Losing Imitation

James Wynn · 29 Dec 2010, 17:42 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 11:42:58 -0600
Subject: (urth) Losing Imitation
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W49110B166B9CCB9DBEA6F4CF010 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W49110B166B9CCB9DBEA6F4CF010 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4D1B7322.1070601 at gmail.com>

>
>> Aunt Jeannine: "Number Five, you're too young for semantics and I'm afraid you've been led
>> astray by that word 'perfect'...The imitation could hardly have been exact, since human
>> beings don't possess that talent and to imitate them 'perfectly' the abos would have to lose
>> it."  Number Five: "Couldn't they?" Aunt Jeannine: "My dear child, abilties of every sort must evolve.  And when they do they must
>> be utilized or they atrophy. If the abos had been able to mimic so well as to lose the power to do so, that would have been the end of them, and no doubt it would have come long before the first ships reached them...."
>
>
> Thus inhumi on Urth, dream-travel be damned, cannot be perfect imitations of humans. They have the
> ability to shift back to their original form and have not, can not lose it, on basic evolutionary
> principles. (according to Auntie Gene anyway)
> Of course Aunt Jeannine goes on to say:
>
>> "veil, who wants a dramatic explanation for the cruelty and irrationality he sees around him, has
>> hung fifty pounds of theory on nothing".
> I'm sure most remember that Aunt Jeannine IS Dr Veil. Hilarious that Wolfe has anticipated both the
> wild theorists about his work and the conservative nay-sayers in one character. Which is he implying
> are the correct ones? 		 	   		

I don't think this applies to the inhumi and I think you have 
misinterpreted the lesson. I think Wolfe is making a statement about 
colonization here. It has always gone on. One group arriving to push out 
the previous one. But in order for the colonization to stick, the 
arrivals with have to take on the customs and eventually even the 
appearance of the natives--those attributes were not invented out of 
nothing. So the arrivals become the natives--in this case, by the 
natives becoming the arrivals. And the native environment is huge and 
inexhaustible. The arrivals will never overwhelm the environment's 
ability to absorb them. When Marsch goes into the outback, he finds abos 
existing quite happily occassionally taking the form of cats or 
four-eyed elks. He even find the abos in their original native state: 
lurid, white worms.

As for the inhumi, when they are in dream-travel, they aren't mimicking. 
That is who they really are without the clothing of their bodies. They 
are no more mimicking than Cilinia was mimicking a night chough (as Pas 
did before her). Returning to their reptilian form is only a matter 
putting their old clothes back on.

u+16b9

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