{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/779", "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": 779, "subject": "Bear with me", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2000-02-10T17:48:29+00:00", "last": "2000-02-10T17:48:29+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Peter Westlake", "address": "peter at harlequin.co.uk" }, "date": "2000-02-10T17:48:29+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Bear with me", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On the Urth list, alga wrote:\nHappy Birthday, dear Bear!" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It was, too! I have just finished reading my best present.\nTwo things struck me: first, the apparent simplicity of the\nwriting. It reminds me of a drawing of a winter landscape by\nRembrandt that I saw once, and of Alusz Iphigenia in Vance's\nDemon Prince books. It's so well written that the writing is\nalmost transparent; the best word for it that I can come up\nwith is \"lucid\". Secondly, the *thoroughness* of the experience;\nall parts of my mind and emotions felt exercised. The story works\non all levels; emotional, intellectual, sensual, and probably even\nspiritual. All this while ostensibly written rather badly!\nThe funny thing is, Horn really isn't a very good writer, but\nWolfe is ... yet both wrote the very same book.\n\n\nNow that I've caught up with all my archived mail, here are some\nreplies, followed by a few speculations, and suggested answers to\nthe questions:\n\n Who bit Sinew when he was a baby?\n\n Why does Krait appear as a boy, not a grown man?\n\n Why is Krait like Sinew, even after preying on many other people?\n\n Why didn't Quetzal think like a little girl?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "vizcacha wrote:\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." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Maybe they like being intelligent, especially after experiencing it?\nAfter all, none of us would want to become a mindless beast, apart from\nthe occasional zoanthrop." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Alastair Reynolds wrote:\nHow does Mucor's possession ability work? Maybe I missed something\n(very likely) but it seems hard to rationalise her talent with an\nunderlying SF-nal explanation, in the usual Wolfe manner. I probably\nneed to re-read TBOTLS..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Straightforward astral projection, surely? Her spirit goes out from\nher body. Of course, that requires you to accept the existence of a\nspirit, but that is entirely reasonable in this universe. Likewise,\nI think that Patera Pike's ghost is the ghost of Patera Pike, that\nSilk met his parents when his spirit departed his body before he was\nrevived, and that Horn is correct when he talks about his spirit\nleaving his body for a while in the pit and then returning. He\ndistinguishes this from the incident on Green when he was fatally\ninjured; naturally his spirit didn't return to his body. That's\nalmost a definition of \"fatal\".\n\nHaving spirits be real also avoids the need for downloads from\nthe Mainframe to get Horn into Silk's body, if it really is that." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Narwhal (before he was Narwhal) wrote:\nThoughts on inhumi hibernating and whether or not this is The Secret --" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[...]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Like Alga was saying, it's a good idea, and seems rather obvious. However, \nhow would this translate into a secret that would destroy the inhumi? " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[...]\nI think a slightly better " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "interpretation than this theory would be that they require a certain amount \nof warmth or sunlight for energy, like dimetrodons or iguanas," }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And we are told that they can't reproduce in the climate[s] of Blue." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "however I \ndon't really see how the colonists could act on that in response to the \nentire population of inhumi." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, you would have to reduce the amount of sunlight. Can't imagine how\nthat would happen, or what Blue would be like if you did. As David Lebling\nwrote: \"Subject: (whorl) Black Hole Series -- I hope not!\"\n\nSeriously, Pajarocu is pretty cold. Horn is glad of his new fur coat,\nbut Krait flies around quite cheerfully, and it's even colder up in\nthe air with no clothes on. [bearfully resisting the temptation to\nadd \", believe me!