# Picturing the inhumi *The Whorl list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 14 Apr 2000* > 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. --- ### Nicholas Gevers *14 Apr 2000, 11:54* Has anyone on this list tried to picture exactly how Wolfe intends an inhumu (or inhuma) to look in its undisguised state? Various zoological parallels are suggested by Horn, IIRC including an owl, a serpent, reptiles generally; but I have trouble visualising the creatures exactly... --- ### mark millman *14 Apr 2000, 15:36 · follows Nicholas Gevers* > At 11:54 am -0700 on 14 April 2000, Nicholas Gevers > wrote: > Has anyone on this list tried to picture exactly how > Wolfe intends an inhumu (or inhuma) to look in its > undisguised state? Various zoological parallels are > suggested by Horn, IIRC including an owl, a serpent, > reptiles generally; but I have trouble visualising the > creatures exactly... I don't know whether this will help anyone, but I tend to visualize a sort of a tailless cross between a naked flying squirrel (substitute lemur or possum for squirrel, as geo- graphically appropriate) and a pterodactyl--the sort with- out a beak, of course. I suspect, however, that Wolfe's key idea about the inhumi is their mutability, and that attempts to visualize them undis- guised probably miss the point a little bit. I have also won- dered how much the guises adopted by inhumi depend on physical alterations, and how much on psychological (or possibly psychical) effects. Nacre *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ---