{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/822",
    "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": 822,
    "subject": "Horn's appearance",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-04-15T13:26:07+00:00",
    "last": "2000-04-15T13:26:07+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0010-0326@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "akt at attglobal.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-04-15T13:26:07+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Horn's appearance",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Nacre replies to Nick:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Has anyone on this list tried to picture exactly how\nWolfe intends an inhumu (or inhuma) to look in its\nundisguised state? Various zoological parallels are\nsuggested by Horn, IIRC including an owl, a serpent,\nreptiles generally; but I have trouble visualising the\ncreatures exactly... "
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I don't know whether this will help anyone, but I tend to\nvisualize a sort of a tailless cross between a naked flying \nsquirrel (substitute lemur or possum for squirrel, as geo-\ngraphically appropriate) and a pterodactyl--the sort with-\nout a beak, of course.\n\nI suspect, however, that Wolfe's key idea about the inhumi\nis their mutability, and that attempts to visualize them undis-\nguised probably miss the point a little bit.  I have also won-\ndered how much the guises adopted by inhumi depend on \nphysical alterations, and how much on psychological (or \npossibly psychical) effects."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Horn at one point (sorry, I don't have time to look for it) speculates that the imagery of demons was based on inhumi. Which is not so different from Nacre's image. (There was quite a lot of lattitude in pre-Renaissance demon imagery, however.) I think that the human guise is virtually entirely psychological (or psychical). Krait pledges to Horn that he, Horn, will always see him for what he is, though everyone else (including Seawrack, somewhat surprisingly) is fooled. But there are two things an inhumu cannot disguise, first, density (they are much lighter than human beings, have to be or they couldn't fly), second, temperature--they are cold-blooded. So they can't get physically close to anyone without being discovered. I think it's a mark in Horn's favor, \"feet of clay up to his neck\" or not, that his love for Krait, which I take as entirely genuine, is despite his always seeing him in this demon aspect.\n\nAnd yes, the Gate of Horn is the one for true dreams. With all the discussion about Sev's veracity, it seems to me that Horn does the best he can to deliver the truth (the same need not be said about his own Creator).\n\n-alga\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}