those darned ambiguities

Mssr. Newt, my memory fails also as to whether Hyacinth was an engineered embryo, though Silk and Chenille sure were. Anyone? How about a few characters not much speculated on, or even, eek, all the, uh human Whorl denizens? (just spitballin here...) And, yes, I too wondered about the deal w/Mucor and those compliant fish. Maybe she grabbed them by their poor li'l ganglia and popped them on out, but perhaps she had already been in contact w/Seawrack or even the fearsome(?)Mother, and all this was some foreshadowing of the shadowy PTB of Blue. No Doubt this will all become crystal (using that advisedly ;) in upcoming episodes and meticulous dissection >g<. Hoo boy. Happy eclipse, everyone, and best fishes-S.

The only character in LONG SUN other than Silk who is clearly a grown special embryo is Mucor (thus her adoption by Blood, and her special powers). Chenille was the natural daughter of Calde Tussah.

I also thought it was just Mucor possessing the fish at first--although Horn, who knows about Mucor, ignores this possibility, and there are the mysterious references to someone else on the island. Babbie, Mother, and Seawrack have all been proposed, and I think a Neighbor is another possibility (the weird hints with Remora, etc.) MAYBE it was just Mucor (or have we been told she can only possess humans?) but something fishy is definitely going on in this bit. Pun intended. "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32

Alex:

How does Mucor's possession ability work? Maybe I missed something (very likely) but it seems hard to rationalise her talent with an underlying SF-nal explanation, in the usual Wolfe manner. I probably need to re-read TBOTLS... I'm about a third of the way through OBW and enjoying it immensely. Very puzzled by Seawrack, and (as was noted here by other readers), Horn's nonchalant attitude to her missing arm. Oh well...I'm sure it will all become clear in the end...not! Al *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

<relatively new subscriber delurking for a question> At WindyCon, GW mentioned at one of his panels that He purposefully put a ghost into the middle of one of his novels so that the reader would not expect only science fiction from the novel. (The panel was about mixing the genres). So perhaps he is mixing sf and the supernatural. But I don't really know, and just wanted to throw that out there to see what other people think. When I first read TBLN I thought the Outsider god was supernatural, and the others were technological, but that is probably naive. ...About the Inhumuni secret. I agree with whoever said that the love-thy-neighbor angle doesn't seem to be a good candidate because of the impossibility of implementation. If something were impossible to implement, then I don't think they would consider it a threat. But the love-thy-neighbor theory is still intriguing and something has to be there. All of the technologically oriented ideas so far seem hokey. One offshoot of the love idea is to love the inhumuni. Maybe this is what saves Horn. Krait drinks his blood, and then Horn loves him. Most people wouldn't. Maybe that's the secret. So it's a bigger version of love-thy-neighbor (what is thy neighbor). Except that, again we have the implementation problem (even if maybe it isn't so difficult, people can protect themselves and it doesn't depend on the actions of other people), and if blood taking is required, what protection is there against inhumuni who would kill their first time victom outright? <back to lurking, don't even have a name.> sh