interview question

Lee Berman · 03 Jan 2011, 03:34 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2011 22:34:35 -0500
Subject: (urth) interview question
Message-ID: <SNT123-W613BF0F8CDF178F6B3C7E5CF070 at phx.gbl>

>Gerry Quinn: I think it is wrong to think of Aunt Jeannine as an unreliable narrator in 
>this instance.  "An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, 
>whose credibility has been seriously compromised."  Jeannine does not fit this definition. 
>Although she hides her identity, there is no credibility issue - in fact one 
>could say it makes her *more* credible as a judge of Veil's motivations

Heh, that's pretty ironic. Aunt Jeannine misrepresents her name, gender and identity to Number 
Five. She also asserts that there is no evidence that abos could change shape and that they 
have died off long ago. Yet somehow she is a reliable narrator? About her own motivations, perhaps
but, as we later see, she is completely wrong about her own theory, which is correct.

>Of course, Veil's Hypothesis is not wholly false; we do have one incident of 
>an abo replacing a human, after they had been travelling alone together for 
>a long period.  And clearly the shapechanging aboriginal Annese have entered 
>human society to some extent - but equally clearly they have not killed and 
>replaced the human colonists en masse. Indeed we may assume they are 
>outcasts for the most part.

>There has been no wholesale replacement of humans by the native 
>Annese; this is plain from such diverse indications as eye colour, tool use, 
>and the stories of Marsch's interviewees.

Sigh..this is so difficult.. Gerry I think you are continuing to treat a fictional world as though it
were the real world, where parsimony and Occam's Razor are valid principles. In fiction they are not.
You know, for years there were debates here over whether Dr. Marsch was actually replaced. I introduced 
the Wolfe quote you cite in the middle of one argument and there hasn't been a debate since. But it shows 
that some people are so intent on "weighing evidence" they forget the purpose of writing a story.

Why would an author (who tends to horror) introduce Veil' Hyphothesis then write this novel full of clues
twists and turns to reveal... nothing.  Or one case of replacement. Or maybe just some minority replacement 
of the population. Where is the horror in that? 

Aunt Jeannine and Dr. Aubrey Veil throw down the gauntlet early: either Veil's Hypothesis is 100% false or 
100% true. None of this namby-pamby partial stuff. I'm not sure how to explain it other than to say that a 
weak realization of Veil's Hypothesis would violate a rule of story-telling. If stories were as boringly
ambiguous as the real world, with partial resolutions and half-baked conclusions, we wouldn't write or 
listen to fiction stories. Cinderella doesn't do the magic pumpkin, ball and slipper routine just to go on a 
few dates with Prince Charming then decide he isn't Mr. Right and go home to live with her steps. That 
story would simply suck (except as parody). Or be "lame" as Gene Wolfe put it.

I don't understand your evidence of "eye color". Could you explain? We are told there is a planetary look
on St. Croix. Number Five has it. With regard to the tool use issue and Marsh's interviewees you are missing 
something important. We hear stories which purport that abos are just animals- so bad with tools they can't use 
a shovel. But we have prima facie evidence they are capable of extremely fine motor skills- Handwriting. It 
may be poor handwriting but it is legible. If you can write legible sentences, you have become a rather skilled
tool-user, by animal standards. 

Still, some feel that the general disrepair of both St. Croix and Ste. Anne is due to the serviceable but 
sub-standard tool use of the current inhabitants.

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