interview questions

Gerry Quinn · 06 Jan 2011, 21:54 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 21:54:57 -0000
Subject: (urth) interview questions
References: <SNT123-W44900689737B3C7330EA4CCF0A0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <06F6EC8965B541FC93CE13B579900E43@jill>

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>
> Gerry Quinn:

>>Borski certainly has a talent for coming up with ingenious hypotheses; the 
>>fact is though that
>>those he comes up with here ultimately collapse, as he himself concedes. 
>>Disgruntled, he tries to
>>assert that there is no correct hypothesis, which has the convenient 
>>effect of boosting the relative
>>value of incorrect ones.
>
> Borksi concedes his theories are collapsed? LMAO. Sheesh, that's as 
> believable as Gerry Quinn admitting
> someone else had a better theory than he does. I'd have to see it to 
> believe it. I think what Borski
> does is suggest that Wolfe deliberately and repeatedly undercuts his own 
> "correct" conclusions to set
> traps for those who cannot penetrate the intuitive requirements for which 
> is the correct one.

In _The Long and Short of It_ he spends ages trying to prove that Mme. 
Etienne is an abo (she isn't, though Casilla may be).  Then he admits that 
it doesn't make sense for Veil's Hypothesis to be true (for then VRT's 
handwriting would be like everyone else).  He asks, "then how are we to 
resolve the hypothesis?  Answer: we're not."  This is just another of the 
multifarious ways to claim there is no valid solution.  when in fact all he 
has shown is that the solution he's just been proposing is wrong, nothing 
more.

>>I take it as a metaphor for the stasis of Maitres clone family after 
>>multiple iterations.  (Other iterative
>>processes that terminate in a fixed state would have worked too.)
>
> This doesn't make sense. The "Maitres" clone family are not approaching 
> perfection. They are, as you say,
> in stasis. They wonder why they cannot achieve more power and higher 
> status. The answer is that they are
> surrounded by other beings who are not in stasis, who are in fact, 
> evolving. (Evolving more rapidly than
> we initially knew, given the Lamarckian nature of their changing).

They are approaching a constant state, exactly as repeated iterations of an 
equation modelling the temperatures at every point inside a heated object 
approach a constant state.  It is irrelevant whether the state is desirable 
or not - the important point is that it is constant.

>>Veil's Hypothesis is, of course, central to all interpretations; the 
>>detective story, if you will, is finding
>>out how and to what extent it is true.  As we are told almost from the 
>>start, of course, its complete truth
>>would be silly.
>
> Why?

Because a perfect imitation would no longer be an imitation.

>>The readers of a book live on a higher plane than the characters within 
>>it;
>
> Not always. Especially with an unreliable narrator. I assure you that 
> Tzadkiel, with her chess queen-like
> omniscience, understands the mysteries of the universes better than we 
> pawns ever could. (seems to me that
> another character has been compared to a chess queen...)
>
>>Thus the observations and hypotheses of the readers regarding events with 
>>a book are of greater strength than the
>>hypotheses of the characters.
>
> The arrogance is sometimes astounding. Please remember that the 
> observations and hypotheses of characters come from
> the mind of the author. Yours do not. It is the author who decides whether 
> reader or character knows more, not you.

The characters are creatures of a sub-creation; they cannot see as clearly 
as we do.  Also, what would be the point in characters having correct 
theories?  If a book is good, these would be redundant as they would merely 
spoil the readers pleasure in arriving at the correct theory from the clues 
in the text.

An exception can be made for the denouement of a detective story, in which 
the detective, at least in theory, confirms the hypotheses of the most 
astute readers.  But imagine if an ordinary character proposed the correct 
answer earlier on - it would ruin the book!

So good authors give their characters theories which are wrong, or 
incomplete.

>> I have presented a 'timeline' for my theory - what does the timeline of 
>> yours look like?
>
> Good work on the timeline Gerry! You deserve praise for it. Still I think 
> it covers only the known colonization of
> the planets. It misses something important.  As I've already suggested in 
> another post, the text suggests that
> there was a much earlier crash on Ste. Anne. perhaps with a single human 
> survivor (or even corpse?). This happened,
> as the McCaffrey-Wolfe quote suggests, in the distant past of the planet, 
> not a couple hundred years previous to the
> Marsch events.

***********
Gene Wolfe: "Since the period in which the Sandwalker scene was-in terms of 
the "present" found in the rest of the book-taking place in the distant past 
of the planet, it made more sense to say, "Here's a legend that has survived 
from that period"
***********

But we KNOW when the Sandwalker scene occurs - it is at the period of the 
French landings, c. 150 years before the events of the first and third 
novellas.  It is a little odd, certainly, to call this the distant past - 
but we must not leap on single words, either from Wolfe's interviews or his 
stories, but take all in context.

- Gerry Quinn

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