Subject: Re: Blue Planet / Green Planet / Dreams

From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2002 13:49:44 +0000

Look, I think you are being too literal.

The Blue Planet/ Green Planet dichotomy surely goes back to THE FIFTH HEAD
OF CERBERUS

In that story also travel to the Green planet from the Blue planet is
associated with loss of self, and a plunge into a Dreamspace which has an
ambiguous relationship with reality.

In that story also, time and history are warped.  The "abos" seem to be
genetically human, but are they?  Really?  If so how did they get there?

This is not explained in TFHOC, and this not-explanation is a signal, a
shove, that pushes the abos from the status of  science-fictional creatures
to creatures of myth.

In that story, also, the Green world is inhabited by "apes of humanity"  (in
the sense that the devil is the Ape of God)  who become convinced that they
are human.

What this tells us is that Wolfe is plugging an old theme here.  This is
mythogenisis, not science fiction.   The Green World represents something
which is to be understood on he level of myth, not reality.

Green and Blue are not Urth and Lune, nor are they St Croix and St Anne.
The Green World is a place of physical horror and destruction, but also a
place of visions.

    Andy Robertson

----- Original Message -----
From: "maa32" <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
To: <whorl at lists1.ba.best.com>
"
> experiences?  At first, I was sure that Blue and Green were Ushas and Lune
> (albeit a Lune that had been somehow cast from its orbit into a
heliocentric
> orbit and in which the green terraforming had gotten out of control, but
it is
> still close enough to effect the tides of Blue), but I find that stance
> untenable in light of the accurate pasage of time between the Nessus that
> Rigoglio remembers and the actual progress of the city.