Subject: (whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v011.n035

From: Jeffrey Meyers <jeffmeyers at earthlink.net>
Date: Sun, 03 Sep 2000 22:34:14 +0000

Endymion9 wrote:

> OBW p.126
> 
> "Would it be effective for us to dig up one of the recent inhumations and
> release him to warn the others?  The thought recurs.
> If the inhumas' eggs hatched in our climate, would not our human kind
> become extinct?  What tricks Nature plays!  If they are natural creatures at
> all.
> But they surely are.  Natural creatures native to Green.  Why would the
> Neighbors create something so malign?"

Endymion9's quotation of this passage in support of the fact that the inhumi
do not breed on Blue reminded me of a thought I had after reading this
passage again the other night.  I don't remember anyone on the list
discussing this.  Are the inhumi the Neighbors' creation?  It's possible.
They (the Neighbors and the inhumi) don't seem to have been living side by
side for ages.  Rather, it seems as if the Neighbors' thriving civilization
was brought down by the inhumi.  Where did they come from?  Did they arrive
from some other planet?  Or are they the result of the experimentation of
the Neighbors, a failed attempt at some sort of biological experiment?  Are
the inhumi the curse on the technilogical hubris of the Neighbors?  Someone
may shoot this down immediately, but I don't remember anything in OBW or IGJ
that would rule it out.  The fact that Horn brings it up and then rules it
out simply on moral grounds seems to indicate that it is possible.  The
Neighbors may not have created the inhumi "so malign", but they may have
*become* so.

Patera Bunny

*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.
*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.moonmilk.com/whorl/
*To leave the list, send "unsubscribe" to whorl-request at lists.best.com
*If it's Wolfe but not Long Sun, please use the URTH list: urth at lists.best.com