (urth) Urth Digest, Vol 56, Issue 58 > To: urth at lists.urth.net > Message-ID: > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > 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 ;) > > > > On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 2:09 PM, wrote: > Send Urth mailing list submissions to > ? ? ? ?urth at lists.urth.net > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > ? ? ? ?http://lists.urth.net/listinfo.cgi/urth-urth.net > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > ? ? ? ?urth-request at lists.urth.net > > You can reach the person managing the list at > ? ? ? ?urth-owner at lists.urth.net > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Urth digest..." > > > 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) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 06:58:32 -0400 > From: "Brian Lovely" > Subject: (urth) Rajan and Food > To: > Message-ID: <011001c9c7f0$465a20c0$d30e6240$@com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > 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 > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > /attachment.html> > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 07:04:11 -0500 > From: "James Wynn" > Subject: Re: (urth) Rajan and Food > To: "The Urth Mailing List" > Message-ID: > 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. > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:00:10 -0700 > From: Jordon Flato > Subject: Re: (urth) Rajan and Food > To: The Urth Mailing List > Message-ID: > ? ? ? ?<273409710904281100p29971f87s893b7b7aff2a2e5b at mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > I've wondered if the strange creature (not the leatherskin) that jumps on > the ship with Horn when he first sets out, which is described much like a > neighbor but faaaar scarier isn't maybe a nieghbor/inhumi remnant. ?That > is > what occurred to me. > > I can't get behind the neighbors as trees/inhumi as vines theory at all. > ?It > seems like such a stretch. ?There is no denying a connection of some sort > between trees and neighbors. ?I'm not certain it is a literal connection. > In New Sun, there are instances of Wolfe anthropomorphising trees and > such. > With human qualities. ?Why wouldn't the same be true on another planet, > but > echoing the essense of the 'original' inhabitants, the neighbors. > > And I think, in terms of the Neighbors infecting the inhumi on the Whorl, > it > was primarily to get a sense of what the souls of the humans were like. > When they saw the result, they made their deciscion that they could give > the > world to Humans, as they had confidence that the humans would have a > chance, > that the neighbors did not, to end the cycle of inhumi/host extinction, > due > to the possible quailities of the human soul. “I think, in Horn/Silk in > particular (keeping in mind that when the neighbors gave Blue to humans > through Horn, he was still Horn and not Silk at all), they saw something > in > humanity (in my opinion, not his being a neighbor doppleganger) that > convinced them that they might be able, at some point, to make a peace > with > the inhumi. ?They wouldn't have known that if they had not first infected > the Whorl with inhumi. > > What is much more controversial to me is that the neighbors say they also > spent time on the whorl, and befriended some there. ?What are the > implications of this” “Who did they befriend” “We have an inhumi character > in Long Sun. ?Is there a as yet unidentified Neighbor” > > On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 5:04 AM, James Wynn wrote: >> 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. >> _______________________________________________ ---