The Book of the Long Sun Question

Gerry Quinn · 20 Sep 2011, 13:05 · from 2011-September.txt.gz

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From: gerry at bindweed.com (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:05:15 +0100
Subject: (urth) The Book of the Long Sun Question
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In the first place, it's by no means certain that the Neighbours can dream travel in the same way as Silkhorn + Inhumi, although they may be able to do other things like shift dimensions.  But let us accept that dream travel is possible for them.  They still could not have reached the Whorl that way, as they were never there before.  Nor could they have brought inhumi to infect the Whorl, because inhumi in dream travel become akin to those whose spirits they have stolen.  An inhumu who travelled to the Whorl would have been a Neighbour there, just as dream travelling inhumi we meet in the books become human. 

They appear to have had spacecraft (called 'landers' by Silkhorn).  They must have used such a technology to reach Green where they met the inhumi.  Again, they could not have dream travelled there, and if they could it would have happened earlier, during a pre-technological phase of their history.  The Neighbours at the time of the Whorl's advent are technologically aware, detecting the Whorl as it approached their system, and recognising it as a hollowed out asteroid.  We could not currently do so well.

And again, irrespective of the tevhnology, we are *told* what happened, are we not?  And I have not seen any better explanation proposed..  I know soime list members pay little heed to such matters (a similar case is the origin of the Shadow Children and the Abos in _Fifth Head of Cerberus_).  My feeling is that one can very easily misinterpret Wolfe by searching too hard for trickery in his books.  Wolfe may like to tell the key elements of his stories only once, briefly and obliquely - but tell them he does.

- Gerry Quinn

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Daniel Petersen 
  To: The Urth Mailing List 
  Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 1:06 PM
  Subject: Re: (urth) The Book of the Long Sun Question

    The Neighbours, by contrast, had legitimate spacecraft.

       They did? 

  Yeah, I would've thought they'd do their 'dream-travel' gig.

  -DOJP

  2011/9/20 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>

    Gerry Quinn wrote (19-09-2011 23:12): 

      The Neighbours, by contrast, had legitimate spacecraft.

    They did? 

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