{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5965", "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": 5965, "subject": "On dream travelers", "messages": 45, "voices": 7, "first": "2011-02-10T19:59:55+00:00", "last": "2011-02-17T16:07:20+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "<00ad01cbc95d$1d451800$89d24a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2011-02-10T19:59:55+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Most of the following was written months ago in the context of another\nargument, but I decided it just wasn't worth the effort to pursue at the\ntime. I trot it out now because it has some relevance to current\ndiscussions.\n\nI am going to lay out some not-so-random textual conditions imposed on those\nwho dream/spirit travel.\n\nThe first of these is that spirit travel is exactly that; the spirit of the\nsubject makes the journey, not the flesh. This is explicitly stated by\nSilkhorn the first time he went to Urth with Jahlee and Rigoglio. This may\nseem just too obvious to mention, but maybe not. \"We are spirits here.\nWatch.\" (IGJ, 320) He then proceeded to shape a sword that looked like the\none Horn had on Green, out of nothing. Other weapons, garments, the gold he\ngave the _Samru_ captain on Urth, etc., were not real, none of it. These\nobjects could also be made to disappear, like the slug gun Hide had in\nMaliki's village on Green. The ability to conjure objects out of nothing was\nnot peculiar to Silkhorn; Hoof and Hide also did it.\n\nThe spirit travelers themselves are not real, not real in the sense that a\nstone or slug gun or table are real. Physical objects such as these cannot\nbe transported between the start and destination locations. One of the\nconsequences of spirit-only travel is that the travelers -- whether human or\ninhumi -- can eat food at the destination location , but it is a pointless\nexercise because they have no digestive system. This is *expressly* stated\nby Silkhorn, in a paragraph too long for me to copy out, on page 266 of\nRTTW.\n\nAnother consequence of spirit-only travel is that the travelers, because\nthey are not real, can and do violate other natural laws of physics. This is\ndemonstrated many times in the text, such as when Jahlee walked right\nthrough the locked door of her cell in the Matachin tower (ibid, 267), and\nwhen Silkhorn and Hoof walked right through the Curtain wall at the Citadel\nto get to the necropolis (ibid, 395).\n\nWe have the examples of Rigoglio and other humans who died at the\nspirit-travel destination, but their bodies back on Blue did not die, they\njust lost their animating spirit. We have no example of an inhumi who died\nat the spirit-travel destination, but Fava's body on Blue did.\n\nWhen Quetzal died on Horn's lander his body reverted to its natural inhumi\nshape, the reptilian horror that caused Moorgrass and Nettle to scream\n(EXODUS, 381). This demonstrates that Quetzal did not get to the LSW by way\nof spirit travel; his body was his real body, not a spirit-travel body.\n\nThere is no textual justification to suppose that the rules that govern\nspirit travel were any different for the Neighbors.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4D55A29E.4000201@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-11T20:57:02+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<00ad01cbc95d$1d451800$89d24a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "All good, Roy. Few additional things..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy C. Lackey-\nThe first of these is that spirit travel is exactly that; the spirit of the\nsubject makes the journey, not the flesh." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A person in soul travel lighter but he still has mass. He is subject to \ngravity. He also bleeds and receives harm. When the Rajan is climbing \nthe rock-face in RttW as inhumi are attacking he says:\n\n\"Here I am tempted to write that the cliff-top appeared suddenly above \nme, for that was how it seemed to me. The truth, of course, was \nconsiderably more prosaic--I [...] had climbed altogether about three \ntimes the height of the tower, and so so had reached it. I do not \nbelieve I could have done it in the body that lay sprawled on the floor \nof Judge Hamer's sellaria. Fortunately, I did not have to; the weight I \nlifted--clawing, sometimes, with bleeding fingers at the red \nrock-face--although it felt real, was substantially less than my true \nweight.\"\nRttW, Chapter 9, Before My Trial\n\n\nSecondly a person in soul travel is--from the perspective of other \nhumans--entirely human. Even an experience as intimate sex, his true \nnature would not be detectable. Jahlee seduces men guards on Urth. When \nshe begins to try to seduce Hide, the Rajan says:\n\n\"Honesty compels me to tell you that Jahlee is not an inhuma at present. \nShe is a human being here, exactly as we are, and I believe for the same \nreason. But if we return to our real whorl, and I believe that we will, \nshe will be again what she was before we came. \"\nIGJ page 319" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy C. Lackey-\nWhen Quetzal died on Horn's lander his body reverted to its natural inhumi\nshape, the reptilian horror that caused Moorgrass and Nettle to scream\n(EXODUS, 381)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"Returns to it's natural state\" only from the perspective of humans. In \nfact, they never really change. Inhumi wear make-up and costumes. The \nrest of the ruse seems to be performed by something of a \"glamour\" such \nas Gideon Chase used in \"An Evil Guest\". Krait presents this ability as \nnothing more than a common, low-rent illusion. But his ability to come \noff as human with only a shirt and pants, or the ability to hide even \nhis presence to selected people in attendance during a conversation with \nthe resurrected HORN suggests it is a more advanced ability than \nthat--although founded on similar principles. The inhumi cause others to \nsee them as they want to be seen as Krait explains:\n\n\"Krait nodded. \"You said you thought he was an old man, and you were \nangry because he had tricked you. You told me some trooper shot and \nkilled him.\" I nodded.\n \"Did you see his corpse?\" [...] Did he look like an old man \nthen?\" [...] He didn't look like an old man anymore, did he? He couldn't \nhave.\"\n I shook my head.\n \"What did he look like?\"\n \"He looked like you.\"\n When Krait said nothing, only transfixing me with his hypnotic \nstare, I added, \"He powdered his face, and painted it. Like a woman. We \nfound the powder and rouge in a pocket of his robe. So would I if I had \nthose things, just as I wear this shirt and these pants, which I took \nfrom you. The eyes see what the mind expects, Horn. Babbie there, lying \nstill with a green twig in his mouth, could make you think he was a \nbush, if you were expecting to see a bush.\"\n\"The young siren you call Seawrack doesn't see me the way you do.[...] \nKnowing that, is it so hard for you to believe that at times she doesn't \nhear me /at all/? [...]If she's listening, she hears you alone, Father. \nOnly the murmur of your voice. She probably thinks you're talking to \nyourself, or to your hus.\"\n~ OBW, Chapter 10, Seawrack's Ring\n\nu+16b9" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 2/10/2011 1:59 PM, Roy C. Lackey wrote:\nMost of the following was written months ago in the context of another\nargument, but I decided it just wasn't worth the effort to pursue at the\ntime. I trot it out now because it has some relevance to current\ndiscussions.\n\nI am going to lay out some not-so-random textual conditions imposed on those\nwho dream/spirit travel.\n\nThe first of these is that spirit travel is exactly that; the spirit of the\nsubject makes the journey, not the flesh. This is explicitly stated by\nSilkhorn the first time he went to Urth with Jahlee and Rigoglio. This may\nseem just too obvious to mention, but maybe not. \"We are spirits here.\nWatch.\" (IGJ, 320) He then proceeded to shape a sword that looked like the\none Horn had on Green, out of nothing. Other weapons, garments, the gold he\ngave the _Samru_ captain on Urth, etc., were not real, none of it. These\nobjects could also be made to disappear, like the slug gun Hide had in\nMaliki's village on Green. The ability to conjure objects out of nothing was\nnot peculiar to Silkhorn; Hoof and Hide also did it.\n\nThe spirit travelers themselves are not real, not real in the sense that a\nstone or slug gun or table are real. Physical objects such as these cannot\nbe transported between the start and destination locations. One of the\nconsequences of spirit-only travel is that the travelers -- whether human or\ninhumi -- can eat food at the destination location , but it is a pointless\nexercise because they have no digestive system. This is *expressly* stated\nby Silkhorn, in a paragraph too long for me to copy out, on page 266 of\nRTTW.\n\nAnother consequence of spirit-only travel is that the travelers, because\nthey are not real, can and do violate other natural laws of physics. This is\ndemonstrated many times in the text, such as when Jahlee walked right\nthrough the locked door of her cell in the Matachin tower (ibid, 267), and\nwhen Silkhorn and Hoof walked right through the Curtain wall at the Citadel\nto get to the necropolis (ibid, 395).\n\nWe have the examples of Rigoglio and other humans who died at the\nspirit-travel destination, but their bodies back on Blue did not die, they\njust lost their animating spirit. We have no example of an inhumi who died\nat the spirit-travel destination, but Fava's body on Blue did.\n\nWhen Quetzal died on Horn's lander his body reverted to its natural inhumi\nshape, the reptilian horror that caused Moorgrass and Nettle to scream\n(EXODUS, 381). This demonstrates that Quetzal did not get to the LSW by way\nof spirit travel; his body was his real body, not a spirit-travel body.\n\nThere is no textual justification to suppose that the rules that govern\nspirit travel were any different for the Neighbors.\n\n-Roy\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4D55AB95.2080001@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-11T21:35:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<4D55A29E.4000201@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I made a typographical error in the OBW quote...I'll repost the whole \nmessage for clarity.\n----------------------------\nAll good, Roy. Few additional things..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy C. Lackey-\nThe first of these is that spirit travel is exactly that; the spirit of the\nsubject makes the journey, not the flesh." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A person in soul travel lighter but he still has mass. He is subject to \ngravity. He also bleeds and receives harm. When the Rajan is climbing \nthe rock-face in RttW as inhumi are attacking he says:\n\n\"Here I am tempted to write that the cliff-top appeared suddenly above \nme, for that was how it seemed to me. The truth, of course, was \nconsiderably more prosaic--I [...] had climbed altogether about three \ntimes the height of the tower, and so so had reached it. I do not \nbelieve I could have done it in the body that lay sprawled on the floor \nof Judge Hamer's sellaria. Fortunately, I did not have to; the weight I \nlifted--clawing, sometimes, with bleeding fingers at the red \nrock-face--although it felt real, was substantially less than my true \nweight.\"\nRttW, Chapter 9, Before My Trial\n\n\nSecondly a person in soul travel is--from the perspective of other \nhumans--entirely human. Even an experience as intimate sex, his true \nnature would not be detectable. Jahlee seduces men guards on Urth. When \nshe begins to try to seduce Hide, the Rajan says:\n\n\"Honesty compels me to tell you that Jahlee is not an inhuma at present. \nShe is a human being here, exactly as we are, and I believe for the same \nreason. But if we return to our real whorl, and I believe that we will, \nshe will be again what she was before we came. \"\nIGJ page 319" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy C. Lackey-\nWhen Quetzal died on Horn's lander his body reverted to its natural inhumi\nshape, the reptilian horror that caused Moorgrass and Nettle to scream\n(EXODUS, 381)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"Returns to it's natural state\" only from the perspective of humans. In \nfact, they never really change. Inhumi wear make-up and costumes. The \nrest of the ruse seems to be performed by something of a \"glamour\" such \nas Gideon Chase used in \"An Evil Guest\". Krait presents this ability as \nnothing more than a common, low-rent illusion. But his ability to come \noff as human with only a shirt and pants, or the ability to hide even \nhis presence to selected people in attendance during a conversation with \nthe resurrected HORN suggests it is a more advanced ability than \nthat--although founded on similar principles. The inhumi cause others to \nsee them as they want to be seen as Krait explains:\n\n\"Krait nodded. \"You said you thought he was an old man, and you were \nangry because he had tricked you. You told me some trooper shot and \nkilled him.\" I nodded.\n \"Did you see his corpse?\" [...] Did he look like an old man \nthen?\" [...] He didn't look like an old man anymore, did he? He couldn't \nhave.\"\n I shook my head.\n \"What did he look like?\"\n \"He looked like you.\"\n When Krait said nothing, only transfixing me with his hypnotic \nstare, I added, \"He powdered his face, and painted it. Like a woman. We \nfound the powder and rouge in a pocket of his robe.\n \"So would I if I had those things, just as I wear this shirt and \nthese pants, which I took from you. The eyes see what the mind expects, \nHorn. Babbie there, lying still with a green twig in his mouth, could \nmake you think he was a bush, if you were expecting to see a bush.The \nyoung siren you call Seawrack doesn't see me the way you do.[...] \nKnowing that, is it so hard for you to believe that at times she doesn't \nhear me /at all/? [...]If she's listening, she hears you alone, Father. \nOnly the murmur of your voice. She probably thinks you're talking to \nyourself, or to your hus.\"\n~ OBW, Chapter 10, Seawrack's Ring\n\nu+16b9" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 2/10/2011 1:59 PM, Roy C. Lackey wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Most of the following was written months ago in the context of another\nargument, but I decided it just wasn't worth the effort to pursue at the\ntime. I trot it out now because it has some relevance to current\ndiscussions.\n\nI am going to lay out some not-so-random textual conditions imposed on those\nwho dream/spirit travel.\n\nThe first of these is that spirit travel is exactly that; the spirit of the\nsubject makes the journey, not the flesh. This is explicitly stated by\nSilkhorn the first time he went to Urth with Jahlee and Rigoglio. This may\nseem just too obvious to mention, but maybe not. \"We are spirits here.\nWatch.\" (IGJ, 320) He then proceeded to shape a sword that looked like the\none Horn had on Green, out of nothing. Other weapons, garments, the gold he\ngave the _Samru_ captain on Urth, etc., were not real, none of it. These\nobjects could also be made to disappear, like the slug gun Hide had in\nMaliki's village on Green. The ability to conjure objects out of nothing was\nnot peculiar to Silkhorn; Hoof and Hide also did it.\n\nThe spirit travelers themselves are not real, not real in the sense that a\nstone or slug gun or table are real. Physical objects such as these cannot\nbe transported between the start and destination locations. One of the\nconsequences of spirit-only travel is that the travelers -- whether human or\ninhumi -- can eat food at the destination location , but it is a pointless\nexercise because they have no digestive system. This is *expressly* stated\nby Silkhorn, in a paragraph too long for me to copy out, on page 266 of\nRTTW.\n\nAnother consequence of spirit-only travel is that the travelers, because\nthey are not real, can and do violate other natural laws of physics. This is\ndemonstrated many times in the text, such as when Jahlee walked right\nthrough the locked door of her cell in the Matachin tower (ibid, 267), and\nwhen Silkhorn and Hoof walked right through the Curtain wall at the Citadel\nto get to the necropolis (ibid, 395).