Inhumi secret

Andrew Mason28 Nov 2012, 15:33

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Lee Berman wrote: nate jarvis: If everyone on Earth stops having sex or doing needle drugs for what? a year? then we all go and get AIDS tests, then AIDS is cured. THAT sounds more likely than everyone being nice to one another to wipe out vampire-like monsters they'd rather lynch. Horn seems to to feel if he revealed the secret it would spell trouble for the inhumi as well.

My own thinking is in line with nates, but I have to admit that Jerry's thinking is congruent with Wolfe's quote in the Gevers interview. Perhaps we are just supposed to accept it at face value. (urg..but I just...can't...do....that)

We should bear in mind, though, that the Rajan himself is very doubtful about whether the secret is really useful. "If you will, it is a great and terrible weapon. That is how the inhumi themselves see it, and I will not call them wrong. But it is a weapon too heavy for our hands." This does of course raise the question why the inhumi themselves feel threatened by it. Did they ever meet a people who were able to use it? Certainly not the Neighbours, who were also overwhelmed by them.

DAVID STOCKHOFF28 Nov 2012, 15:57

↳ in reply to Andrew Mason

Perhaps the Neighbors were somewhat better at it than we would be. They did after all gather enough "political will" to leave Blue and Green entirely. I don't see humans doing even that much. Or perhaps Krait has a more developed imagination, and a better grasp of ethics, than we assume---fully human, in other words, and not dependent on linear stimulus-response thinking.

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________________________________ From: Andrew Mason <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com> To: urth at lists.urth.net Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 10:33 AM Subject: (urth) Inhumi secret Lee Berman wrote:

nate jarvis: If everyone on Earth stops having sex or doing needle drugs for what? a year? then we all go and get AIDS tests, then AIDS is cured. THAT sounds more likely than everyone being nice to one another to wipe out vampire-like monsters they'd rather lynch. Horn seems to to feel if he revealed the secret it would spell trouble for the inhumi as well.

nate jarvis28 Nov 2012, 17:09

↳ in reply to DAVID STOCKHOFF

We should bear in mind, though, that the Rajan himself is very doubtful about whether the secret is really useful. "If you will, it is a great and terrible weapon. That is how the inhumi themselves see it, and I will not call them wrong. But it is a weapon too heavy for our hands." </Andrew Mason> So is it not a weapon too heavy for the Neighbors' hands? Did their "final" coordination affect the inhumi strongly/adversely enough that they paranoidly expect humans to do something different but with similar effect, even if most humans would see such coordinated, instantaneous "goodness" as utterly impossible? Nate.

DAVID STOCKHOFF28 Nov 2012, 20:15

↳ in reply to nate jarvis

Actually, I think they see a potential for good in us that we don't. They may inflate it somewhat because it represents a grave danger to them. But they are smart enough to not take it for granted---at least those who converse with the Rajan don't. Of course, the population of humans on Blue is much smaller than that on Earth, so it may seem more realistic on Blue than here. Perhaps their experience with the Neighbors surprised them in some way---they may have found a few uncorruptible Neighbors; presumably not too farfetched for humans, however "impossible."

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________________________________ From: nate jarvis <natejarv at gmail.com> To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 12:09 PM Subject: Re: (urth) Inhumi secret We should bear in mind, though, that the Rajan himself is very doubtful about whether the secret is really useful. "If you will, it is a great and terrible weapon. That is how the inhumi themselves see it, and I will not call them wrong. But it is a weapon too heavy for our hands." </Andrew Mason> So is it not a weapon too heavy for the Neighbors' hands? Did their "final" coordination affect the inhumi strongly/adversely enough that they paranoidly expect humans to do something different but with similar effect, even if most humans would see such coordinated, instantaneous "goodness" as utterly impossible? Nate. _______________________________________________

nate jarvis29 Nov 2012, 02:07

↳ in reply to DAVID STOCKHOFF

But if humans on Blue were all "good", wouldn't they all let the inhumi feed from them, the way the Rajan does? Nate.

Jerry Friedman29 Nov 2012, 15:16

↳ in reply to nate jarvis

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From: nate jarvis <natejarv at gmail.com>

But if humans on Blue were all "good", wouldn't they all let the inhumi feed from them, the way the Rajan does?

You can be good without being that good, and the inhumi might naturally worry about the worst case, which is humans wiping them out. However, this is a good point, and it might be fun to speculate. If the inhumi picked up self-reliance from self-reliant humans, would they want to work for their blood or beef tea? “As messengers” “Entertainers” “Clerics, which Quetzal was good at” “Isn't there something about them not being good at manual labor” Jerry Friedman

Lee Berman29 Nov 2012, 16:25

↳ follows, by subject match Jerry Friedman

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David Stockhoff: Perhaps the Neighbors were somewhat better at it than we would be. They did after all gather enough "political will" to leave Blue and Green entirely. I don't see humans doing even that much.

I agree with this. I get the sense that the Neighbors, though previously highly susceptible to the evil of Inhumi are now immune to them. Perhaps this is related to the fact that they no longer exist entirely in our physical, material plane

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Actually, I think they see a potential for good in us that we don't. They may inflate it somewhat because it represents a grave danger to them. But they are smart enough to not take it for granted---

I think this general direction of thinking might get to the heart not only of Short Sun but perhaps the whole Sun series. I've long gotten the sense that Wolfe is depicting a kind of spiritual progression across the 12 books. I'll guess Green is the starting point and the Edenic associations to it support that. Urth and The Whorl, war-torn and ruled by superhuman pagan gods, is probably the next stage in the progression. Ushas and Blue would be next; the Flooding somehow keeps the rule of the giant gods at a more manageable level? As seems to be Wolfe's wont, he doesn't directly address the impact of Christ's arrival in his fiction. But advanced beings like the hierotypes, The Green Man and Neighbors would seem to illustrate what the next stage beyond our own current status might be.

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