lots of stuff

Lee Berman · 12 Jul 2010, 13:44 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 09:44:47 -0400
Subject: (urth) lots of stuff
Message-ID: <SNT123-W3112BE6281E5290885301ACFB80 at phx.gbl>

>Hm...let me make a distinction in terms: "chained to a rock", not 
>"marooned" there. And by associating Fr Inire with Fenrir, I do not 
>intend to say that Fr Inire was captured and forced to stay on Urth by 
>some means physical means

I like the possibility of Fenrir as a name origin for Fr. Inire too. I 
also agree that suggesting Inire could escape Urth whenever he wanted is
not capturing the spirit of the suggestion. One might similarly suggest 
that Moses could have just gone down from Mt. Nebo and walked into The
Promised Land whenvever he pleased despite what God told him.

I think I am safe in saying that nobody is suggesting Father Inire IS
Fenrir, any more than I was suggesting that he IS the baboon-headed 
Egyptian god Thoth.

The Tale of the Boy Called Frog borrows from greek mythology, the Old
Testament, Rudyard Kipling, roman mythology and the Mayflower/Pilgrims stuff.
Wolfe poaches from all these stories to make a melange which serves
his purpose in this story. Perhaps he makes a similar melange of mythological
characters with Father Inire, also to serve the purpose of this story.

Lest one think that any mythological story can be contorted into fitting 
into BotNS I'll mention that I did check into what is probably the most 
notable monkey-like god of the pagan world, the Hindu deity, Hanuman. I 
didn't find much at all that could suggest Wolfe had borrowed from him for 
Father Inire.

On the other hand there is the Chinese monkey-king, Sun Wukong, who travelled
with a monk from China to retrieve Buddhist scriptures from India.

>He acquired the powers of shapeshifting known as the "72 transformations", 
>supposedly the more versatile and difficult set of skills that allows him to 
>transform into every possible form of existence, including people and objects. 
>He also learned about cloud-traveling, including a technique called the J?nd?uy?n
>which covers 108,000 li (54,000 km or 33,554 mi) in a single flip. Finally, he 
>could transform each of the 84,000 hairs on his body into inanimate objects and
>living beings, or even clones of himself.

I see some possibility for BotNS poaching there.

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