\n\nWe have the examples of Rigoglio and other humans who died at the\nspirit-travel destination, but their bodies back on Blue did not die, they\njust lost their animating spirit. We have no example of an inhumi who died\nat the spirit-travel destination, but Fava's body on Blue did.\n\nWhen Quetzal died on Horn's lander his body reverted to its natural inhumi\nshape, the reptilian horror that caused Moorgrass and Nettle to scream\n(EXODUS, 381). This demonstrates that Quetzal did not get to the LSW by way\nof spirit travel; his body was his real body, not a spirit-travel body.\n\nThere is no textual justification to suppose that the rules that govern\nspirit travel were any different for the Neighbors.\n\n-Roy\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<004901cbca5d$c5f18460$e8d14a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2011-02-12T02:37:15+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<4D55AB95.2080001@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "James Wynn wrote:\nAll good, Roy. Few additional things..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Roy C. Lackey-\nThe first of these is that spirit travel is exactly that; the spirit of\nthe\nsubject makes the journey, not the flesh." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "A person in soul travel lighter but he still has mass. He is subject to\ngravity. He also bleeds and receives harm. When the Rajan is climbing\nthe rock-face in RttW as inhumi are attacking he says:\n\n\"Here I am tempted to write that the cliff-top appeared suddenly above\nme, for that was how it seemed to me. The truth, of course, was\nconsiderably more prosaic--I [...] had climbed altogether about three\ntimes the height of the tower, and so so had reached it. I do not\nbelieve I could have done it in the body that lay sprawled on the floor\nof Judge Hamer's sellaria. Fortunately, I did not have to; the weight I\nlifted--clawing, sometimes, with bleeding fingers at the red\nrock-face--although it felt real, was substantially less than my true\nweight.\"\nRttW, Chapter 9, Before My Trial" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, the bodies of dream travelers have weight and seem to otherwise behave\nas if they were real, but they are not real. Remember the part about no\ndigestive tracts. Rigoglio's spirit-travel body received a mortal wound on\nUrth, but there was not a mark on his real body back on Blue. I dare say an\nautopsy of Rigoglio's spirit body would have revealed anomalies as glaring\nas the lack of a digestive tract, to say the least, if that body even\ncontinued to exist after Silkhorn left." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Secondly a person in soul travel is--from the perspective of other\nhumans--entirely human. Even an experience as intimate sex, his true\nnature would not be detectable. Jahlee seduces men guards on Urth. When\nshe begins to try to seduce Hide, the Rajan says:\n\n\"Honesty compels me to tell you that Jahlee is not an inhuma at present.\nShe is a human being here, exactly as we are, and I believe for the same\nreason. But if we return to our real whorl, and I believe that we will,\nshe will be again what she was before we came. \"\nIGJ page 319" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not even from the perspective of other people are spirit travelers entirely\nhuman; humans can't walk through locked metal doors like Jahlee did in the\nMatachin tower, as I cited, and both Merryn and Severian saw her do it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Roy C. Lackey-\nWhen Quetzal died on Horn's lander his body reverted to its natural\ninhumi\nshape, the reptilian horror that caused Moorgrass and Nettle to scream\n(EXODUS, 381)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"Returns to it's natural state\" only from the perspective of humans. In\nfact, they never really change. Inhumi wear make-up and costumes. The\nrest of the ruse seems to be performed by something of a \"glamour\" such\nas Gideon Chase used in \"An Evil Guest\". Krait presents this ability as\nnothing more than a common, low-rent illusion. But his ability to come\noff as human with only a shirt and pants, or the ability to hide even\nhis presence to selected people in attendance during a conversation with\nthe resurrected HORN suggests it is a more advanced ability than\nthat--although founded on similar principles. The inhumi cause others to\nsee them as they want to be seen as Krait explains:\n\n\"Krait nodded. \"You said you thought he was an old man, and you were\nangry because he had tricked you. You told me some trooper shot and\nkilled him.\" I nodded.\n \"Did you see his corpse?\" [...] Did he look like an old man\nthen?\" [...] He didn't look like an old man anymore, did he? He couldn't\nhave.\"\n I shook my head.\n \"What did he look like?\"\n \"He looked like you.\"\n When Krait said nothing, only transfixing me with his hypnotic\nstare, I added, \"He powdered his face, and painted it. Like a woman. We\nfound the powder and rouge in a pocket of his robe.\n \"So would I if I had those things, just as I wear this shirt and\nthese pants, which I took from you. The eyes see what the mind expects,\nHorn. Babbie there, lying still with a green twig in his mouth, could\nmake you think he was a bush, if you were expecting to see a bush.The\nyoung siren you call Seawrack doesn't see me the way you do.[...]\nKnowing that, is it so hard for you to believe that at times she doesn't\nhear me /at all/? [...]If she's listening, she hears you alone, Father.\nOnly the murmur of your voice. She probably thinks you're talking to\nyourself, or to your hus.\"\n~ OBW, Chapter 10, Seawrack's Ring\n\nu+16b9" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "What has any of that to do with what I wrote? I wrote:\nWhen Quetzal died on Horn's lander his body reverted to its natural inhumi\nshape, the reptilian horror that caused Moorgrass and Nettle to scream\n(EXODUS, 381). This demonstrates that Quetzal did not get to the LSW by way\nof spirit travel; his body was his real body, not a spirit-travel body.<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That stands. Quetzal was an inhumu who tried to pass for human. That is why\nhe drank only beef tea in the presence of humans and used makeup. Like Krait\nand Jahlee and Fava, he could fly (CALDE, chap. 1, 25). Inhumi during spirit\ntravel could no more fly than Silkhorn or Hide or Fava (IGJ, 197). Inhumi\nduring spirit travel do not have fangs. Quetzal had fangs and used them on\nTeasel.\n\nIn their natural state, inhumi are described as reptilian and as looking\nsomething like bats when they take wing, which is exactly what Krait hastily\ndid when he was charged by Babbie soon after getting Horn out of the pit\n(OBW, 214). As Krait was dying on Green and could no longer keep up his\nhuman guise, his face looked like that of a \"serpent\" (IGJ, 82). When both\nQuetzal and Krait were wounded, they would let no one look at or treat their\nwounds because their true reptilian bodies could not be hidden.\n\nBy no stretch was Quetzal's body that of a spirit traveler. Had it been, he\nwould have had no need of the makeup. He would have been as human as Juganu\nor Jahlee.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4D55F6A0.2030704@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-12T02:55:28+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<004901cbca5d$c5f18460$e8d14a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy-\nYes, the bodies of dream travelers have weight and seem to otherwise behave\nas if they were real, but they are not real. Remember the part about no\ndigestive tracts. Rigoglio's spirit-travel body received a mortal wound on\nUrth, but there was not a mark on his real body back on Blue. I dare say an\nautopsy of Rigoglio's spirit body would have revealed anomalies as glaring\nas the lack of a digestive tract, to say the least, if that body even\ncontinued to exist after Silkhorn left." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Let's say rather that they are different. Not real implies that they are \nmerely virtual. They don't need to eat but they DO bleed. The Rajan is \nattacked by inhumi after his blood and he remarked that his hands were \ncut from his climb. If an astral body can be harmed, it implies that \nthey have something in them that can be harmed. They have flesh that can \nbe damaged by objects." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy-\nNot even from the perspective of other people are spirit travelers entirely\nhuman; humans can't walk through locked metal doors like Jahlee did in the\nMatachin tower, as I cited, and both Merryn and Severian saw her do it." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That is irrelevant. Astral bodies have powers that corporal bodies do \nnot, that is true. However, astral bodies can be touched. There is no \nindication that people touching them sensed something wrong." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy-\nWhat has any of that to do with what I wrote? I wrote\nWhen Quetzal died on Horn's lander his body reverted to its natural inhumi\nshape, the reptilian horror that caused Moorgrass and Nettle to scream\n(EXODUS, 381). This demonstrates that Quetzal did not get to the LSW by way\nof spirit travel; his body was his real body, not a spirit-travel body.\n[...]\nBy no stretch was Quetzal's body that of a spirit traveler. Had it been, he\nwould have had no need of the makeup. He would have been as human as Juganu\nor Jahlee." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Don't get defensive. I certainly never claimed that Quetzal was a spirit \ntraveler. Did you think I did? I was only clarifying that \"reverted\" was \nan /apparent/ transformation.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4D55F732.5090907@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-12T02:57:54+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<4D55F6A0.2030704@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "James Wynn-\nThat is irrelevant. Astral bodies have powers that corporal bodies do \nnot, that is true. However, astral bodies can be touched. There is no \nindication that people touching them sensed something wrong." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Oh. And, by the same token, the swords and guns the astral travels \nconjure are entirely lethal.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<001901cbca79$d7a41760$c5cd4a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2011-02-12T05:58:11+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<4D55F6A0.2030704@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "James Wynn quoted and wrote:\nRoy-\nYes, the bodies of dream travelers have weight and seem to otherwise\nbehave\nas if they were real, but they are not real. Remember the part about no\ndigestive tracts. Rigoglio's spirit-travel body received a mortal wound\non\nUrth, but there was not a mark on his real body back on Blue. I dare say\nan\nautopsy of Rigoglio's spirit body would have revealed anomalies as\nglaring\nas the lack of a digestive tract, to say the least, if that body even\ncontinued to exist after Silkhorn left." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Let's say rather that they are different. Not real implies that they are\nmerely virtual. They don't need to eat but they DO bleed. The Rajan is\nattacked by inhumi after his blood and he remarked that his hands were\ncut from his climb. If an astral body can be harmed, it implies that\nthey have something in them that can be harmed. They have flesh that can\nbe damaged by objects." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, they can be harmed, but let's be real. No digestive tract means, among\nother things, that there is no ability to produce blood and its nutrients.\nWithout blood and a circulatory system to move it, the body dies, brain and\nall. Spirit-travel bodies are not real in the sense that they are not the\nsame as normal human bodies -- human bodies do not work that way. Even if\nyou can grant some for-the-sake-of-the-story magical dispensation of\nbiological realities, it could not go on for very long. That spirit-travel\nbody would soon die without new fuel to power it.\n\nThe stated reason that the inhumi are just as real as humans during spirit\ntravel is that their spirit bodies are manifestations of how they perceive\nthemselves to be in their hearts or souls or whatever, and even then that\nonly holds true for inhumi who have previously fed on human blood. A \"wild\"\ninhumi from the jungles of Green would not appear to be human if caught up\nin spirit travel; it wouldn't even understand the concept. The inhumi soul\nor spirit must come by way of human blood, in some mystical religious sense,\nmuch as Christians partake of the essence of Christ in Catholic ritual.\n(*Please* let this not start another tiresome religious debate! I think you\nknow what I mean.)\n\nIn other words, the bodies of spirit travelers have much more to do with the\nspirit than the flesh; the flesh is a manifestation of the spirit, and harm\ndone to the flesh of a spirit traveler is on the spiritual level. That is\nwhat happened to Rigoglio." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Roy-\nNot even from the perspective of other people are spirit travelers\nentirely\nhuman; humans can't walk through locked metal doors like Jahlee did in\nthe\nMatachin tower, as I cited, and both Merryn and Severian saw her do it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That is irrelevant. Astral bodies have powers that corporal bodies do\nnot, that is true. However, astral bodies can be touched. There is no\nindication that people touching them sensed something wrong." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't know for sure. During one of Hoof's astral warps to Urth, he started\nmaking little things out of nothing. That violates natural law, in and of\nitself, but then he went on to *make* Hide: \"Then I looked around to see if\nanybody was watching, and I made Hide.\" (RTTW, 363). Real humans can't make\npeople. Because Hoof had the attention span of a gnat, he wasn't able to\nhold his brother there for long, but he did it, and Hide hadn't even been on\nSilkhorn's boat when they went to sleep. Afterward, Hide said he had no\nknowledge of any such thing having happened to him (ibid). Was Hide really\nthere, or was he there only in spirit because his brother *willed* him to be\nthere?\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4D562D3A.5010303@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-12T06:48:26+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<001901cbca79$d7a41760$c5cd4a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy-\nYes, they can be harmed, but let's be real. No digestive tract means, among\nother things, that there is no ability to produce blood and its nutrients.\nWithout blood and a circulatory system to move it, the body dies, brain and\nall. Spirit-travel bodies are not real in the sense that they are not the\nsame as normal human bodies -- human bodies do not work that way." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No. They are not merely corporeal bodies. They are a lighter. They don't \nneed food. But the DO have blood! The Rajan bleeds. The inhumi attack \nhim for his blood. They die from physical harm." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Even if\nyou can grant some for-the-sake-of-the-story magical dispensation of\nbiological realities, it could not go on for very long. That spirit-travel\nbody would soon die without new fuel to power it." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I will not grant that assumption. I have my own opinion about what \nhappens to an astral body if its corporeal body dies. I realize it is \nstill an open debate, but even if you don't believe it lives on, you \ncan hardly claim that the text affirms that it dies. We know nothing \nabout what \"powers\" an astral body. To do all it does and still remain \nsolid would require far more energy than a single physical body could \nprovide." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The stated reason that the inhumi are just as real as humans during spirit\ntravel is that their spirit bodies are manifestations of how they perceive\nthemselves to be in their hearts or souls or whatever," }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No. I don't think, so. Perhaps you are remembering something I am not.