Subject: (whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v010.n070

From: Alice Turner <pei047 at attglobal.net>
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 09:32:29 +0000

Wm. Ansley posited:
 
> I think the secret is that ALL human beings must be protected from the bite
> of the inhumi. No one on Blue wants the inhumi to feed on themselves or
> their loved ones and they will usually go to great lengths to prevent it.
> But, even though most of them probably don't want the inhumi to feed on any
> human being, they won't risk themselves or even make much of an effort to
> protect anyone else. But, if everyone knew that if the inhumi were
> prevented from getting any human blood at all, they would become
> unintelligent and (more importantly) unable to pose as human, then they
> might be motivated to actually act on this knowledge.
> 
> I have to wonder how possible this complete protection would be, however.
> It doesn't seem entirely plausible to me, which makes me expect that there
> will turn out to be more than this to Krait's secret.

Nicely reasoned, Wm. (and thanks for reprising the Lebling list), but I don't buy it for a moment. (And I don't think you do either.) Look, you guys, you're all familiar with the author--what on earth makes you think that Wolfe is going to give you the secret before Book III (if then)? Would that be in characacter? Of course not! Not that it isn't fun to speculate in advance, but (IMO) the speculations have been spectacularly un-Wolfean to date. Sweetness and Light is hardly his game.

-alga

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---

From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 10:01:16 +0000

alga said:

>Nicely reasoned, Wm. (and thanks for reprising the Lebling list), but I don't bu
>y it for a moment. (And I don't think you do either.) Look, you guys, you're all
> familiar with the author--what on earth makes you think that Wolfe is going to 
>give you the secret before Book III (if then)? Would that be in characacter? Of 
>course not! Not that it isn't fun to speculate in advance, but (IMO) the specula
>tions have been spectacularly un-Wolfean to date. Sweetness and Light is hardly 
>his game.

True.  I doubt we have enough to figure out the whole secret (or even the key).
However, Wolfe is also good for sticking clues to Big Secrets early in the text
and then making you slap yourself on second reading and say "Why didn't I realize
that?"  I think it's very likely that the whole "inhumi steal their nature from
us" idea is at the very least going to be an important element of the story to
come (Krait!) and I suspect it has SOMETHING to do with Horn's Solution.  Anyway,
it is very Lupine to take Sweetness and Light as his starting point and pull the
rug out from under it and us.

"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