\"]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Dennis/Endy wrote:\nI still don't understand why Krait couldn't \nmimic the use of the gun and thus fire it. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Recoil! He's too .... *squishy*!\n\n\nOn elephants: surely no other native creature has its Earth name?\nIt would reduce the impact of \"trunks\" considerably to find that\nthis wasn't an elephant but another animal of the same name. My\nspectacles nearly fell off at that one, and they're part of my fur.\nI like to think something funny is going on. Maybe they aren't\nreally elephants, but I hope they are. \n\nOf course, if Horn looks like Odin, he would need an 8-legged horse." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "William Ansley wrote:\n13. Who was in the trees calling for Babbie? \"Someone on the shore called\nagain for Babbie\" [p.377] And who did Horn find in the forest? \"I found him\nin the forest, sitting in the dark under the trees\" [p.378]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This is one of the oddest sections of the book. My interpretation is that\nat this point, for whatever reason, Horn's and Babbie's identities become\ntotally confused (or maybe it's just the reader who becomes totally\nconfused). Babbie hears Horn calling his name, but Horn hears it as well,\nas if he is Babbie. As far as who finds who in the forest, the full passage\nreads:\n\n--------------------------------\nI found him in the forest, sitting in the dark under the trees. I could not\nsee him. It was too dark too see anything. But I knelt beside him and laid\nmy head upon his knee, and he comforted me.\n--------------------------------\n\nI think the pronouns in this passage can be thought to refer (with the\nexception of \"I knelt beside him and laid my head upon his knee\") equally\nwell to Babbie or Horn." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "On the very last page, Brother and Sister say they have spoken to the\nVanished God in the forest, and Horn tells them about him (!) and \"much\nmore besides\". I understood it to mean that the Vanished God was the\none sitting under the tree." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Rostrum wrote:\nOn Fri, 15 Oct 1999, Jim Jordan wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "We certainly cannot assume\nthat Horn had access to Luke, Acts, and the book of Revelation to use as\ntemplates. That would seem to be the doing of the Outsider and, behind him,\nWolfe." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Or vice versa. \n\n-Rostrum" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Aaaugh! Douglas Hofstadter meets C.S.Lewis meets Ian Watson! A scary\nthought indeed, though it *would* account for the quality of the writing ...\n\n\nOther things:\n\nI was very chuffed to see Oreb again! So, where does \"The Night Chough\"\nfit in, chronologically? Someone please tell me it's set after Long Sun\nbut before Horn gets back to the Whorl. Does it have shed any light on\nevents in the Long or Short Sun?\n\nWhy are the neighbours not illuminated by the fire? Could their\ncloaks be some really dark colour - darker than black? Is that\nwhy they are hard to count if they stand too close together?\n\"How do you count a party of Neighbours? Count the legs and\ndivide by four!\"\n\nCan the inhumi *really* fly through space? I don't recall when\nand how we learn that, but we haven't witnessed one actually\ndoing it. It takes an awful lot of kinetic energy to get to\nescape velocity, even jumping off a very tall tree in a gale.\nMaybe the secret is that they can't fly through space at all,\nand the way to defend Blue against them is to deny them access\nto landers? As someone points out, rescuing the colonists on\nGreen would be desirable too, though not essential from the\npoint of view of those on Blue in this scenario.\n\nFinally, another idea about the secret. I asked who bit Sinew\nwhen he was a baby, why Krait appears as a boy, why he resembles\nSinew, and why Quetzal didn't think like a little girl. Here are\nmy suggestions, which definitely fall into the balancing-a-stick-\nand-trying-to-climb-it class:\n\n- Krait isn't quite full-grown yet; his appearance as a boy reflects\n his size, age and maturity as an inhumu. Maybe Krait is just a little\n younger than Sinew, in fact.\n\n- Quetzal didn't think like Teasel, as far as I can see. Nor did Krait\n stop being like Sinew after feeding on different people; and when did\n he ever bite Sinew anyway? If he ever did, it was a long time ago.\n Why would that one personality persist?\n\n In fact, is the blood theory WRONG?\n\n- Now, who bit Sinew. Just once, as far as we know. A long time ago, if so.\n I suggest that it was Krait's *mother*.\n\nSpectacled Bear.\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }