Losing Imitation

Lee Berman · 29 Dec 2010, 19:41 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:41:31 -0500
Subject: (urth) Losing Imitation
Message-ID: <SNT123-W65600BD7E7EECC3BE9625CCF020 at phx.gbl>

>James Wynn: 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.

James it is interesting. We are seeing the same connection between Shadow Children and Inhumi 
but in reversed perspective. Sainte Anne/St. Croix is the home planetary system of Shadow Children 
and Green/Blue is the home planetary system of Inhumi. Humans have come to both planets and have 
been killed/imitated/replaced by the natives in both places.

Shadow Children, like Inhumi, dream travel. Why do they do it? To lure prey to their planetary
system. Why do Inhumi dream-travel? We don't really know. But we have the Whorl delivering prey
to the Inhumi planetary system. 

(when the question comes up of why the Whorl was sent to Blue/Green all I've ever seen are shrugs)

When you say the inhumi "really are human" in dream travel, what does that mean? That they show
the human form of someone they have bitten? I can't really understand any other meaning. These 
things are really vampires or reptiles or vines or white worms.

(FWIW, Dracula author Bram Stoker also wrote Lair Of the White Worm. I don't think the vampire connection
is coincidental)

By analogy I must guess that the Shadow Children appear human to those humans they contacted via
dreams. Perhaps it is redundant to note that both the locals from Ste. Anne and the locals from
Green are pretty bad at using tools.

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