\nAs I recall the Rajan says only that the inhumi are humans in astral \ntravel for \"the same reason\" that human's are human in astral travel. I \nunderstood this to be that they are human in astral travel because they \nhave human souls just as humans do. But they are not _pure spirit_. They \nhave mass and they are mortal. Those are BODIES that they have in astral \ntravel. Those bodies are different from corporeal bodies, but they are \nin fact physical entities." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " and even then that\nonly holds true for inhumi who have previously fed on human blood. A \"wild\"\ninhumi from the jungles of Green would not appear to be human if caught up\nin spirit travel; it wouldn't even understand the concept. The inhumi soul\nor spirit must come by way of human blood, in some mystical religious sense,\nmuch as Christians partake of the essence of Christ in Catholic ritual.\n(*Please* let this not start another tiresome religious debate! I think you\nknow what I mean.)\n\nIn other words, the bodies of spirit travelers have much more to do with the\nspirit than the flesh; the flesh is a manifestation of the spirit, and harm\ndone to the flesh of a spirit traveler is on the spiritual level. That is\nwhat happened to Rigoglio." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I disagree. It is not possible that physical weapons would harm a pure \nspirit. The spirits in astral travel assume NEW bodies during that \nperiod that operate according alternate unexplained physical laws." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I don't know for sure. During one of Hoof's astral warps to Urth, he started\nmaking little things out of nothing. That violates natural law, in and of\nitself, but then he went on to *make* Hide: \"Then I looked around to see if\nanybody was watching, and I made Hide.\" (RTTW, 363). Real humans can't make\npeople. Because Hoof had the attention span of a gnat, he wasn't able to\nhold his brother there for long, but he did it, and Hide hadn't even been on\nSilkhorn's boat when they went to sleep. Afterward, Hide said he had no\nknowledge of any such thing having happened to him (ibid). Was Hide really\nthere, or was he there only in spirit because his brother *willed* him to be\nthere?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "There are certain literary experiments with astral bodies that I would \nhave liked to have seen performed. What if a wild inhumi fed on an \nastral traveller? What if one had fed on the generated Hide? The ability \nto generate weapons and even (potentially I suppose) people while in \nastral travel reminds me a bit of the CS Lewis novel \"The Great Divorce\" \nin which those in Hell could at will create houses, fire, and food. \nHowever, that case, the houses provided no shelter. The fire no heat. \nAnd the food no satisfaction. The weapons created by the Short Sun \nastral travelers are quite potent. Possibly more potent than the normal \nkind.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4D562E88.9050705@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-12T06:54:00+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<4D562D3A.5010303@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "James-\nNo. They are not merely corporeal bodies. They are a lighter. They \ndon't need food. But the DO have blood! The Rajan bleeds. The inhumi \nattack him for his blood. They die from physical harm." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And they have sexual desire." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-12T08:14:18+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<4D562E88.9050705@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Roy-\nNot even from the perspective of other people are spirit travelers entirely\nhuman; humans can't walk through locked metal doors like Jahlee did in the\nMatachin tower, as I cited, and both Merryn and Severian saw her do it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "James Wynn: That is irrelevant. Astral bodies have powers that corporal bodies do \nnot, that is true. However, astral bodies can be touched. There is no \nindication that people touching them sensed something wrong." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is an interesting debate. It reminds me of the debate last year with Tony Ellis\non whether Yesod is to be found forward or backward in time relative to Briah. The\nevidence presented by both sides would make the answer appear to be \"both\".\n \nThat this is incomprehensible is a desired outcome by WOlfe. How else can he describe\nsomething incomprehensible to the human mind except via such paradoxes? I think it \nmust be the same with dream travelers. They are corporeal but somehow also incorporeal\nand James and Roy are each focusing on one side of the coin (Roy to the exclusion that\nthere is another side to the coin, if I understand correctly).\n \nWe are shown the reverse of dream travel. That is, Horn encounters Neighbors who are\ndream travelling. He is able to shake one's hand, notice stiff bristly arm hair....\nyet somehow he is unable to count their limbs or even heads. Then the perception is reversed\nwhen the troupe dream travels to Urth. Combining the experiences of being on both sides\nof this process is all we have to understand it. But it is incomprehensible so we won't\nbe able to fully understand it, just like inter-universal travel.\n \nI really think David Stockhoff's idea of Faerie is relevant (not restricting it to a Celtic\nview; more of a combined multi-cultural view of similar phenomena). Can it be that demons and\nangels (and/or mythological gods) exist in a sort of Faerie world or parallel plane to ours?\nIn legend, somehow they are able to have sex with humans, perhaps even bleed...yet they are\nnot fully, physically mortal either. Hard to imagine an angel wrestling with biblical Jacob\nor demon having sex with a witch or Zeus raping Europa and also having a digestive system and \ngoing off to poop in the woods, eh?\n \nPerhaps the idea of the Secret House is relevant here. A Secret Whorl? Could the Neighbor Whorl\nbe somehow in close parallel to Blue, almost built within it? Or perhaps a better way to describe\nit would be that Blue and the Neighbor Whorl are adjacent branches on the timeline (Brook Madregot?).\nSo close that it is possible for certain elements of both whorls/worlds to co-mingle in certain\nways without being fully, physically present to each other.\n \nPerhaps this is the key to Marc's ideas about Urth and Green. Not \"the same\" but so close on time\nstrands that...well....something like that. If WOlfe can't describe the indescribable, I certainly\ncan't. \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<0D94B324FF4F41C68FD0BAE1FA43E319@jill>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerryq at indigo.ie" }, "date": "2011-02-12T15:11:05+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<001901cbca79$d7a41760$c5cd4a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I don't know for sure. During one of Hoof's astral warps to Urth, he \nstarted\nmaking little things out of nothing. That violates natural law, in and of\nitself, but then he went on to *make* Hide: \"Then I looked around to see \nif\nanybody was watching, and I made Hide.\" (RTTW, 363). Real humans can't \nmake\npeople. Because Hoof had the attention span of a gnat, he wasn't able to\nhold his brother there for long, but he did it, and Hide hadn't even been \non\nSilkhorn's boat when they went to sleep. Afterward, Hide said he had no\nknowledge of any such thing having happened to him (ibid). Was Hide really\nthere, or was he there only in spirit because his brother *willed* him to \nbe\nthere?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Maybe it was the dream-travel tech equivalent of an aquastor?\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerryq at indigo.ie" }, "date": "2011-02-12T15:28:01+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Lee Berman\" \nThat this is incomprehensible is a desired outcome by WOlfe. How else can \nhe describe\nsomething incomprehensible to the human mind except via such paradoxes?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't think the position of Yesod on generalised spacetime maps is \nintended to be inexplicable or paradoxical.\n\nA lot of these arguments you make for inexplicability and paradox, in my \nview, Lee, trace back to your view of religion. Fundamentally, you think \nreligious belief is stupid. Faced with the fact of a clearly intelligent \nauthor displaying religious belief, you find your beliefs contradictory. \nUnwilling to modify them, you decide that an intelligent believer must be \nengaged in some kind of self-hypnosis, choosing to believe contradictory \nthings at once. You therefore look for paradoxes and contradictions in \nWolfe's books, and find many that are not there." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think it\nmust be the same with dream travelers. They are corporeal but somehow also \nincorporeal\nand James and Roy are each focusing on one side of the coin (Roy to the \nexclusion that\nthere is another side to the coin, if I understand correctly)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think this is more a case of Wolfe being unable rather than unwilling to \ngive a detailed physical model of dream travel." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "We are shown the reverse of dream travel. That is, Horn encounters \nNeighbors who are\ndream travelling. He is able to shake one's hand, notice stiff bristly arm \nhair....\nyet somehow he is unable to count their limbs or even heads." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm not sure he quite says that. Note that there is no evidence that people \non Urth cannot count the limbs or heads of Silk and his dream-travelling \ncompanions.\n\nI think there's also a bit of a question mark over whether what the \nNeighbours do is the same thing as what Silkhorn can do with the aid of an \ninhuma. It is related in some way, certainly. When I re-read BotSS I will \ntry to look closely at these points.\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-13T02:03:10+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Gerry Quinn: A lot of these arguments you make for inexplicability and paradox, in my \nview, Lee, trace back to your view of religion. Fundamentally, you think \nreligious belief is stupid. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nNo, I don't. \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<00ab01cbcb5a$61681f60$5acf4a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2011-02-13T08:45:27+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<4D562D3A.5010303@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "James Wynn quoted and wrote:\nRoy-\nYes, they can be harmed, but let's be real. No digestive tract means,\namong\nother things, that there is no ability to produce blood and its\nnutrients.\nWithout blood and a circulatory system to move it, the body dies, brain\nand\nall. Spirit-travel bodies are not real in the sense that they are not\nthe\nsame as normal human bodies -- human bodies do not work that way." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "No. They are not merely corporeal bodies. They are a lighter. They don't\nneed food. But the DO have blood! The Rajan bleeds. The inhumi attack\nhim for his blood. They die from physical harm." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, the spirit body dies -- it happened to Rigoglio and some mercenaries.\nBut back in the real world, on Blue, only their spirits had died. As I\ncited, Silkhorn said during dream travel, \"We are spirits here.\" The bodies\nof spirit travelers are spiritual.\n\nSeverian could tell that Silkhorn wasn't afraid to be locked in a cell in\nthe Tower, and wondered why. Silkhorn responded: \"Because I'm not really\nhere.\" (RTTW, 263)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Even if\nyou can grant some for-the-sake-of-the-story magical dispensation of\nbiological realities, it could not go on for very long. That\nspirit-travel\nbody would soon die without new fuel to power it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I will not grant that assumption. I have my own opinion about what\nhappens to an astral body if its corporeal body dies." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You mean the sleeping body of the dreamer? That's a different situation from\nwhat I said. I am saying that the astral body could not live for long\nwithout being powered by something. The mercenaries Silkhorn took to Green\nto exterminate the inhumi in the City of the Inhumi ate rations they had\ncarried with them, yet we are told that dream travelers have no digestive\ntracts. Obviously eating those rations could not have provided any\nsustenance. Maybe it constituted comfort food." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I realize it is\nstill an open debate, but even if you don't believe it lives on, you\ncan hardly claim that the text affirms that it dies." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You must be thinking of Fava, since she is the only example in this\ncategory. She seems to have gone on living in or on some sort of spiritual\nplain, because she was able to maintain contact with Mora through Mora's\ndreams and seemed to be able to possess and speak through Vadsig." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "We know nothing\nabout what \"powers\" an astral body. To do all it does and still remain\nsolid would require far more energy than a single physical body could\nprovide." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't know what that last sentence is supposed to mean, but solid bodies\ncannot walk through the Curtain wall as Silkhorn and Hoof did. Ghosts and\nspirits are reputed to be able to do that sort of thing." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "The stated reason that the inhumi are just as real as humans during\nspirit\ntravel is that their spirit bodies are manifestations of how they\nperceive\nthemselves to be in their hearts or souls or whatever," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "No. I don't think, so. Perhaps you are remembering something I am not." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I guess so. Hoof wrote of Juganu, after they returned from a brief astral\nwarp to Urth: \"He said it was what he was in his heart, that the blond man\non the deck of the big boat was the real Juganu, the man he was in dreams.\"\n(RTTW, 349)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As I recall the Rajan says only that the inhumi are humans in astral\ntravel for \"the same reason\" that human's are human in astral travel. I\nunderstood this to be that they are human in astral travel because they\nhave human souls just as humans do. But they are not _pure spirit_. They\nhave mass and they are mortal. Those are BODIES that they have in astral\ntravel. Those bodies are different from corporeal bodies, but they are\nin fact physical entities." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I still maintain that natural laws cannot be ignored, at least not by\nhumans. Anyway, after Silkhorn and Fava warped to Green, then from Green to\nthe Duko's palace in Soldo and back to Green, Silkhorn wondered\nparenthetically: \"(Why did not the Duko accompany us? And was he shot, and\nwhat was the result of that shot, a visionary slug fired by an unreal\ntrooper from an equally chimerical slug gun.)\" (IGJ, 221) Mind the\nadjectives.\n\nWhen Captain Sfido remained loyal to the Duko during that warp to Green, his\nneedler was taken from him and used in the fight against the inhumi, yet\nwhen the group finally returned to Blue the needler was back with him (IGJ,\n230). What happened to the needler taken from him on Green? When the mercs\ngot back to Blue after fighting all those inhumi in the City on Green, were\nthey missing any of the slugs they had fired on Green? I don't think so." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": " and even then that\nonly holds true for inhumi who have previously fed on human blood. A\n\"wild\"\ninhumi from the jungles of Green would not appear to be human if caught\nup\nin spirit travel; it wouldn't even understand the concept. The inhumi\nsoul\nor spirit must come by way of human blood, in some mystical religious\nsense,\nmuch as Christians partake of the essence of Christ in Catholic ritual.\n(*Please* let this not start another tiresome religious debate! I think\nyou\nknow what I mean.)\n\nIn other words, the bodies of spirit travelers have much more to do with\nthe\nspirit than the flesh; the flesh is a manifestation of the spirit, and\nharm\ndone to the flesh of a spirit traveler is on the spiritual level. That\nis\nwhat happened to Rigoglio." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I disagree. It is not possible that physical weapons would harm a pure\nspirit. The spirits in astral travel assume NEW bodies during that\nperiod that operate according alternate unexplained physical laws." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Rigoglio's spirit was sure as hell harmed. The spirit body is linked to the\nnatural body; why else were Rigoglio's hands still tied when he got to Urth?\nSome of the mercenaries from Soldo died and were buried on Green but were\nalive and mindless on Blue.\n\nWhen Jahlee's astral self got stranded on Green, Silkhorn was able to go\nback and get her because her body still lived on Blue. After Fava's body\ndied on Blue, he was apparently unable to go back to Green to see her astral\nself, but he was able to speak to her through Vadsig and Mora's dreams on\nBlue.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<252923.63255.qm@web161815.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-02-13T19:26:56+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think those vanished people went the same place the hiero whatever guys did, whether that be through the brook Madregot or into a higher level of existence, the difference is that I just don't see the need to multiply dimensions, to me, these little inferences are always pretty concrete:\nWeer is dead, Latro is Ares/Pleistorus, Silk is Typhon's Heir, Horn is in Babbie after OBW, Silver Silk is Pig, Green is Urth, Marsh is an abo, Number Five's name is Gene Wolfe ... I feel like all these little elisions are actually concrete explanations that really don't work symbolically. The one I'm still waiting for to satisfy me is Blue is XXXXXX. So, in that way, I think Wolfe elides material details that explicate vast tracts of text but these are almost never symbolic.\n\nBut YES - ITS WAY POSSIBLE AND EVEN LIKELY TO DRAW AN UNINTENDED CONCLUSION or latch onto a red herring, so I admit, I may have reached the wrong material conclusions in some of those cases, but I argue their is a material, non symbolic conclusion to be reached at the heart of every one of his important framework identity elisions. He is a mystery writer who knows the answers to his mysteries.\n\nBut I'm not saying I'm right all the time, because I was SURE Blue was Urth until I saw that the mechanism for astral transport had Silk thinking of Green, that Green was hotter than Urth or Blue, that the city on Green was like Nessus, etc etc etc. I just didn't see it until it was brought to my attention." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "--- On Sat, 2/12/11, Lee Berman wrote:\n " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Perhaps the idea of the Secret House is relevant here. A\nSecret Whorl? Could the Neighbor Whorl\nbe somehow in close parallel to Blue, almost built within\nit? Or perhaps a better way to describe\nit would be that Blue and the Neighbor Whorl are adjacent\nbranches on the timeline (Brook Madregot?).\nSo close that it is possible for certain elements of both\nwhorls/worlds to co-mingle in certain\nways without being fully, physically present to each\nother.\n \nPerhaps this is the key to Marc's ideas about Urth and\nGreen. Not \"the same\" but so close on time\nstrands that...well....something like that. If WOlfe can't\ndescribe the indescribable, I certainly\ncan't. ???\n????????\n?????? ???\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<820EA51709954262A2D64973FDFF1388@jill>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerryq at indigo.ie" }, "date": "2011-02-13T20:00:58+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<252923.63255.qm@web161815.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Marc Aramini\" \nNumber Five's name is Gene Wolfe ..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I doubt it... though perhaps it is Eugene Loup ;-)\n\nThe family is of French origin. The head of the family is referred to as \nMaitre, and while the name David could be English or French, Jeannine is \ncertainly French. We must assume Number Five's name is French also, and \n'Gene Wolfe' is not very French.\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "<796119.85786.qm@web161809.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-02-13T20:13:10+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<820EA51709954262A2D64973FDFF1388@jill>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Heh heh. Good point! " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- On Sun, 2/13/11, Gerry Quinn wrote:\nFrom: Gerry Quinn \nSubject: Re: (urth) On dream travelers\nTo: \"The Urth Mailing List\" \nDate: Sunday, February 13, 2011, 12:00 PM\n\nFrom: \"Marc Aramini\" " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Number Five's name is Gene Wolfe ..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I doubt it... though perhaps it is Eugene Loup ;-)\n\nThe family is of French origin. The head of the family is\nreferred to as Maitre, and while the name David could be\nEnglish or French, Jeannine is certainly French. We\nmust assume Number Five's name is French also, and 'Gene\nWolfe' is not very French.\n\n- Gerry Quinn\n\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Thornton", "address": "adam at io.com" }, "date": "2011-02-13T20:30:12+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<252923.63255.qm@web161815.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Feb 13, 2011, at 1:26 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:\nLatro is Ares/Pleistorus," }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "So....if Latro is Ares, does that make the Soldier Cycle _Nethack_ ?\n\nThat little \"pop\" you just heard was just my brain aneurism. Don't worry.\n\nAdam" } ] }, { "message_id": "<67F4C11A-49D9-40F6-9BB1-9A5428FE1999@io.com>", "from": { "name": "Adam Thornton", "address": "adam at io.com" }, "date": "2011-02-13T20:31:25+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<820EA51709954262A2D64973FDFF1388@jill>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Feb 13, 2011, at 2:00 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n\nFrom: \"Marc Aramini\" " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Number Five's name is Gene Wolfe ..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I doubt it... though perhaps it is Eugene Loup ;-)\n\nThe family is of French origin. The head of the family is referred to as Maitre, and while the name David could be English or French, Jeannine is certainly French. We must assume Number Five's name is French also, and 'Gene Wolfe' is not very French." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From the scene in the library, we're pretty sure their name is \"Wolfe.\"\n\nAdam" } ] }, { "message_id": "<633732.11241.qm@web161809.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-02-13T20:40:32+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- On Sun, 2/13/11, Adam Thornton wrote:\nOn Feb 13, 2011, at 1:26 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Latro is Ares/Pleistorus," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "So....if Latro is Ares, does that make the Soldier Cycle\n_Nethack_ ?\n\nThat little \"pop\" you just heard was just my brain\naneurism. Don't worry." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Let me just flesh that out in two quick paragraphs, but I really am not prepared to argue it now, its been a long time since I read the soldier books and I'm not sure if Ares was possessing the roman soldier Lucius when the brain injury happened or if indeed Latro is an actual Avatar like being.\n\nAres is associated with Pleistorus, who has been missing for some time, and some say that Pleistorus is Ahura Mazda incognito (a direct quote more or less from Soldier of Arete). Ahura Mazda is kind of pretty much a cognate for THE God. \n\nSo since Pleistorus has been missing and Latro embodies all these Arete qualities and has Victory riding behind him, (see his success at the Olympics and his ability to push Sisyphus' boulder all the way to the top, something the demigod Sisyphus can't do), and since at one point Sphinx in his memory palace says something about being his mother, it seems that Latro MIGHT be at least an Avatar of the God of War, if not the missing god pleistorus himself trapped in flesh because of his damaged memory.\n\nHis entrapment in the flesh and the wanton murder of the freed slaves of the Spartans depresses him, and I think this is symbollic of the paradigm shift between paganism, Judaism, and Christianity: the old testament God is tired of war. At one point there is a poem that says the god of war is weary of the spear, and I think that is what has happened to Latro: he learned that killing was very far from the answer through the manumission murder ceremony of the spartans and the death of his amazon, so that when he returns to Rome somehow it will precipitate the Pax Romana, which will allow the birth of Christ and truly kill Pan. So I think Latro's experiences are teaching Ahura Mazda that war is bad, and mercy and peace can be a worthwhile pursuit, thus Latro being ostensibly Roman, and in a way a trial run for Christ, when the True God is ensconced in fully human flesh.\n\nI could be wrong, though.\n\n\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "<696F89E4375940C487B8B758DB8EA399@jill>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerryq at indigo.ie" }, "date": "2011-02-13T20:53:01+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<67F4C11A-49D9-40F6-9BB1-9A5428FE1999@io.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Adam Thornton\" \nOn Feb 13, 2011, at 2:00 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote\nFrom: \"Marc Aramini\" " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "Number Five's name is Gene Wolfe ..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I doubt it... though perhaps it is Eugene Loup ;-)\n\nThe family is of French origin. The head of the family is referred to as \nMaitre, and while the name David could be English or French, Jeannine is \ncertainly French. We must assume Number Five's name is French also, and \n'Gene Wolfe' is not very French." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From the scene in the library, we're pretty sure their name is \"Wolfe.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You're right, of course - the Woolf and the Wilhelm make it clear that the \nshelving must be alphabetic.\n\nI'm not crazy about \"Jean\", though - that is French for 'John' and is \npronounced similarly. Eugene seems to be the closest French name to Gene. \nI don't know if the French ever use Gene as a diminutive.\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "<06D7A0BC-599F-4A21-95D6-803A528C3871@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "António Pedro Marques", "address": "entonio at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-13T21:56:58+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<633732.11241.qm@web161809.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No dia 13 de Fev de 2011, ?s 20:40, Marc Aramini escreveu:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "So since Pleistorus has been missing and Latro embodies all these Arete qualities and has Victory riding behind him, (see his success at the Olympics and his ability to push Sisyphus' boulder all the way to the top, something the demigod Sisyphus can't do), and since at one point Sphinx in his memory palace says something about being his mother, it seems that Latro MIGHT be at least an Avatar of the God of War, if not the missing god pleistorus himself trapped in flesh because of his damaged memory." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I may be mistaken, but if not then Ares was more of a god of the fields, rather than war, before he got syncretised with Mars. (Or was it the reverse?)" } ] }, { "message_id": "<269346.60124.qm@web161811.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-02-13T22:02:40+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<06D7A0BC-599F-4A21-95D6-803A528C3871@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- On Sun, 2/13/11, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote:\nFrom: Ant?nio Pedro Marques \n\nI may be mistaken, but if not then Ares was more of a god\nof the fields, rather than war, before he got syncretised\nwith Mars. (Or was it the reverse?)\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<07FFF5B3-1C19-4B47-99A0-2A620F8EA158@io.com>", "from": { "name": "Adam Thornton", "address": "adam at io.com" }, "date": "2011-02-13T22:06:37+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<269346.60124.qm@web161811.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Feb 13, 2011, at 4:02 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:\n\nI don't know, but it IS kind of clear that Pleistorus is a god of battle, possibly the Thrakian version of Ares, and I think the text makes it a better case that it is Pleistorus who is missing and is Ahura Mazda, so if pressed I would say, Latro is Pleistorus, because I am not sure if in the Soldier books Ares and Plesitorus are distinct at all." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Dude, it *is* Nethack.\n\n\"Who do you think you are, War?\"\n\nAdam" } ] }, { "message_id": "<716935.47617.qm@web161803.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-02-13T22:10:33+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<07FFF5B3-1C19-4B47-99A0-2A620F8EA158@io.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Oh, and for my interpretation to work, Pleistorus and Ares have to share this realization of disgust at murder and war, for there is one poem where it says \n\n(I paraphrase)? \"and Ares quits the spear proud throng\"\n\nI think that is what is going on in these books, War is learning compassion and love to be communicated to Ahura Mazda so that he can reconcile creation to a Christian milieu of (ideally) love and forgiveness away from the wrath of the old testament God.\n\nI don't know anything about Nethack, got to look it up. heh heh.\n\n\n--- On Sun, 2/13/11, Adam Thornton wrote:\n\n\nFrom: Adam Thornton \nSubject: Re: (urth) On dream travelers\nTo: \"The Urth Mailing List\" \nDate: Sunday, February 13, 2011, 2:06 PM\n\n\n\n\n\nOn Feb 13, 2011, at 4:02 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:\n\n\nI don't know, but it IS kind of clear that Pleistorus is a god of battle, possibly the Thrakian version of Ares, and I think the text makes it a better case that it is Pleistorus who is missing and is Ahura Mazda, so if pressed I would say, Latro is Pleistorus, because I am not sure if in the Soldier books Ares and Plesitorus are distinct at all.\n\n\nDude, it *is* Nethack.\n\n\n\"Who do you think you are, War?\"\n\n\nAdam\n-----Inline Attachment Follows-----" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4D592A49.30208@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-14T13:12:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<696F89E4375940C487B8B758DB8EA399@jill>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "From the scene in the library, we're pretty sure their name is \"Wolfe.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "You're right, of course - the Woolf and the Wilhelm make it clear that \nthe shelving must be alphabetic.\nI'm not crazy about \"Jean\", though - that is French for 'John' and is \npronounced similarly. Eugene seems to be the closest French name to \nGene. I don't know if the French ever use Gene as a diminutive." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It has always seemed likely to me that \"Gene\" (if that is the ultimate \nspelling) is an assimilation. Originally, the name was Jean. This seems \nimplied by the Aunt Jeanine's name, by the fact that all abo males are \nnamed \"John\", and that twinnish, shared-dreams between VRT and Number \nFive. Perhaps the English call him \"Gene\" because it looks like that the \nway it is spelled.