interview questions

David Stockhoff · 06 Jan 2011, 13:10 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2011 08:10:38 -0500
Subject: (urth) interview questions
In-Reply-To: <4D25B8A3.2060607 at gmail.com>
References: <AANLkTi=EVH_hJ1GPhY4Lqk33=iMtw2a_qV4v95_i0+rT at mail.gmail.com>
	<4D25B8A3.2060607 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4D25BF4E.306 at verizon.net>

That's the heart of the conundrum, for me. When possible, I try to take 
Wolfean phenomena as literary rather than literal. But that principle is 
of little use here. Is Wolfe using those names for the same reason 
aliens on Star Trek speak English? Or are we to understand that they 
indicate a recent provenance, whether the abos/SC are human or not?

But Wolfe didn't need to use them. He could have found another way of 
expressing a cultural memory of Earth, like describing glaciers and 
mastodons and caves or something. I can only speculate that we are to 
understand that an cultural memory can be created, so that it is not 
that old.

On 1/6/2011 7:42 AM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote:
> Tony Ellis wrote (06-01-2011 10:21):
>> Lee Berman wrote:
>>> Since there aren't any (that I recall) Abo or Shadow Child ruins, 
>>> does this imply an
>>> earthly orgin to these guys? Maybe something like David's 
>>> idea...like, Q. Where did Homo habilus
>>> disappear to?"  A. to Ste. Anne.
>>
>> An earthly origin, or perhaps that humanity on both Earth and St Anne
>> is the result of some earlier galactic expansion. I find the idea
>> pretty far-fetched to say the least - but also hard to dismiss, for
>> reasons I go into in my response to Gerry.
>
> Wolfe wouldn't put the French and Vernor Vinge in a timeframe much 
> different from ours, so if someone came there millennia earlier, it 
> wasn't someone we know from History. The folks from Atlantis, maybe? 
> Or Gondwanaland, but both names are modern. Heck.
>
>
>

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