Rajan and Food

Jordon Flato · 28 Apr 2009, 18:00 · from 2009-April.txt.gz

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From: jordonflato at gmail.com (Jordon Flato)
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:00:10 -0700
Subject: (urth) Rajan and Food
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I've wondered if the strange creature (not the leatherskin) that jumps on
the ship with Horn when he first sets out, which is described much like a
neighbor but faaaar scarier isn't maybe a nieghbor/inhumi remnant.  That is
what occurred to me.

I can't get behind the neighbors as trees/inhumi as vines theory at all.  It
seems like such a stretch.  There is no denying a connection of some sort
between trees and neighbors.  I'm not certain it is a literal connection.
In New Sun, there are instances of Wolfe anthropomorphising trees and such.
With human qualities.  Why wouldn't the same be true on another planet, but
echoing the essense of the 'original' inhabitants, the neighbors.

And I think, in terms of the Neighbors infecting the inhumi on the Whorl, it
was primarily to get a sense of what the souls of the humans were like.
When they saw the result, they made their deciscion that they could give the
world to Humans, as they had confidence that the humans would have a chance,
that the neighbors did not, to end the cycle of inhumi/host extinction, due
to the possible quailities of the human soul.  I think, in Horn/Silk in
particular (keeping in mind that when the neighbors gave Blue to humans
through Horn, he was still Horn and not Silk at all), they saw something in
humanity (in my opinion, not his being a neighbor doppleganger) that
convinced them that they might be able, at some point, to make a peace with
the inhumi.  They wouldn't have known that if they had not first infected
the Whorl with inhumi.

What is much more controversial to me is that the neighbors say they also
spent time on the whorl, and befriended some there.  What are the
implications of this?  Who did they befriend?  We have an inhumi character
in Long Sun.  Is there a as yet unidentified Neighbor?

On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 5:04 AM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

> He's a tree, he's a tree! Neighbors are trees,
>> Inhumi are parasitic vines.  .or something.
>> Not sure what the Neighbor-version of Inhumi
>> are-maybe the vine with a face that is cut for Incanto's staff.
>>
>
> Brian, let's posit that the Neighbors are dryads--that their steady
> physical form is one of the "sleepy trees" in the forests of Blue. How do
> the inhumi make the jump to become vines? Or how do they transform back to
> winged/clawed vampiric reptiles? That is the fundamental problem with any
> "tree/vine theory" regarding the Neighbors and inhumi.
>
> J.
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