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4D59560D.9030508@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-14T16:19:25+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<00ab01cbcb5a$61681f60$5acf4a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "No. They are not merely corporeal bodies. They are a lighter. They don't\nneed food. But the DO have blood! The Rajan bleeds. The inhumi attack\nhim for his blood. They die from physical harm." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yes, the spirit body dies -- it happened to Rigoglio and some mercenaries.\nBut back in the real world, on Blue, only their spirits had died. As I\ncited, Silkhorn said during dream travel, \"We are spirits here.\" The bodies\nof spirit travelers are spiritual.\n\nSeverian could tell that Silkhorn wasn't afraid to be locked in a cell in\nthe Tower, and wondered why. Silkhorn responded: \"Because I'm not really\nhere.\" (RTTW, 263)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A. Yes, but his meaning is not as simple as that, as is obvious in the \nfact that an astral body can bleed to death. When the Rajan said he \nwasn't afraid because \"I'm not really here\", the following conversation \ntakes place:\n\n [Severian]: \"That judge is afraid.\"\n\n [Rajan]: \"He doesn't know, you see. [...] Or if he does by this\n time, he may be afraid that my daughter and I will leave him here.\n As we might.\"\n\nIn the same paragraph that the Rajan says they \"aren't really here\" he \nspeaks of \"leaving\" Judge Hamer \"here\".\n\nPure spirit cannot die.\n\nOn the other hand, let me posit something that I believe is close to \naccurate. Dream-travel involves the formation of an astral body for the \nsoul of the traveler. This body is created along the same principles as \nthe creations of the weapons and astral-Hide.\nDuring astral travel, the link between the traveler's soul and his \ncorporeal body is the astral body. If the astral body dies, the soul \ncannot return to the corporeal body.\nThe link between the Rajan's astral body (or other Neighbor's since I \nsuppose it is his Neighbor part that gives the Rajan his special \nabilities) and his corporeal body is an inhumi.\nThe link between normal human dream-travelers and the inhumi is the Rajan." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "You mean the sleeping body of the dreamer? That's a different situation from\nwhat I said. I am saying that the astral body could not live for long\nwithout being powered by something. The mercenaries Silkhorn took to Green\nto exterminate the inhumi in the City of the Inhumi ate rations they had\ncarried with them, yet we are told that dream travelers have no digestive\ntracts. Obviously eating those rations could not have provided any\nsustenance. Maybe it constituted comfort food." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "B. But I don't see any evidence that the dream-travelers /need/ \nsustenance from _any_ apparent source. As you say they don't eat. \nPerhaps they received sustenance from some other involuntary method. \nSince the astral bodies can receive harm, even bleed to death, I suppose \nthey probably age as well. Do we have any evidence that they can \nsuccessfully heal? The only limitation on their time in dream travel \nseems to be the ability of the *corporeal body* to survive without care. \nThis is a problem for humans.\n\nBut what if the bodies of the Neighbors are not so limited. If Green Man \nwere in dream-travel, and you put him on an IV for fluids, would there \nbe any limit to how long he could remain there? What if Lemur were in \nsoul travel?\n\nIn fact, I suspect that is the case for the Neighbors. I believe that \nthe corporeal bodies of the Neighbors are tree-like. Not that every tree \non Blue needs to be a Neighbor (although they might be in some sense). \nSo they can sleep and remain in dream-travel as long as their astral \nbodies lived (assuming their astral life-span is shorter than their \ncorporeal life span). If a Neighbor's astral body dies, his corporeal \nbody can continue to live...even reproduce. But he has lost his \nSentience, because the link to his soul has been lost.\n\nSeeing the Neighbors as a kind of Dryad further develops their nominal \nconnection to fairies." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "You must be thinking of Fava, since she is the only example in this\ncategory. She seems to have gone on living in or on some sort of spiritual\nplain, because she was able to maintain contact with Mora through Mora's\ndreams and seemed to be able to possess and speak through Vadsig." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "C. It's encouraging that we agree on this point." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I don't know what that last sentence is supposed to mean, but solid bodies\ncannot walk through the Curtain wall as Silkhorn and Hoof did. Ghosts and\nspirits are reputed to be able to do that sort of thing." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "D. Yes, certain solid bodies most evidently can. The astral bodies are \nsolid. They have mass. They can be damaged by physical objects and when \nthey are, they bleed. So they have blood. Presumably they have blood \nvessels. If you doubt they are solid, then I would really like to know \nhow you rectify these facts?\n\nSince any physical object is mostly empty space. It is not beyond \nconception that solid entities _could_ do what astral entities can under \nspecific configurations." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I guess so. Hoof wrote of Juganu, after they returned from a brief astral\nwarp to Urth: \"He said it was what he was in his heart, that the blond man\non the deck of the big boat was the real Juganu, the man he was in dreams.\"\n(RTTW, 349)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "E. I'm not sure this is the same as saying \"The stated reason that the \ninhumi are just as real as humans during spirit travel is that their \nspirit bodies are manifestations of how they perceive themselves to be \nin their hearts or souls\". This describes how Tartaros _claims_ the \nimages of the Whorl gods are formed. But the quote you are offering does \nnot describe this process. It _could_ be compatible with it, I guess. \nBut it is not, in itself, the same thing." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I still maintain that natural laws cannot be ignored, at least not by\nhumans. Anyway, after Silkhorn and Fava warped to Green, then from Green to\nthe Duko's palace in Soldo and back to Green, Silkhorn wondered\nparenthetically: \"(Why did not the Duko accompany us? And was he shot, and\nwhat was the result of that shot, a visionary slug fired by an unreal\ntrooper from an equally chimerical slug gun.)\" (IGJ, 221) Mind the\nadjectives.\n\nWhen Captain Sfido remained loyal to the Duko during that warp to Green, his\nneedler was taken from him and used in the fight against the inhumi, yet\nwhen the group finally returned to Blue the needler was back with him (IGJ,\n230). What happened to the needler taken from him on Green? When the mercs\ngot back to Blue after fighting all those inhumi in the City on Green, were\nthey missing any of the slugs they had fired on Green? I don't think so." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "F. See my explanation at point (A). The bodies in astral travel are not \nmerely \"visionary\" in the sense you seem to be using it. Nor are their \nslug guns, as evident by their ability to kill corporeal people and by \nthe astral traveler's ability to be killed by corporeal weapons. The \nRajan's speculation makes that clear." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I disagree. It is not possible that physical weapons would harm a pure\nspirit. The spirits in astral travel assume NEW bodies during that\nperiod that operate according alternate unexplained physical laws." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Rigoglio's spirit was sure as hell harmed. The spirit body is linked to the\nnatural body; why else were Rigoglio's hands still tied when he got to Urth?\nSome of the mercenaries from Soldo died and were buried on Green but were\nalive and mindless on Blue.\nWhen Jahlee's astral self got stranded on Green, Silkhorn was able to go\nback and get her because her body still lived on Blue. After Fava's body\ndied on Blue, he was apparently unable to go back to Green to see her astral\nself, but he was able to speak to her through Vadsig and Mora's dreams on\nBlue." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "G. So what are you arguing here?\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<65712C33AE524B36ABB2B75E8D7AE4DD@jill>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerryq at indigo.ie" }, "date": "2011-02-14T18:04:37+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<4D592A49.30208@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"James Wynn\" \nGerry Quinn:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I'm not crazy about \"Jean\", though - that is French for 'John' and is \npronounced similarly. Eugene seems to be the closest French name to \nGene. I don't know if the French ever use Gene as a diminutive." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "It has always seemed likely to me that \"Gene\" (if that is the ultimate \nspelling) is an assimilation. Originally, the name was Jean. This seems \nimplied by the Aunt Jeanine's name, by the fact that all abo males are \nnamed \"John\", and that twinnish, shared-dreams between VRT and Number \nFive. Perhaps the English call him \"Gene\" because it looks like that the \nway it is spelled." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I disagree that there's evidence for assimilation. The head of the \nhousehold is still called Maitre. Besides, if he is called Gene because his \nname is spelt Jean then his name is still not Gene but Jean.\n\nAs for the abo stuff, I don't think it's relevant. The use of the name John \ntells us nothing about Gene, and I don't believe there is any connection \nbetween Number Five and the abos.\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerryq at indigo.ie" }, "date": "2011-02-14T18:38:28+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<4D59560D.9030508@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " From: James Wynn \n On the other hand, let me posit something that I believe is close to accurate. Dream-travel involves the formation of an astral body for the soul of the traveler. This body is created along the same principles as the creations of the weapons and astral-Hide. \n During astral travel, the link between the traveler's soul and his corporeal body is the astral body. If the astral body dies, the soul cannot return to the corporeal body. \n\nI agree with thiis part.\n\n\n The link between the Rajan's astral body (or other Neighbor's since I suppose it is his Neighbor part that gives the Rajan his special abilities) and his corporeal body is an inhumi. \n The link between normal human dream-travelers and the inhumi is the Rajan. \n\nThis doesn't really make sense to me. The inhumi dream travel as well, in company with SilkHorn. Dream travel for them seems similar to humans. I don't see any reason why they should function as links between the human travellers and their astral bodies.\n\nThe presence of an inhuma does seem to be necessary for SilkHorn to effect dream travel. I interpret it as an emergent ability coming from the contact of humans and a telepathic alien species - we have seen this before in the case of the humans who became the Shadow Children, and the native Annese. \n\nI don't believe SilkHorn has any Neighbour part. He has been the subject of spirit transference by way of both Neighbour and Human technology, but the spirits transferred (Silk, Horn, Pas) were always ultimately human in origin. \n\nSo why has SilkHorn alone developed this ability? Perhaps those spirit transfers and internal reconstructions have loosened the connection between body and spirit, and enabled him to separate them and catalyse the separation of others.\n\nI would not normally expect to be invoking Peter F. Hamilton in trying to explain the works of Gene Wolfe [I have nothing against Hamilton, he isa a good writer but he tends to work with one or two big ideas and then fill 3000 pages or so with 'event', plus lots of sex and gore]. But I am reminded of the anti-hero Quinn Dexter in Hamilton's 'Night's Dawn' trilogy. In this series, an alien species comes in contact with humans, and inadvertently catalyses the takeover of some of them by the soulds of trhe dead. In their new bodies the souls suppress the original souls and gain various psychic powers. Dexter manages to drive out the soul inhabiting him, regaining control of his old body and even greater abilities. The abilities seem to stem, essentially, from the loosening of the bonds between body and spirit. SilkHorn may be experiencing something of the kind.\n\nDo the Neighbours use inhumi for dream travel? I don't think so - they seem happy to leave them behind. In truth, I suspect that while the Neighbours do something that resembles dream travel, it is really not quite the same thing at all.\n\n\n But what if the bodies of the Neighbors are not so limited. If Green Man were in dream-travel, and you put him on an IV for fluids, would there be any limit to how long he could remain there? What if Lemur were in soul travel?\nMaybe Lemur *is* in soul travel!\n\n In fact, I suspect that is the case for the Neighbors. I believe that the corporeal bodies of the Neighbors are tree-like. Not that every tree on Blue needs to be a Neighbor (although they might be in some sense). So they can sleep and remain in dream-travel as long as their astral bodies lived (assuming their astral life-span is shorter than their corporeal life span). If a Neighbor's astral body dies, his corporeal body can continue to live...even reproduce. But he has lost his Sentience, because the link to his soul has been lost.\n\nTrees don't have brains. Sentient trees don't really make sense. And why would their spirits be something other than trees anyway? \n\nNeighbours lived in houses and built structures. Trees wouldn't have bothered.\n\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4D597B0E.9020301@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-14T18:57:18+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<65712C33AE524B36ABB2B75E8D7AE4DD@jill>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "It has always seemed likely to me that \"Gene\" (if that is the \nultimate spelling) is an assimilation. Originally, the name was Jean. \nThis seems implied by the Aunt Jeanine's name, by the fact that all \nabo males are named \"John\", and that twinnish, shared-dreams between \nVRT and Number Five. Perhaps the English call him \"Gene\" because it \nlooks like that the way it is spelled." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I disagree that there's evidence for assimilation. The head of the \nhousehold is still called Maitre." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "So? My friend's American kids call their aunt \"Tia\". Various familial \nterms used within the Wolfe household mean nothing. There are plenty of \npeople with French surnames in the US that English pronunciation. Have \nyou never met anyone in the UK named Benet or Benoit who pronounces it \nas spelled? Mr. Million predates the English-speakers taking over the \ncolony. You don't suppose they still speak French do you? I presume the \nWolfes still know how." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Besides, if he is called Gene because his name is spelt Jean then his \nname is still not Gene but Jean." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not necessarily for English. I don't know why this needs explaining." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As for the abo stuff, I don't think it's relevant. The use of the \nname John tells us nothing about Gene, " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Slight quibble: This is should be \"Because I disbelieve that \"gene\" is \nmerely a homonym for an English pronunciation for \"jean\", I therefore \nbelieve the use of the name John tells us nothing about Gene.\"\n\nWere you to accept the presupposition on which this argument is based, \nyou would see that John and Gene are indeed connected." