{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1333", "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": "whorl", "thread": { "id": 1333, "subject": "Dealing with the inhumi (was Re: (whorl) To Adam: Christ in Eden)", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2001-04-10T20:07:19+00:00", "last": "2001-04-10T20:07:19+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2001-04-10T20:07:19+00:00", "subject": "Dealing with the inhumi (was Re: (whorl) To Adam: Christ in Eden)", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "on 4/9/01 3:25 AM, Nicholas Gevers at vermoulian at yahoo.com wrote:\nAssuming (as Wolfe and Silk are, let me emphasise\nagain, unwilling naively to do) that the Secret can be\nfully harnessed" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "To be sure: Silk explicitly states that the Secret can't be used (I'm not\nsure what Wolfe thinks). But he does say that if everyone _could_ love each\nother, then the inhumi could be reduced to unintelligent animals. And the\ninhumi think the Secret can be used, so it must be at least plausible." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "it has a clear practical application.\nNote how often Horn/Silk emphasises the vulnerability\nof the poor, the elderly, and the isolated to the\ninhumi. Answer: protect them, look after them, so that\nthey are no longer defenseless; implement social\njustice, stop fighting among yourselves." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, this is the received view on this list. But when I think about it, I\ndon't see how it would work. We're talking, after all, about predators who\ncan fly. The only way to protect the isolated would be to end their\nisolation: i.e., to make everyone live in a larger settlement, like it or\nnot. And people doing agricultural tasks would have to be guarded all the\ntime, which basically implies doing everything collectively. And you'd also\nneed a centralized registry of all the humans on Blue, to stop inhumi from\ninsinuating themselves into people's households like Fava did. If this is\nthe way to defeat the inhumi, then the colonists don't need another Jesus,\nthey need another Stalin.\n\nOtoh, maybe this would only be necessary during conjunction; maybe without\nthe harvest during conjunction, not enough inhumi can get human blood for\nthe population of intelligent inhumi to be self-sustaining. In that case,\nall that would be necessary would be for everybody to shelter in a city\nduring conjunction. That wouldn't be so hard. In fact, the motive of\nself-preservation alone could lead the colonists to implement it, and the\ncities to bear the burden of sheltering a large population for a few weeks\nevery few years. (I could be misremembering and conjunction lasts much\nlonger, in which case disregard this paragraph.) But in that case, \"loving\none another\" doesn't enter into it. And it's hard to see why Silk would\nthen say that the Secret can't be used. (You'd still need the central\nregistry, though.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Utopia, in\nother words. And once this has been realised, by all\nmeans offer the inhumi a voluntary source of human\nblood; make them human, absorb them into utopia." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But Silk says that if we loved one another, the inhumi could be reduced to\nanimals, not made human." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Adam: “But Horn doesn't kill Jahlee as a deterrent to\nother inhumi; he kicks her to death in anger, and is\ndeeply ashamed of it afterwards. (And if it had been\na deterrent, then it didn't work, since it was\nfollowed shortly afterwards by the mass attack.)\n\n“I agree, though, that Jahlee's death is a plausible\ndevelopment, though not inevitable. My complaint was\nnot at the failure of the inhumi subplot to resolve in\na utopian fashion, but at its failure to resolve at\nall (except as far as Jahlee is concerned). The\nSecret was a big letdown (I don't buy the theory that\nHorn has concealed the real secret from us, for\nreasons I've stated before, and if I did it wouldn't\nmake me happier), and the victory over the massed\ninhumi at the wedding solves nothing.\n\n“The more I think about that wedding attack, though,\nthe fishier it \nsounds. Such a mass attack (at least six hundred\ninhumi) seems to be\nunprecedented. It must be very rare, at least, or Blue\nwould have to be far more militarized and regimented\nthan it is. Would Juganu really be able to get\nhundreds of inhumi deviate from their usual habits and\njoin him in his private revenge? And would these\ninhumi continue the attack once they saw that the\nwedding party was armed, contrary to expectations?”\n\nJahlee’s death foreshadows the wedding massacre, which\nIS a deterrent." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not really. All it does is demonstrate that massed attack against superior\nweaponry is a losing tactic. The inhumi already know that humans will\ndefend themselves." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Adam, I think you miss the real\nmotives for Juganu’s attack, motives which numerous\nother inhumi share. Motive Number One: Horn/Silk and\nhis wife know the Secret, and those around them may\nwell have got wind of it too. So: attack en masse and\nkill them when they are all together." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "If the object was to kill Silkhorn and his family, there were a lot of\nbetter opportunities to wipe them out than during the wedding. If the idea\nwas to wipe out everybody who might have heard the Secret, the inhumi should\nhave realized that they were bound to fail (the commotion would attract\narmed men sooner or later), and the survivors would have no qualms about\nusing the Secret, assuming they knew it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Motive Number Two: Silk/Horn is a\nMessiah to the Inhumi, the human being in whom they\nhave reposed much of their hope of becoming truly\nhuman; now he has turned against them, and they feel\nbetrayed. So attack en masse and kill him. And forget\nthe risks of doing so." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I really don't recall any evidence that the inhumi generally see Silkhorn as\na savior." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In other words, the inhumi subplot certainly resolves\nitself; the terms on which humans should interact with\nthe inhumi are laid down: tame them, in a nutshell,\nfirst by force and then by another sort of sanguinary\nsuasion, as it were." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I still don't see that the wedding massacre contributes anything to this.\nThe colonists were defending themselves against the inhumi already. Since\nthe inhumi are unlikely to repeat their tactical mistake, the colonists\nhaven't learned anything useful to the battle. And if Silk did indeed have\n\"loving the inhumi into submission,\" so to speak, in his mind, he never\nmentions it to anybody. (He talks about the humans' cruelty making the\ninhumi crueler, but that's not the same thing.)\n\n--Adam\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }