Subject: (urth) a pre-writeup general question on the short story Lukora

From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2015 17:34:47 +0000

Trying to finish up a few write ups in the late 80s and one that I have
thought about but not started seriously yet is Lukora.  The plot is simple
enough, possibly off world surveyors are searching for "Small Folk" and the
female suffers bouts of unconsciousness while following the male as he
wanders around in the forest (full of "needle- trees"). They meet up with a
pale woman whose initial description is tri-partite before she comes close,
and it is merely her dark hair over her white shoulders splitting her so.
Eventually the female seems to be overcome with a kind of blood lust that
is almost lycanthropic.

The story is like a mixture of SF and fantasy, but the name Lukora seems
close to the Spanish word locura, for madness or insanity.  If it is SF,
then this seems to be a "rabies" kind of story where the periods of
unconsciousness are a kind of scientific lycanthropy and both of the
searchers are contaminated.  While Wolfe has done the tree/bacteria thing
in Fifth Head, the needle trees (Evergreens) keep coming up here and I
don't want to necessarily say that the small folk they seek are like the
shadow children or the personified bacteria of Peritonitis, but the tribe
which Michael battles has some members almost as tall as him ...

Trying to decide if I should pursue the possibility of a female goddess of
madness and mythic resonances or the SF element - is the Lukora/locura
similarity simply  made up or is personified madness the theme?

The other issue: This was written for Terry Carr's memorial anthology, an
influential editor and SF fan who also did some writing of his own.  His
Universe and Best of Anthologies are fairly famous.  Any allusion to his
work, fiction, or editing, could be so wide ranging as to be beyond the
scope of my research allotment for this brief story (the stories in his
collections are diverse and permeate the genre).  Is anyone familiar with
Carr's own fictional worlds to posit a direct allusion, or is this merely a
story Wolfe wrote for the anthology?

Thought maybe someone would be more familiar with Carr's particular genre
impact than I was.
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