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "and I don't believe there is any connection between Number Five and \nthe abos." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Seems like an arbitrary bit of geography to choose to hold or die on, \nbut okay.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerryq at indigo.ie" }, "date": "2011-02-15T00:56:44+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<4D597B0E.9020301@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"James Wynn\" " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "It has always seemed likely to me that \"Gene\" (if that is the ultimate \nspelling) is an assimilation. Originally, the name was Jean. This seems \nimplied by the Aunt Jeanine's name, by the fact that all abo males are \nnamed \"John\", and that twinnish, shared-dreams between VRT and Number \nFive. Perhaps the English call him \"Gene\" because it looks like that the \nway it is spelled." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I disagree that there's evidence for assimilation. The head of the \nhousehold is still called Maitre." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "So? My friend's American kids call their aunt \"Tia\". Various familial \nterms used within the Wolfe household mean nothing. There are plenty of \npeople with French surnames in the US that English pronunciation. Have you \nnever met anyone in the UK named Benet or Benoit who pronounces it as \nspelled? Mr. Million predates the English-speakers taking over the colony. \nYou don't suppose they still speak French do you? I presume the Wolfes \nstill know how." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Sure, they speak English. That doesn't change his name." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Besides, if he is called Gene because his name is spelt Jean then his \nname is still not Gene but Jean." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Not necessarily for English. I don't know why this needs explaining." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You seem to be arguing that his name is Jean... then insisting that it is \nactually Gene. Doesn't make a lot of sense." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "As for the abo stuff, I don't think it's relevant. The use of the name \nJohn tells us nothing about Gene," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Slight quibble: This is should be \"Because I disbelieve that \"gene\" is \nmerely a homonym for an English pronunciation for \"jean\", I therefore \nbelieve the use of the name John tells us nothing about Gene.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No - I mean that the fact that all males of one tribe of aliens on another \nplanet were once given the forename John is irrelevant to the name of the \nnarrator whatever that name is and whatever its origins (in fact it is \npresumably a name given an ancestor by his mother on Earth and passed down \nto the cloned generations)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Were you to accept the presupposition on which this argument is based, you \nwould see that John and Gene are indeed connected." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "and I don't believe there is any connection between Number Five and the \nabos." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Seems like an arbitrary bit of geography to choose to hold or die on, but \nokay." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Pointing out the extreme tenuosity of one of your arguments isn't choosing a \npoint to stand or die on.\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "<001201cbccd0$67385500$18d24a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2011-02-15T05:22:45+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<4D59560D.9030508@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "James Wynn quoted and wrote:\nSeverian could tell that Silkhorn wasn't afraid to be locked in a cell\nin\nthe Tower, and wondered why. Silkhorn responded: \"Because I'm not really\nhere.\" (RTTW, 263)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "A. Yes, but his meaning is not as simple as that, as is obvious in the\nfact that an astral body can bleed to death. When the Rajan said he\nwasn't afraid because \"I'm not really here\", the following conversation\ntakes place:\n\n [Severian]: \"That judge is afraid.\"\n\n [Rajan]: \"He doesn't know, you see. [...] Or if he does by this\n time, he may be afraid that my daughter and I will leave him here.\n As we might.\"\n\nIn the same paragraph that the Rajan says they \"aren't really here\" he\nspeaks of \"leaving\" Judge Hamer \"here\"." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes. What Hamer didn't know was that he wasn't really on Urth. That was the\npower Silkhorn held over the judge; the judge's ignorance of the situation.\nHamer was at Silkhorn's mercy. Had Silkhorn stranded Hamer's astral body on\nUrth, his natural body on Blue would have eventually died from starvation or\nother causes, as Silkhorn had learned from Fava's example of having died of\nthe cold.\n\nThat was the concern Silkhorn had for Jahlee after she went into her long\nsleep; if he didn't get her absent spirit back to her natural body, that\nnatural body would die and her spirit would be stranded on or in whatever\nspiritual plain Fava's spirit had gone to.\n\nThere are a number of places where Silkhorn says that astral bodies are not\nreal in the same sense that natural bodies are real. Here is another. The\nMaliki of Sinew's village thought Silkhorn, Hide and Jahlee had come there\non a lander, because of Jahlee's clean, red hair. Silkhorn told her, \"We are\nnot real -- not really present in the way you are -- exactly as my son told\nyou.\" (IGJ, 367)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Pure spirit cannot die." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree. I don't claim that the astral bodies are pure spirit; they are\nobviously not, as the example of Rigoglio I have mentioned more than once\ndemonstrates. But the essence of the spirit bodies is spiritual, as the case\nof Rigoglio also demonstrates." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On the other hand, let me posit something that I believe is close to\naccurate. Dream-travel involves the formation of an astral body for the\nsoul of the traveler. This body is created along the same principles as\nthe creations of the weapons and astral-Hide.\nDuring astral travel, the link between the traveler's soul and his\ncorporeal body is the astral body. If the astral body dies, the soul\ncannot return to the corporeal body." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I can go along with that." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The link between the Rajan's astral body (or other Neighbor's since I\nsuppose it is his Neighbor part that gives the Rajan his special\nabilities) and his corporeal body is an inhumi.\nThe link between normal human dream-travelers and the inhumi is the Rajan." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I guess I can go along with that, except for the Neighbor bit." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "You mean the sleeping body of the dreamer? That's a different situation\nfrom\nwhat I said. I am saying that the astral body could not live for long\nwithout being powered by something. The mercenaries Silkhorn took to\nGreen\nto exterminate the inhumi in the City of the Inhumi ate rations they had\ncarried with them, yet we are told that dream travelers have no\ndigestive\ntracts. Obviously eating those rations could not have provided any\nsustenance. Maybe it constituted comfort food." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "B. But I don't see any evidence that the dream-travelers /need/\nsustenance from _any_ apparent source. As you say they don't eat." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I didn't say they don't eat; they obviously can and do, as I said of the\nmercenaries and their rations. Still, they have no digestive tracts. I can\nonly speculate, which I hesitate to do. Perhaps the rations (or any food\neaten by dream travelers) does amount to comfort food. That is, dream\ntravelers tend to behave as if their astral bodies are the same as their\nreal bodies. There are exceptions, of course, such as when they walk through\nwalls and create objects out of nothing." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Perhaps they received sustenance from some other involuntary method.\nSince the astral bodies can receive harm, even bleed to death, I suppose\nthey probably age as well. Do we have any evidence that they can\nsuccessfully heal? The only limitation on their time in dream travel\nseems to be the ability of the *corporeal body* to survive without care." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "With that last sentence I quite agree, if by corporeal body you mean their\nnatural body." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This is a problem for humans." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And for inhumi. Witness Fava.\n\n[snip of speculation about Neighbors]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I don't know what that last sentence is supposed to mean, but solid\nbodies\ncannot walk through the Curtain wall as Silkhorn and Hoof did. Ghosts\nand\nspirits are reputed to be able to do that sort of thing." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "D. Yes, certain solid bodies most evidently can. The astral bodies are\nsolid. They have mass. They can be damaged by physical objects and when\nthey are, they bleed. So they have blood. Presumably they have blood\nvessels. If you doubt they are solid, then I would really like to know\nhow you rectify these facts?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I can't explain it, any more than you can explain how bodies that cannot\ndigest food can continue to produce blood.\n\n[snip]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "I disagree. It is not possible that physical weapons would harm a pure\nspirit. The spirits in astral travel assume NEW bodies during that\nperiod that operate according alternate unexplained physical laws." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Rigoglio's spirit was sure as hell harmed. The spirit body is linked to\nthe\nnatural body; why else were Rigoglio's hands still tied when he got to\nUrth?\nSome of the mercenaries from Soldo died and were buried on Green but\nwere\nalive and mindless on Blue.\nWhen Jahlee's astral self got stranded on Green, Silkhorn was able to go\nback and get her because her body still lived on Blue. After Fava's body\ndied on Blue, he was apparently unable to go back to Green to see her\nastral\nself, but he was able to speak to her through Vadsig and Mora's dreams\non\nBlue." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "G. So what are you arguing here?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That when Fava's natural body died in the snow her spirit, as manifested by\nher astral body, lost its tether and became disembodied, which is why\nSilkhorn never saw her again.\n\nWhen Jahlee's spirit was stranded on Green and Silkhorn went back for her,\nhe gained the top of that cliff and met her. She said, \"You came back! I had\ngiven up.\" (RTTW, 190) Why was she concerned, if she then had her heart's\ndesire to be fully human, plus lording it over the lowly inhumi? She went on\nto say, \"We . . . They bring me food I can't eat. Children, and all the\nwhile I know by body's starving up there.\" (191) True, she no longer had\nfangs with which to suck the children's blood, but that didn't matter\nbecause she had no digestive tract anyway, no matter what she ate. Her\nspirit body was starving, just as her natural body was starving back on\nBlue, and she knew it. When she returned from a spirit warp she immediately\nflew off to find human blood to drink, as did Juganu.\n\n(I am loathe to even speculate on why the inhumi who worshipped the\nfully-human Jahlee on Green did not drink her blood. Even if you can write\nit off to religious awe or something, that would apply only to those inhumi\nwho had some intelligence due to having previously drank human blood; that\nwould not apply to the \"thousands\" of inhumi said to be \"mere animals\"\n(RTTW, 189) that had swarmed Silkhorn's astral body on the cliff-face, eager\nfor his blood.)\n\nSilkhorn told Juganu repeatedly that, though he would be tempted to remain\nbehind on Urth, he would die if he did so. \"By going with us to a place\nwhere you will be as human as we are.\" [...] \"And by coming back. You will\nbe tempted to remain, I warn you; and if you do, you will die and it will be\nby no act of mine.\" (RTTW, 344) See also (397). After laying Cilinia's ghost\nSilkhorn said, \"We've accomplished the task we set out to do, but the most\ndifficult part of our trip remains, my son. We must persuade -- or force --\nJuganu to return with us.\" (393-94) In fact, they had to fight Juganu to get\nhim to return (397), after which he flew away to organize the inhumi on Blue\nfor the future attack on the wedding party.\n\nHaving learned from the example of Fava, Silkhorn admonished both Jahlee and\nJuganu that they could not remain in dream travel, though both inhumi liked\nit there and wished to remain. Once they had served his use of them, why not\nreward them by giving them what they so wanted? Was he just being mean to\nthem? No, he knew that if their spirits did not return to their respective\nnatural bodies, those bodies would soon die of starvation or whatever cause,\nand when their natural body died they would lose their spirit bodies, as was\nthe case with Fava.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<786884.74591.qm@web161804.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-02-15T05:43:24+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk beating two horses, Orpine rotting to vines,\n\tand Wolfe's dedication", "in_reply_to": "<001201cbccd0$67385500$18d24a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I was browsing over the first volume of long sun last night and I have to admit it made me feel a little ill.\n\nHere is Wolfe's dedication to Lake of the Long Sun:\n\nTo Dan Knight, who will understand more than most.\n\nThis right here validates all the twisted readings of Wolfe I've ever done, he is simply not a straightforward writer from the get go, and I think he expects almost everybody NOT to get everything.\n\nOkay, in one dream, Silk is beat two black horses, but he is said to be whipping the wrong horse every time he tries to hit its brother, that if the brother does not help, the horse being hit will die.\n\nThe horse winds up being cast into the save grave as orpine, who rots away to like flowers and vegetation in his dream, but it also talks about receding waters and other stuff, too. Does anybody have a good explanation for Silk whipping the wrong horse?\n\nAlso, the last pages of Nightside have Silk contemplating two disturbing things that are kind of doubletalk if not taken literally: he talks about how the Outsider split him in two, and how that old version of himself would be frightful to meet. In context, this describes the harmless prelate and the burglar willing to contemplate violence, but I think this is surely, surely the best and only hint in the text that there may be a multiplication of Silks, something I DON'T like.\n\nBut MORE disturbing is his immediate comparison of the Outsider with Auk, thinking, what if the Outsider is good ... in a dark way? Thoughts like this are what lead me to believe Typhon has a hand in his enlightenment. \n\nIf the embryos were grown before, and in any way have a familial relationship to the monarch, could Mucor be Echidna, or another daughter like Scylla or Molpe, and her alien brain the reason that the scans of the other gods are so alien in appearance?\n\nWhat I don't like in these theories is there is just no way to determine if these embryos were ever fully grown or not.\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "<2B10DFD0F8BC4468AA94E0A2DF926DD8@jill>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerryq at indigo.ie" }, "date": "2011-02-15T12:58:12+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk beating two horses, Orpine rotting to vines,\n\tand Wolfe's dedication", "in_reply_to": "<786884.74591.qm@web161804.