cynocephalus

James Wynn · 09 Aug 2010, 16:26 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:26:33 -0500
Subject: (urth) cynocephalus
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	<AANLkTiktQ_TCQuzp9vK7XiFcPrddGJT6bzfH4=n34nMJ at mail.gmail.com>
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> I thought it had been suggested and officially debunked by Wolfe 
> himself...but a quick google got me only this:
> Are the Cumaean and/or Merryn inhumi? Possibly, or definitely?
>     No. The Cumaean is an alien but not an inhuma. Merryn is a human
>     being. 
> http://www.sfsite.com/03b/gw124.htm

Was anyone else stunned that Merryn was human?

>  So the Cumaean, at least, is not an inhuma but Wolfe didn't rule out 
> Inire being one in that quote.  I still seem to recall seeing 
> somewhere a more general comment by Wolfe that the inhumi were not 
> present on Urth during Book of the New Sun, but I can't find it.

I believe that what he said was that Quetzal was "an recent arrival" 
which does not rule out the possibility that other inhumi were on Urth. 
Actually, I find it appealing that the neighbors had a hand in the sale 
of the Whorl plan to Typhon because I infer deliberate parallels in the 
story to the tale of how Midas got his golden touch from Dionysus. 
http://www.urth.org/whorlmap/midas.htm

However, while it can be said that Quetzal/Silk is highly analogous to 
Fr Inire/Severian, I'm not convinced that he IS Fr Inire. Actually, I 
suspect there is _a lot_ more overlap than just Mentor/Student, but I 
can't prove it because I don't believe we know anything important about 
Inire.

Inire is one of those characters that "shows up" so-to-speak in Wolfe 
stories--an important character that either makes no actual appearance 
or only brief cameo appearances. Or an important character that suddenly 
disappears from the active narrative although he is supposedly quite 
active in it. His absence is disturbingly fishy. You look for him 
everywhere because he _needs_ to be there.

u+16b9

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