An Evil Guest: tone, and clones

Gwern Branwen · 04 Jan 2010, 06:32 · from 2010-January.txt.gz

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From: gwern0 at gmail.com (Gwern Branwen)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2010 01:32:10 -0500
Subject: (urth) An Evil Guest: tone, and clones
Message-ID: <cbf55b101001032232v3d72f3f3y2cd5684244f80309 at mail.gmail.com>

So I've finally read it, and it was very interesting. The depth, if it
is there (I'm not yet convinced), is much better hidden than in
_Peace_ or _Fifth Head of Cerberus_ where half the time one is
wondering what's the real story because the surface story is too dull
to be worth writing.

One of the things that bothers me the most is Bill Reis's death.

We get several lines about him flickering in and out of visibility,
and it seems to me that he almost chose the ceremony - how could Reis
be caught by the muscle-bound natives he equipped when the USG
couldn't? The latter had much better equipment and presumably also
knew of his optickal skillz (from Gideon Chase if nothing else). And
the bat-men didn't interfere until *after*. They were able to take
Cassie away while having apparently no problems with the groundlings.
Cassie shooting Kanoa would disrupt things, yes, but altogether?

And then there are the occasional mentions of cloning. Something I
don't think I've seen anyone mention is that maybe Wolfe is pulling an
_Endymion_ or Young's "The Dandelion Girl": perhaps Reis slips out of
the execution, and now supposed to be dead, travels to Woldercon with
Chase, returning when he is old and gray back through time to the
execution. Because he's flickering in and out, no one would notice the
sudden aging of Reis, and he could still live with Cassie.

Or perhaps he isn't executed at all - we are only told of the sound of
breaking bone, and never that anyone actually sees his corpse or that
his death accomplishes anything. (We don't even know that Reis died
and calmed the storm - Reis was not the only 'king' to die that night,
or even that minute.) If Gideon Chase can simply lose a leg, Reis can
have his collarbone or arm smashed. I heard that a smashed skull makes
a different, squishier, sound than a bone breaking. A similar escape
would then ensue with the bat-men (an explanation why they couldn't
carry Cassie all the way - Reis is heavy), and thence with Chase to
Woldercon.

But why would he go to Woldercon, then? His fortune is largely
untouched since it's globally dispersed, presumably. Fear of Cthulhu
might explain it: his gambit with the Navy may have failed and Cthulhu
or the cultists have a good idea of who is responsible. Reis does say
that fear of depth-charges is what prevented Cthulhu from moving
against him, so if the depth-charges are employed and are inutile, the
fear is dispelled. Further, we wouldn't expect Reis to give up -
Cthulhu is evil and needs to be fought - and Woldercon is an excellent
place to look for eldritch allies and learn the other 2 arts. But why
not communicate with Cassie at all? This might be the real meaning of
Chase's message.

Or perhaps a Reis does die in the ceremony, but there is no
time-shifting: it's just a clone swapped in. The dummy dies, and the
real one escapes. Flesh is flesh to hulking warriors.

That there are so many explanations, each equally bad and consistent,
bothers me a lot.

But enough about clones!

Another thing that bothered me was the tone. I noticed it throughout,
but 2 example really struck me well enough that I remember them for
this email.

The first was the Japanese computer speaking in the classic racial 'me
rikey very much' pattern. There's really no excuse for this
in-universe, set in the far future where presumably the Japanese have
for centuries been a 1st-World industrialized technology powerhouse
and have been for centuries successfully localizing their Mario games
and whatnot for gaijin markets.

I saw an earlier poster comment that Wolfe is just copying his source
material, but with some of it, he couldn't be. What pulp fiction ever
postulated Japanese computers with voice synthesis which speak in turn
of the century Charlie Chan tones?

The second example has even less excuse. While discussing the Squid
cultists, one character speaks of California and casually drops in
among his listing of pagans, Satanists, and other objectionable
religious riff-raff -- Buddhism. Leaving aside my personal offense (I
have the utmost respect for Buddhist theology & philosophy), this
doesn't even make sense as '20s-'40s material. California wasn't known
for Buddhism that early on. Western occultism was there, yes, as well
as some Hinduism related stuff, but all the significant Buddhist
influence was post-WWII - things like _Zen in the Art of Archery_
postdate the '40s, and it was the '60s that saw most of the US
monasteries and institutions get started with the Beat Generation.
What pulp fiction distinguished one fetishistic Eastern religion
espoused by the Yellow Peril from another religion that Wolfe should
single out Buddhism and not Hinduism?

To me, that just looks like bashing. It's as incongruous and unfair
from my perspective as if Wolfe had instead included Calvinism in the
listing. Worse, actually, because I reasonably assume Wolfe knows a
fair bit about Calvinism, but offhand, I can't remember anything in
_Shadows of the New Sun_ (and a quick search of the OCR shows naught)
or anything in any of my files even touching on Buddhism. I expect
more of him than that.

-- 
gwern

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