Babbie's 20-20-20-20 vision

Patera Nutria, my fellow quinquagenarian, having asked: <3. I cannot recall evidence that Neighbors have two heads. Neither Babbie nor any of the other indigenous lifeforms of Blue do, do they?> Not sure. How do you interpret the scene on dream-Urth that Hoof describes as following: "Our boat was water, and Babbie was a hairy man with thick arms and real big shoulders, and glasses, and a couple of Babbie's eyes (the little ones)." (Note also how Hoof describes Horn as looking more like the father he remembers from Blue.) Will I now be damned if I theorize that Babbie has at least tetra-ocular vision--half of which apparently needs correction by spectacles? By Pas's bright four eyes, I'm almost sure of it! Robert Borski *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

Further Borskianism:

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You aren't even damned for thinking the Neighbors have two heads, or seven if it makes you happy; just wrong (or at best unsubstantiated). But you are quite right about Babbie (and thus presumably other Bluvian critters, including the Neighbors) having four eyes. This fits the general theme -- elephants with eight legs & two trunks, etc. (BTW, I noticed the two trunks long before I picked up the octopedality, and had a rather nightmarish flashback to FOOTFALL, the last book by either Niven or Pournelle I bothered even trying to read. Niven shot his wad as a writer long ago; and Pournelle never had one.) Again: I can't offer direct evidence that Neighbors, Hus, octodiles, etc., don't have two heads apiece; I have only my argument that, if they do, one head does not constitute the "person" in the same way that Typhon's transplanted head "is" Typhon. [H'mmmmm. PiaTyphon, I think, has to be added to my list of bleshed people in the SUN books. This "theme" looks bigger every time I look at it. One thing for sure about Typhon and Piaton: it wasn't syzygy...]

Thanks for reminding me of this. There was something that bothered me about Hoof-and-Hide's decision that Silkhorn is not their father: this scene is what was niggling in the back of my head. You'd think he'd (or they'd) have more of a clue that, yep, Dad's in there. *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.