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Marc Aramini\" \nI was browsing over the first volume of long sun last night and I have\n to admit it made me feel a little ill.\nHere is Wolfe's dedication to Lake of the Long Sun:\nTo Dan Knight, who will understand more than most.\n\nThis right here validates all the twisted readings of Wolfe I've ever\ndone, he is simply not a straightforward writer from the get go, and I\nthink he expects almost everybody NOT to get everything." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It's only a dedication. And sure, nobody will get EVERYTHING. That \nprobably applies to books much simpler than Wolfe's. Doubtless there are \nsubtleties we miss in See Spot Run." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Okay, in one dream, Silk is beat two black horses, but he is said to be\nwhipping the wrong horse every time he tries to hit its brother, that if \nthe\nbrother does not help, the horse being hit will die.\n\nThe horse winds up being cast into the save grave as orpine, who rots\naway to like flowers and vegetation in his dream, but it also talks about\nreceding waters and other stuff, too. Does anybody have a good \nexplanation\nfor Silk whipping the wrong horse?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't think this dream is hard to interpret, even if there are some \ndetails that are not absolutely clear (heh, dreams are like that).\n\nThe horses represent the actions of Silk - Silk's strength if you like. \nSilk is literally beating the wrong horse - he is focused on the wrong \naction to save his manteion. He's beating a dying horse, in fact, a dying \nhorse that will die at the grave if he doesn't find the right way forward. \nAnd this dream points the way forward, although Silk does not realise it \nyet.\n\nOrpine's grave is too deep, at the bottom he sees black velvet, and the \nvelvet is sprinkled with sparks... and the horse that never pulled now \nlunges and pulls with all his might. This is Silk's true destiny: to lead \nhis people outside the Whorl, to the sparks that do not flicker like the \ndying Long Sun with its sinking streams that will NOT rot Orpine back to new \nlife.\n\nSilk must find his destiny, or the Whorl will itself become a grave, where \nOrpine lies alongside everyone else.\n\nSome minor points:\n\n - By the light of one star Marble is young again - that represents Sol, I \nguess (it is not referred to as red, but I don't think that's important - \nprobably it would mess up the metaphors too much)\n\n - \"Too long\" - I think this probably refers to the age of the decaying \nWhorl\n\n - Hyacinth and Silk on the deadcoach at the end - this may prefigure the \nend of Exodus, where Silk turns back to stay with Hyacinth.\n\n\n[By the way, Marc, maybe you should think about how much of your own \ninterpretations you force into what you read. The title of your post \nincludes \"Orpine rotting to vines\". But the dream explicitly says that \nOrpine will NOT rot. And if she did, Silk was not thinking of vines: \"The \ncold, sinking waters of underground streams that were sinking every year it \nseemed would never wash Orpine, would not rot her back to trees and \nflowers...\" Just saying, maybe if you read carefully first and interpret \nafter - and try not to overinterpret - things will make more sense. Like \nthe key imagery of this dream, for example, which I think is really pretty \nup front. This advice is not solely directed at you, Marc ;-) Honestly, \nWolfe is a far more straightforward writer than some folks give him credit \nfor!]\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "<720341.97074.qm@web161814.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-02-15T13:03:45+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk beating two horses, Orpine rotting to vines,\n\tand Wolfe's dedication", "in_reply_to": "<2B10DFD0F8BC4468AA94E0A2DF926DD8@jill>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "trees are just as important to me as vines, my bad I couldn't find it when I was writing the stuff last night. sorry about the title. The idea of two black horses that are brothers is interesting to me. These things beg for interpretation of some kind. Luckily we can explain waters receding in light of Lake Limna, or else I would be saying something else right now ...\n\n--- On Tue, 2/15/11, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n\nBut the dream explicitly says that Orpine will" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "NOT rot. And if she did, Silk was not thinking of\nvines: \"The cold, sinking waters of underground streams that\nwere sinking every year it seemed would never wash Orpine,\nwould not rot her back to trees and flowers...\"? Just\nsaying, maybe if you read carefully first and interpret\nafter - and try not to overinterpret - things will make more\nsense. Like the key imagery of this dream, for\nexample, which I think is really pretty up front. This\nadvice is not solely directed at you, Marc ;-)?\nHonestly, Wolfe is a far more straightforward writer than\nsome folks give him credit for!]" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-15T13:27:06+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk beating two horses, Orpine rotting to vines,\n and Wolfe's dedication", "in_reply_to": "<720341.97074.qm@web161814.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Marc Aramini: To Dan Knight, who will understand more than most. This right here validates \nall the twisted readings of Wolfe I've ever done, he is simply not a straightforward writer \nfrom the get go," }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nMarc, it upsets some people here greatly to think that Gene Wolfe would write in a way which\nis not meant to be understood. Perhaps \"not conciously understood\" is a more gracious way of \nthinking about it. If you consider that he wrote 5HoC and BotNS, Soldier series and Long\nSun before the internet, then any thinking person should at least wonder if he ever meant those\nstories to be fully understood by a majority of his audience. I am willing to label him (as\nan author) as a liar and trickster in the mold of some of the worst of his characters. (including\nwhen he writes \"Green is Urth\"; IMHO that was a true/not true trick as much as anything else he\nwrites)\n \nI don't have any answers for the puzzles you mention but maybe I have some vague intuitions on\nthe right directions Wolfe is pointing us toward." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Okay, in one dream, Silk is beat two black horses, but he is said to be whipping the wrong horse \nevery time he tries to hit its brother." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nI think there is some wordplay going on. A conflation of two equine metaphors- \"backing the wrong\nhorse\" and \"beating a dead horse\". Does this dream occur before Silk has fully accepted The Outsider\nas the true God? If so it could relate to backing Pas and his brood when he should be backing the \nOutsider. I dunno." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The horse winds up being cast into the save grave as orpine, who rots away to like flowers and vegetation \nin his dream..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "If the embryos were grown before, and in any way have a familial relationship to the monarch, could Mucor \nbe Echidna..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nI think it is important to remember that Mucor is a misnomer by Vironese convention. Mucor is neither \nplant nor animal, but a fungal mold which grows in soil and other rotting vegetative material. I think\nideas about the importance of plants and succession could be important. As Ushas is fertilized by the\ndeath of humanity, so something is fertilized by the death of plants. Again, nothing concrete to offer." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "disturbing is his immediate comparison of the Outsider with Auk, thinking, what if the Outsider is good ... \nin a dark way?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nI think gnostic thinking pervades this story. Our earthly Judeo-Christian creator Jahweh is surely primarily \na God of Light. Not so in Briah. The outsider is primarily a God of Dark. This doesn't mean He is bad or evil \nnecessarily but..well, perhaps each is missing something." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "he talks about how the Outsider split him in two, and how that old version of himself would be frightful to meet." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nI think this relates to Severian. There was a long discussion not so long ago about \"dark and light twins\" from\nBotNS. So many dark/light mirror images between these characters to be found. There is physical appearance, of \ncourse. There is the gentle augur vs. the rough torturer constrast. I'm thinking how Severian carries a blue \n(dark) light and a bright sword. SilkHorn carries a bright light and a dark sword (on Green). Severian seems immortal, \nSilk well, not so much. There is the suggestion in BotNS that Severian's light twin is Typhon, whom some think is \nrelated to Silk. Both Silk and Severian have associations with The Outsider (Severian's association is according to \nWolfe, directly).\n \n \n \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-15T14:29:03+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk beating two horses, Orpine rotting to vines,\n and Wolfe's dedication", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Gerry Quinn: Just saying, maybe if you read carefully first and interpret \nafter - and try not to overinterpret - things will make more sense. Like \nthe key imagery of this dream, for example, which I think is really pretty \nup front. This advice is not solely directed at you, Marc ;-) Honestly, \nWolfe is a far more straightforward writer than some folks give him credit \nfor!" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nThis is potent advice. If more people would follow it, more people would have the \nclear, straightforward understanding of Gene Wolfe that Gerry Quinn does. \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<376975.70123.qm@web161806.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-02-15T14:50:49+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk beating two horses, Orpine rotting to vines,\n\tand Wolfe's dedication", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't want to always incite words between Lee and Gerry, but Gerry, when I read something that I think is interesting or confusing, I like to write down a few quick thoughts and post to the discussion list, because, well, maybe somebody has a better understanding. Sorry about the imprecision. Its not theorizing in any but the loosest sense, like, gee, here is an image, does anybody think it could be this or this?\n\nThat is how my hybridization with trees scheme came about, when thoughtful discourse was engendered over weird facts.\n\nSometimes I forget things I noticed a long time ago. For example, where Mint calls Chenille an older sister, last night I saw on the bottom of the page where I had written \"both possessed by Kypris\" years ago, so that I came to the same conclusion the first time through as others here, forgotten it, then tried to read something into \"older\" sister that I clearly did not the first time through.\n\nThis last post especially was just bouncing around impressions to see if anybody else had some, it does not require a lot of thinking, because that is what a discussion list is for. \n\nAs far as the two horses, sometimes I get the feeling that perhaps it is Auk and Silk who are sharing the burden here instead of Silk and Severian. Who is the beaten, tortured horse in the Silk, Sev grafting? Or is it more like Piaton and Typhon? Two many \"yoked\" pairs to make a great comparison, but they are called, I think, \"brother\" horses.\n\nAs far as saving the manteion obsessively rather than saving the whorl, I think that works on one level but the brutality of the whipping, to death, does not seem to parallel that situation well in my mind." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- On Tue, 2/15/11, Lee Berman wrote:\nFrom: Lee Berman \nSubject: (urth) Silk beating two horses, Orpine rotting to vines, and Wolfe's dedication\nTo: urth at lists.urth.net\nDate: Tuesday, February 15, 2011, 6:29 AM" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Gerry Quinn: Just saying, maybe if you read carefully\nfirst and interpret \nafter - and try not to overinterpret - things will make\nmore sense. Like \nthe key imagery of this dream, for example, which I\nthink is really pretty \nup front. This advice is not solely directed at\nyou, Marc ;-)? Honestly, \nWolfe is a far more straightforward writer than some\nfolks give him credit \nfor!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " \nThis is potent advice. If more people would follow it, more\npeople would have the \nclear, straightforward understanding of Gene Wolfe that\nGerry Quinn does. ???\n????????\n?????? ???\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<112950.35158.qm@web161812.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-02-15T15:49:30+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk beating two horses, Orpine rotting to vines,\n\tand Wolfe's dedication", "in_reply_to": "<376975.70123.qm@web161806.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Just wanted to also add very quickly that the proliferation of theories in attempts to explain basic elements of the story indicates Wolfe is NOT straightforward. These kind of disagreements are impossible between intelligent readers discussing, for example, Asimov, or even most other SF authors, despite weird situations.\n\n\nIt says Silk's an embryo, but we have NO idea if the embryo has been grown before or is unique instead of a clone, if other embryos besides Silk are possibly related to Pas or artificially engineered. We do see four sets of parents. Are even Mucor and Silk related?\n\nfrom Gerry: no real specific parentage is implied in concrete details in the text beyond the calde and his adoptive mother\n\nothers: Mamelta is his birth mother\n\nLemur: typhon wanted an heir\n\nothers: he is that heir, of Typhon and Kypris\n\nme: Kypris is Mamelta, he is an heir to Pas\n\nothers: he is a clone of typhon or a clone of the son of typhon and kypris\n\nme: he is meant to succeed his father\nothers: he is meant to be taken over by Typhon's personality\nothers: there are a proliferation of Typhon's family and himself, cloned and placed into the whorl, to re-establish his monarchy as it stood before.\n\nIf we can't agree on even the Plan of Pas, its because Wolfe is not straightforward and clear in explaining exactly what is going on.\n\nWe can all agree R Daneel Olivaw is a robot with human qualities. Jonas is too, but in a really really really different way.\n\nI don't think these basic disagreements would arise even if we were discussing Shakespeare or Joyce before Finnegan's Wake. This multiplicity of interpretations is not possible in a straightforward author.\n\n\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerryq at indigo.ie" }, "date": "2011-02-15T16:12:46+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk beating two horses, Orpine rotting to vines,\n\tand Wolfe's dedication", "in_reply_to": "<376975.70123.qm@web161806.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Marc Aramini\" \nI don't want to always incite words between Lee and Gerry, but Gerry, when\nI read something that I think is interesting or confusing, I like to write \ndown a\nfew quick thoughts and post to the discussion list, because, well, maybe\nsomebody has a better understanding. Sorry about the imprecision. Its \nnot\ntheorizing in any but the loosest sense, like, gee, here is an image,\ndoes anybody think it could be this or this?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I wasn't being critical. I was just making the point that Wolfe is often \npretty straightforward if people would just let him be ;-)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As far as the two horses, sometimes I get the feeling that perhaps it is \nAuk and\nSilk who are sharing the burden here instead of Silk and Severian. Who is \nthe\nbeaten, tortured horse in the Silk, Sev grafting? Or is it more like \nPiaton and\nTyphon? Two many \"yoked\" pairs to make a great comparison, but they are\ncalled, I think, \"brother\" horses." