Wolfe being clear on 5HoC

Tony Ellis · 06 Sep 2006, 21:40 · from 2006-September.txt.gz

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From: tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com (Tony Ellis)
Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2006 22:40:36 +0100
Subject: (urth) Wolfe being clear on 5HoC
Message-ID: <000001c6d1fd$169bfb10$6401a8c0@cthulhu>

bsharp wrote, quoting Wolfe:

>>If you hire a shape 
>>changer as a guide, there's a definite 
>possibility that he's going to change into your shape at some 
>>point. Which 
>>is what happens.
>
>To me this says Wolfe generally means for his puzzles to be solvable.

Heh, and to me this says that some of the people I've argued with about
5HC just haven't read the same book as me.

To be fair, it sometimes feels like cheating to bring an external Wolfe
quote into an argument - which is why I always try to argue directly
from the books - and on occasion it can open a whole can of worms. But
this one really does seem unequivocal, so thanks for digging it up.

On another occasion, Wolfe has said that Marsch was replaced by one of
the Shadow People. I *think* he meant "one of the Annese", and was
accidentally transposing a memorable name for a less memorable one,
because VRT exhibits all the characteristics of the abos and none of
those of the Shadow People - but there you go: already I'm imposing my
own preconceptions on an external Wolfe statement.

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