{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/655",
    "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": 655,
    "subject": "Covers; Inhumi; Who is Horn?",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-10-04T10:07:32+00:00",
    "last": "1999-10-04T10:07:32+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0010-0056@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "David Lebling",
        "address": "david_lebling at avid.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-10-04T10:07:32+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Covers; Inhumi; Who is Horn?",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "alga (I think) wrote that the cover illustration is wrong because it shows Horn\nwith a beard.  Just a little correction: the cover is clearly illustrating\nSeawrack's return (about p. 240).  Just a few pages earlier Horn refers to his\nbeard.  (Besides, the fact that Horn shaves doesn't mean he can't have a beard\n-- lots of people with beards shave part of their face to keep the beard safely\nconfined to a limited area).  Horn should be bald, though, and Babbie could use\na few more legs.  The boat looks a bit too big to me as well, to add another\nnitpick; this is a boat that seems in danger of swamping every other chapter.\n'Way too much freeboard in that sucker on the cover for that!\n\nOn the subject of Babbie's limbs, I find it interesting (but wholly appropriate)\nthat the Neighbors also have eight  (four legs and four arms, to be exact).\nThey also have fur.  I think Babbie is to a Neighbor as a chimpanzee is to a\nhuman.\n\n *\n* *\n\nDan Rabin wrote:\n<<Morally repugnant to whom?  My interpretation of Krait's \"cattle\" metaphor\nand his comment \"I must eat\" is that the inhumi's drinking of blood is as\nmatter-of-fact to them as eating fish is to Horn.  When leatherskins kill\nhumans, are they being immoral?>>\n\nAt one point Krait remarks that inhumi prey on humans preferentially, because\nthey like human blood better than that of other \"cattle.\"  I think this is at\nleast morally suspect on their part.  This is worse than humans preferentially\neating chimpanzees or dolphins, I think: inhumi show little evidence (so far) of\nbeing more intelligent than humans.\n\n *\n* *\n\nmantis opines:\n<<Ah, the Horn who is writing (aka \"the Rajan of Gaon\") is one eyed and white\nhaired, like Odin.  But he also has a hurt ankle, is sometimes confused\nwith Silk by others (just because he's wearing the clothes, walking the\nwalk, talking the talk <g>), often confuses the names of his own twins\n(\"Horn [sic] and Hide\") as well as writing of Horn in the third person, and\neven, in the very end, says that =he= caught the ball (at the beginning of\nTBOTLS)!  He =is= Silk, in some as-yet-unspecified way. Not to mention the\nintriguing \"Passilk\"!>>\n\nI think that Passilk is the merging of Silk and Pas, hinted at in _Exodus_ and\nnearly confirmed (by denial of first-hand knowledge) in _Blue_.  By extension, I\nthink that the \"Horn\" who is writing _Short Sun_ is Horn's mind in Silk's body\n-- this must have happened at, near, or because of the death of Horn that he\nspeaks of on several occasions in _Blue_.  As to whether Silk's mind is there\ntoo, mantis's point about the ball is telling.\n\n *\n* *\n\nOn the subject of the inhumi's secret, I have to disagree with alga.  There are\nseveral places (as I've previously pointed out) where Horn states that the\nsecret is something that would, if known, give humans some sort of advantage\nagainst the inhumi.  It's explosive enough that Horn fears the inhumi will try\nto kill him if it becomes known that he has it.  I doubt that inhumi survival\nwhen inhumed (couldn't resist) is enough of a secret.  After all, inhumation is\nonly used in Gaon, and doesn't really seem to confer any sort of immunity.  Like\nany sort of hostage-taking, it only confers an advantage if the victims allow it\nto, and it suffers from the same disadvantage that kidnapping has here on Earth:\nfirst you have to catch your rabbit.\n\nI'll dig up the references (Horn's hints on the secret) tonight, if I have time.\n\n     --Dave Lebling\n     (aka vizcacha)\n\nps: I'm already reading it a second time.  I couldn't stop myself.\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}