Subject: (whorl) SS Stuff on a Monday

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2001 09:20:18 +0000

Michael, no, your theory, attractive though it is (I love the idea of
embarassing vampires to death...), simply doesn't fit with many of the 
Narr's statements about the nature of the SotI. While pricking them in
the vanity might do any number of things to the Inhumi, causing them 
to become mindless leechagators is just _not_ a likely result.

Okay, now as to the utopia thing. There definitely does seem to be an
aspect of that in SS. Some aspects worth considering:

1) It's clearly a form of the Hero's Journey. 

2) If Wolfe is going to write a Utopia, it will be a Christian utopia
   -- which is almost a contradiction in terms, given the Christian
   belief that "this world" is radically Fallen and no true utopia is
   possible short of Heaven. But and counterweighting this we need
   also to remember that the word "utopia" comes from the Catholic 
   St. Sir Thomas More, and did not, in his hands, mean a "perfect"
   state so much as an optimal one. 

3) It's also in dialogue with several other things besides KSR's Mars
   books (which I haven't read, btw: are they really worth the effort?).

   a) Another three-volume hero's journey: Dante. Nell mezzo del camino 
      de whatever Horn finds himself all at sea (so to speak), lost. His 
      journeys lead him through Hell (Green), Purgatory (the Whorl), and 
      ultimately to, uh, well, that's where it gets kind of complicated...

      But there's also a political Commedia here, as the Narrator 
      journeys through hell (the theo-monarchies of OBW), purgatory (the 
      Italianate city-states of IGJ), and paradise (the democracy of Dorp 
      and the jolly quasi-anarchy of NV), only political "paradise" ain't 
      no paradise anyway, which leads me to point b.

   b) Another well-known SF political "utopian" novel featuring twin 
      worlds, where the Hero's Journey leads him to realize that political 
      utopia ain't going to happen? I refer, of course, to Le Guin's THE 
      DISPOSSESSED. (Btw, if we take it that this dialog is intended-- and 
      I think a strong case can be made for this -- then there is also an 
      implicit  dialog with Delany's [TROUBLE ON] TRITON.) 

   c) And, of course, it is in dialog with (and implicitly critiques, if 
      only by differentiae) the LONG and NEW SUN books.

I think I'll go take my medication now.

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From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 01:44:53 +0000

Well, I haven't got much to say on this other than to direct your attention to:

http://world.std.com/~pduggan/wolfeint.html

> GW: The adventurous reader has probably already moved past
> realism. I realize that sounds like a smart remark, but I mean past
> the kind of fiction that is called "realism" as a literary genre,
> and that's what it is: a literary genre. It is archtypically the
> story about the college professor who is married to the other
> college professor.

> Did you read Ursula K. LeGuin's novel, The Dispossessed? It was
> about the college professor who's married to a college professor,
> only science fiction, and this planet is Russia and this planet is
> the United States. When I read it I was so disappointed. I'd had a
> dozen people tell me how wonderful it was.

> Q: Yeah, I heard that too. Then I read it. 

> GW: I've read that book before; I've read it as realism many a
> time. It's a John Updike kind of book. I've read that story so many
> times ... now I read a book until I can recognize the story, and
> say, "This is what it is," and that's as far as it goes, since I
> have no urge to finish it. I'm long past feeling so guilty that I
> have to finish everything I start. I don't finish ninety percent of
> what I start.

> Look, the reason someone should go past that sort of realism is that
> it is narrow, stultifying and ultimately false.

I'll add that I agree with Wolfe about THE DISPOSSESSED.  It plus THE
LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS stands as my examplar of how even when the prose
quality is uniformly excellent, a writer can vary wildly in quality.

Also, I still like Short Sun despite remaining clueless about the many
apparent red herrings it introduces.  The emotional impact didn't feel
forced or as if he were tired of the series to me--although it did
feel as if Silk/Horn was tired of writing.

--
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)
Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department
8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce

---

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 23:03:47 +0000

> to become mindless leechagators is just _not_ a likely result.

My original theory was that the Narrator meant this metaphorically.  That
if humans knew what the inhumi were, then they would regard them as
mindless leechagators, rather than intellegent, possibly superior
predators.  The inhumi want to be taken for human, but they'll settle for
Count Dracula (judging from Krait's initial encounters with Horn) so long
as they don't have to be mere vampire bats.

On re-reading OBW, I see that the Rajan's words are hard to take
metaphorically (he talks about the inhumi possibly being better off as
mindless reptiles)--of course this is the same guy who claims to think
Silk might be living on Green or some other continent of Blue and who
claims to believe that hogwash about inhumi flying from Green to Blue, so
what does he know!

Seriously, it could be both: loving each other would mean the inhumi could
no longer prey on humans and would lose their intelligence, but the Rajan
also says that this is *not* the Secret that the inhumi are hunting him
for.  So the Secret could still be that they want to be human.

On Mon, 9 Apr 2001, Adam Stephanides wrote:

> 'Fraid not; your theory won't jibe with Horn's statement that the Secret  
> "is a weapon too heavy for our hands," and that the Neighbors knew it,
> but could not wield it (IGJ, 125).  The humans on Blue are perfectly
> capable of saying to the inhumi "nyah, nyah, you aren't really
> human," and the Neighbors presumably could have done the same. 

I take this to mean that the weapon is not too heavy to wield at all, but
too heavy to wield responsibly.  It would be too cruel (yes, more cruel
even than burying them alive--how many inhumi claim to prefer death to
abandoning the dreamwalking worlds where they seem fully human?) and
Silkhorn believes that by exercising such cruelty, humans would ultimately
harm themselves as well as the inhumi.

Further evidence: It is Hornsilk's harsh frustration of Juganu's desire to
experience human life on Urth that seems to lead to the inhumi attack.  
Other inhumi he adopted and treated as human, and they seem to have loved
him in return, but he rubs Juganu's face in his inhumanity and it enrages
him.  

-Rostrum

---

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 11:43:34 +0000

> ultimately to, uh, well, that's where it gets kind of complicated...

I like this, though I don't know if Wolfe intended it.  But surely Purgatory
would be the Whorl _and_ Blue, with the conversation with Remora
corresponding to the final purging of Dante's sins; and the undepicted
voyage to the stars would be the Paradiso.  That would make either Seawrack
or Nettle Beatrice; either would fit.  But who is Virgil, then?  Since
Virgil left Dante at the end of the Purgatorio, the logical candidate would
be Horn's spirit, which (as I've argued before) leaves Silk's body around
this time; which would mean that it is Silk who corresponds to Dante.  But
Silk wasn't on Green, except in astral form, and that came after the Whorl,
so this doesn't fit.

> no paradise anyway, which leads me to point b.

This, otoh, I don't see.  There's no significant difference in forms of
governance between the city-states of IGJ and those of RttW, as far as I
remember; if anything, Blanko is better governed than either Dorp or New
Viron.  And anyway, Dante liked theo-monarchies.

--Adam