{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/743", "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": 743, "subject": "If you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1998-06-05T14:52:43+00:00", "last": "1998-06-08T07:45:13+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Robert Borski", "address": "rborski at coredcs.com" }, "date": "1998-06-05T14:52:43+00:00", "subject": "(urth) If you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "To my esteemed colleague from across the Pond, re our latest 5H debate:\n\nAll right, Tony, you win.\n\nMillions of years ago, pre-Flintstones spacecraft traveled to Sainte Anne,\nwhere the spacehumans subsequently forgot the technical skills required to\nferry them back across 20 light years of space, and subsequently\nretrogressed to the level of savages.\n\nMeanwhile, back here on Earth, as hundreds of thousands of lifeforms\nthrived, then died off (hello dinosaurs, hello neanderthals, hello dodo),\nHomo sapiens pangalacticus re-evolved the necessary skills to make the\ntransit back across the leagues of space to Sainte Anne, where the natives\nhave never changed over a similar span of millennia, and a single solitary\nviable hybrid is produced between Annese and human.\n\nThis is much easier to accept and scientifically valid that the notion the\nparents of Victor Roy Trenchard are simply both abos.\n\nLogic rules, Mr. Ellis.\n\nI stand in your shadow.\n\nRobert Borski (who although he may vehemently disagree with TE still\nenormously respects his opinion because at least he's read FIFTH HEAD and\ncan marshal his arguments from text. We simply have alternate takes on the\nsame book, eh?)" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "1998-06-08T07:45:13+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: If you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It may be just me, but do I detect a teensy note of irony here? " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Millions of years ago, pre-Flintstones spacecraft traveled to Sainte Anne..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Meanwhile, back here on Earth, as hundreds of thousands of lifeforms\nthrived, then died off (hello dinosaurs, hello neanderthals, hello dodo),\nHomo sapiens pangalacticus re-evolved the necessary skills to make the\ntransit back across the leagues of space to Sainte Anne, where the natives\nhave never changed over a similar span of millennia, and a single solitary\nviable hybrid is produced between Annese and human.\n\n...Logic rules, Mr. Ellis." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "If you find this too fantastic blame GW, not me, Robert. Because however\nillogical, the Gondwanaland theory is raised too many times for us to\njust look the other way and pretend it isn't there. Care to count along\nwith me?\n\nIn Fifth Head, young Gene suggests it during lessons with Mr Million.\nOk, he's just a kid trying to be clever. Forget it. I mean it's not as\nif Gene Wolfe ever hides the truth in plain view or anything, is it? \n\nIn \"A Story\", it is the Old Wise One who says \"It is possible that our\nhome was named Atlantis or Mu, Gondwanaland, Africa, Poictesme, or The\nCountry of Friends\". Coincidence, right? That's why there's a subtheme\nrunning the whole length of the novella about how the shape-changing\nindigenous Annese were once visited by a race of space-going humans. (Oh\nyes, and their home world had a yellow sun.)\n\nFinally, in \"VRT\" it is Dr Marsch who muses that \"there remain a great\nmany reports of a native race so similar to human beings that they might\nalmost have been the descendants of an earlier wave of colonization.\"\n\n\"What I tell you three times is true.\"\n\nIf it's the lack of human evolution on St Anne that bothers you, there\nare several answers. For starters, \"Gondwonaland\" may be intended more\nas a name to conjure with than a fixed reference. The Old Wise One also\nmentions Africa, which may imply a migration only after the continents\nbroke up. Atlantis, if we're to believe Plato, sank a mere 11,000 years\nago.\n\nOn top of this, we _do_ see some signs of evolution. That knack of\nmimicry came from somewhere, and the dreams of the Free People imply a\nnascent telepathic ability, too. (Presumably the ability to use tools\nwasn't de-evolved overnight, either.)\n\nNot least of all, a lack of change is very much in keeping with the\npeculiarly timeless, dreaming character of The Back of Beyond that Wolfe\nconveys. Like the Australian subcontinent it so closely resembles, St\nAnne seems to be a world that exists outside of the normal flow of time." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This is much easier to accept and scientifically valid that the notion the\nparents of Victor Roy Trenchard are simply both abos." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "There is nothing \"simple\" about your notion that Victor's parents are\nboth abos! It is precisely the fact that it requires so much shoring-up\nand rewriting of the texts that makes me mistrust it. (And how\n\"scientifically valid\" is the idea of grafting human limbs onto 100%\nalien tissue?)\n\nTony Ellis (who thinks that if he has to suspend his disbelief in God to\naccept the logic underpinning The Book of the New Sun, everyone else can\naccept a trifling prehistoric migration or two.)" } ] } ] }