Like a good Neighbor

Lee Berman · 21 Nov 2011, 04:43 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2011 23:43:03 -0500
Subject: (urth) Like a good Neighbor
Message-ID: <SNT123-W2EBA6A7F2523CEC2CFA6CCFCB0 at phx.gbl>

> Marc Aramini: And that hunter gatherer system you are describing is not an  
> accurate picture of the neighbors - they are elsewhere.  Sounds more  
> like a description of HePenSheep and those guys, who have gone  
> native but are not Neighbors.

I shouldn't have said the Neighbors hunt, true. Horn finds them while on a hunt.

But they are gathered around a fire. If they were living as advanced spaceage

beings, wouldn't they have a ship and some warmth/light technology greater than fire?

Now, they used to have spaceships. That's how they got to Green. I take the circle

of glass Horn encounters to be fused sand from a rocket launch. They used to have 

cities also, on Blue, but they are ruins beneath the waves. 

I know we differ on this point, Marc but that's how I see the situation. Green is Urth, 

a corrupt, infested planet which needs to be cleansed. Blue has been cleansed. Severian 

first detects human life on Ushas by the glow of their fires. Horn first detects 

Neighbors by the dots of light of their fires also.

>> It seems clear to me that Wolfe presents us with higher beings than  
>> humans in the form of the hiero-types, the angelic hierarchy. Can  
>> you imagine B, F and O and/or Tzadkiel and Apheta (...)

>Entonio: Excuse me, but I don't think those are higher than humans.

I have no problem with your thoughts about angels, Entonio. 

But Gene Wolfe does think they are higher than humans.

>James Jordan: JJ: Okay. Oh... Severian's sexual relationship with her (Apheta). What 

>is the purpose of that?...here you have an angelic being takes him for the night. 

>What is going on there?

>Gene Wolfe: I think that the ideal of the higher being trying to raise the lower 

>being to a greater height perhaps. And also the attraction that the lower being at least 

>properly should feel toward the higher being.

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