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "At a basic level the horse imagery comes from the two real horses that \npulled the deadcoach Silk rode in that morning. To interpret the dream we \nneed to work out what they mean metaphorically. The obvious metaphor is \nthat they represent the urges or actions of the dreamer Certainly, Silk in \nthe dream is riding the deadcoach. That makes it hard for one horse to be \nSilk and one horse somebody else Typhon, if Silk were for some reason \ndreaming about riding him, would surely be a single horse with two heads. \nI'm at a loss to know what Severian would have to do with anything in the \nWhorl.\n\nOf course, by the metaphor both horses can be considered parts of Silk.\n\nThey are brother horses because they share the traces of the deadcoach, no \nmore." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As far as saving the manteion obsessively rather than saving the whorl, I \nthink that\nworks on one level but the brutality of the whipping, to death, does not \nseem to\nparallel that situation well in my mind." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The horse is not being whipped to death as such, but to exhaustion. But \nthese are dream horses, not real ones. Whipping the horse just means taking \na course of action. The dead horse probably represents the fruitlessness of \nthe wrong action.\n\nBut remember the central imagery of the dream - the grave going down too \ndeep, the velvet background of space and stars at its bottom, the dying \necology of the Whorl. What can that mean other than what it says, plain and \nsimple? And knowing that, what else can the horses mean other than Silk's \nactions as they pertain to Exodus? [You could try to squeeze Auk and Silk \ninto their shoes, with Silk as the whipped horse, but this doesn't really \nwork for a number of reasons, mainly that Silk does not fail in the end even \nthough he stays behind.]\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-15T16:40:18+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk beating two horses, Orpine rotting to vines,\n and Wolfe's dedication", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Marc Aramini: I don't want to always incite words between Lee and Gerry" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nIncite sounds so negative! I think much good comes from the interaction. I\nassume Gerry feels the same way, given his continued participation in the process.\nGroup members like Gerry (and there have been a number through the years) serve an\nimportant purpose. How many sons have been driven to great heights of acheivement in\ntrying to gain the acceptance of a hyper-critical, impossible to please father? Of \ncourse every stern, hectoring papa needs a counter-balance...." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "when I read something that I think is interesting or confusing, I like to write down a \nfew quick thoughts and post to the discussion list, because, well, maybe somebody has a \nbetter understanding. Sorry about the imprecision. Its not theorizing in any but the \nloosest sense, like, gee, here is an image, does anybody think it could be this or this?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nA number of years back there was a corporate/intellectual concept called \"brainstorming\"\nwhere ideas could be shared freely, without initial criticism, in hopes a synergistic\nprocess would take hold, energizing everyone's thinking in the process.\n \nIt didn't work very well. It was found that the best work was always done individually and\nthe brainstorming wasn't an efficient use of time. Plus certain group members were left \ngnashing their teeth and clawing the carpet when they weren't permitted to criticize.\n \nBut, in an electronic format, things are a bit different. There is no time constraint. There\nis no product to be efficiently and effectively manufactured (unless someone plans to publish) \nSo I think this forum provides just what youare looking for- a sounding board to help shape vague \nideas.\n \nIt seems like a law of nature that this board provokes the most interest and energy from \n\"stern papa\" (Apollonian) types, to the point that a group-think develops in which \"that's the way \nit is supposed to be; the ONLY way to be\". Maybe someday enough permanent \"nurturing mama\" \ninfluence will arrive to balance things out and allow ideas to grow. But, kinda doubtful. \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<4D5ABD0B.3030405@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-15T17:51:07+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<001201cbccd0$67385500$18d24a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy-\nThat when Fava's natural body died in the snow her spirit, as manifested by\nher astral body, lost its tether and became disembodied, which is why\nSilkhorn never saw her again.\n\n[snip]Her\nspirit body was starving, just as her natural body was starving back on\nBlue, and she knew it. When she returned from a spirit warp she immediately\nflew off to find human blood to drink, as did Juganu.\n[...]" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think it is a really interesting theory that an astral body will \neventually starve if the traveler does not return to his corporeal form. \nIt has the benefit of explaining why the Rajan did not allow leave \nJuganu and Jahlee in astral form. I'm not convinced it is true and the \nmain reason is that I think--if you were right-- it would be really \ninteresting to show the result of someone remaining in dream-travel, but \nWolfe didn't do that (admittedly my discrepancies are based on the \nabsence of information which I consider to be \"weak\" form argument). \nOther problems are:\n\n1) Jahlee doesn't say she's hungry in dream-travel IIRC. She only says \nthat the inhumi bring her food that she can't eat. Now that doesn't mean \nthat she isn't \"starving\" anyway. Still, it could be that astral bodies \nstarve but don't feel hunger.\n\n2) If an astral body can \"starve to death\" it has to be different from \nmerely being killed in astral travel. Fava is able to enter people's \ndreams. No one else who dies seems to be able to do that.\n\nNow, The fact that the Rajan doesn't RECORD any further meetings with \nFava, doesn't really bother me. I mean, if astral bodies can starve to \ndeath, then it takes a while. He still had plenty of opportunity to find \nher, right? Why didn't he? Also, that the Rajan says Juganu will \"die\" \nif he stays is not troubling (in itself) because of course his corporeal \nbody WILL die if he stays. Still, it doesn't explain why Juganu would care.\n\nSo, while I admit that the question of why the Rajan insisted the inhumi \nreturn with him is perplexing AND your explanation resolves that issue, \nI'm not convinced. There's something about it that makes me uneasy. It \nis possible that the Rajan could imagine all sorts of mischief that an \nastral inhumi could cause with the ability to walk through walls and \ncreate objects at will. So, he's unwilling to leave them unsupervised. I \nthink Jahlee wanted the Rajan to return for her because being stuck on \nGreen as a goddess to the inhumi is not what she wants.\n\nHOWEVER:\nWhat happens to Fava is still mysterious whether one believes she \n\"starved\" or if one believes she could not. I've assumed that her astral \nbody is not destroyed instantly when her corporeal body dies, but do we \nreally know? In that case, \"astral starving\" is really not the issue. \nHer astral body is destroyed and she is left in the Limbo-world of \ndreams. That would explain what the Rajan's warning to Juganu meant. But \nwould that be worse from the perspective of an inhumi than being stuck \nas a monster?\n\nPS Regarding the \"rations\" eaten by the Rajan's men. Is it possible that \nthe food an astral traveler carries with him into dream-travel is \nedible? In which case, I would presume that \"conjured\" food would be \nnourishing to dream travelers.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<002001cbce0f$00e91e20$92d14a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2011-02-16T19:23:27+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<4D5ABD0B.3030405@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "James Wynn wrote:\n[snip]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "1) Jahlee doesn't say she's hungry in dream-travel IIRC. She only says\nthat the inhumi bring her food that she can't eat. Now that doesn't mean\nthat she isn't \"starving\" anyway. Still, it could be that astral bodies\nstarve but don't feel hunger.\n\n2) If an astral body can \"starve to death\" it has to be different from\nmerely being killed in astral travel. Fava is able to enter people's\ndreams. No one else who dies seems to be able to do that." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The case of Fava is different from Jahlee (and Juganu) because her natural\nbody died during dream travel, but it does shed some light on the issue,\nhowever darkly. That is, she *did* feel hunger *after* she died. More below.\n\n[snip]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "HOWEVER:\nWhat happens to Fava is still mysterious whether one believes she\n\"starved\" or if one believes she could not. I've assumed that her astral\nbody is not destroyed instantly when her corporeal body dies, but do we\nreally know? In that case, \"astral starving\" is really not the issue.\nHer astral body is destroyed and she is left in the Limbo-world of\ndreams. That would explain what the Rajan's warning to Juganu meant. But\nwould that be worse from the perspective of an inhumi than being stuck\nas a monster?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "After the Battle of Blanko, Mora and Eco met up with Silkhorn at that\nfarmhouse Jahlee had taken over. She (Mora) recounted to him what had\nhappened to her since they last met. (This farmhouse meeting was right\nbefore the Rigoglio group warped to Urth.) She also consulted with Silkhorn\nabout the dreams she began having on her wedding night, and had been having\nevery night since. Those dreams were of herself and Fava as little girls,\nplaying with dolls and things. In her dreams Fava was a human girl, not an\ninhuma.\n\nThe dreams were pleasant, but since she knew Fava was in fact an inhuma and\nthe dreams were persistent, she thought \"something must be wrong.\" (IGJ,\n304) (Bear in mind that at this point she didn't know that Fava had died in\nthe snow.) Silkhorn responded, \"I believe that something must be right,\nMora.\" In fact, he envied her, wishing himself to be a small boy again in\nhis dreams. He then asked her if she would like for him to put a stop to the\ndreams, but warned her that if he did so, he would be unable to restore them\nagain, that they would be gone forever. He also warned her \"that these\ndreams may cease sometime of their own accord.\" (305) She said that if the\ndreams weren't dangerous she wanted to keep having them as long as she\ncould.\n\nHe replied: \"That's wise, I believe. You had a very short childhood, and you\nwere eager to leave it behind you, I know. I'm happy to see that the\nOutsider, who is far wiser than either of us, has found a way to prolong\nit.\" He then told her, \"You will never see her again, outside dreams.\" He\nthen told her Fava was dead. Mora said, \"This is crazy. I was playing dolls\nwith her last night.\" He nodded. \"Was I really? Was it true?\" (306) He\nresponded:\n\n\"I think so. It's the interior person that survives death, Mora. Fava was an\ninhuma, as we both know. We both know, also, that her interior person, her\nspirit, was not. When you yourself die -- and we all die -- you will be the\ninterior person, and there will be no other. To put it a bit more\naccurately, that interior person will be the only _you_ in existence.\"\n(ibid) He then gives her a little sermon to the effect that everyone should\ntry to be good, because everyone is stuck with their interior person, and\nthat gets harder and harder to do with age.\n\nFava's human *spirit* lived on after her natural body died, but could\nmanifest itself only in dreams. Silkhorn's spin on it is that, for Mora, it\nis a gift from the Outsider, a prolongation of Mora's unhappy, lonely\nchildhood, but bettered by the addition of a cherished playmate. But what\ndid Fava get out of it? In the middle of all this stuff I have described and\nquoted, Silkhorn spoke of the Outsider having arranged a sort of cosmic\nbalance \"with gain involving loss, and loss, gain.\" I think that when Fava's\nnatural body died, her good fortune was that her spirit was out of her body,\nin dream travel.\n\nIt is not dream travel that bestows a human spirit or soul; it is the\ndrinking of human blood. When Jahlee died, she still had a human spirit,\nevil as she and all inhumi may be (just as with humans); what became of that\nspirit after the death of her natural body is between her and the Outsider,\nand I will not speculate. But Fava's spirit (soul), whatever its ultimate\nfate, was not immediately harvested or otherwise dealt with by the Outsider.\nShe ended up in a sort of limbo or other plain of existence, such as is\ncommonly believed to be inhabited by ghosts.\n\nI don't know what Silkhorn thought he could do to put an end to Mora's\ndreams of Fava, but he also thought they might cease anyway. Maybe he meant\nonly that Mora would outgrow childish things, as people usually do when they\nlose their childhood sense of wonder. But he may have meant that Fava's\nexistence as a spirit was of limited duration.\n\nNow back to Fava's hunger.\n\nIn the scene where she and Mora possess Vadsig, it isn't hard to tell who\nsaid what, even in the same paragraph of dialogue. It is mentioned twice\nthat the possession will end when Onorifica wakes Mora for breakfast. Fava\nsays, \"That's the good thing about this. I can eat.\" (RTTW, 178) By \"good\nthing about this\" she means, of course, the possession of Vadsig. Mora is\nasleep and cannot eat, and Fava comes to her in dreams. Hide is pissed about\nthe possession of his girl and wants them to leave her. After Silkhorn\nidentifies the possessors, Hide mentions that Fava is really dead. Silkhorn\nsays, \"Death isn't a hard and fast line like the edge of a table. It is a\nprocess, and it can be a long time before the dead person is entirely\ngone -- indeed, it may not end in total dissolution at all.\" I take that\nlast bit for the usual human religious belief that there is a life after\ndeath.\n\nHe goes on to say \"and if Fava wants to eat and Vadsig allows it, I'll have\nto arrange for food--\" Further along he addresses Vadsig, \"Fava -- I believe\nit's Fava -- would like you to eat. I may be mistaken, but I think she'll\nmake you eat voraciously. Is that all right?\" Vadsig agreed and Fava said,\n\"But I won't make her hurt herself or drink blood like I used to, Incanto.\"\nIn the same paragraph Mora said, \"I won't let Fava make her sick.\" Food was\narranged for.\n\nThe point is that Fava had a helluva appetite that Mora obviously couldn't\nassuage, and what good could eating vicariously through possession of Vadsig\nreally do for a spirit, with or without a spirit body? If Fava had a spirit\nbody, and could eat, she could have fed herself. Since I think Fava lost her\nspirit body when her natural body died, I think her desire to eat was just\nfor the vicarious thrill she got out of it, the chance to do, in a way, what\nshe didn't get a chance to do when she briefly had a human spirit body.\n\nNo matter how you cut it, that girl was hungry -- or thought she was.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-17T00:30:08+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<002001cbce0f$00e91e20$92d14a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thanks Roy. I've been a bit confused on why Vadsig was possessed by Mora and Fava.\nThere is still some mystery to it. How? Why? But your ideas shed some light on the\nsubject. \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<4D5D47B8.3020006@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "António Pedro Marques", "address": "entonio at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-17T16:07:20+00:00", "subject": "(urth) On dream travelers", "in_reply_to": "<002001cbce0f$00e91e20$92d14a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I liked Fava." } ] } ] }