Like a good Neighbor

António Pedro Marques · 22 Nov 2011, 15:34 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: entonio at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?QW50w7NuaW8gUGVkcm8gTWFycXVlcw==?=)
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:34:22 +0000
Subject: (urth) Like a good Neighbor
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W361537C008E22D0F473BD7CFC80 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W361537C008E22D0F473BD7CFC80 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4ECBC0FE.9050106 at gmail.com>

Lee Berman wrote (22-11-2011 15:13):
> If intelligent, sound-minded people see that Horn was hurt and then
> recovered in the pit then that's what happened. If other intelligent,
> sound-minded people see that he died and was resurrected, that too
> happened.

But there's an intelligent, sound-minded bloke here saying that he died and
never came back... and we were left to witness the attempt of a completely 
different entity to fulfill his quest. In a way that's an interesting idea; 
but it does take away from the theme of Horn-trying-to-be-Silk and 
Silk-trying-to-be-Horn if after all he is neither one nor the other. Nor 
does one get the feeling of 'character growing out of his inborn 
limitations' (*as applied to a Neighbour*) which is present of so much of 
Gene Wolfe's work.

Though I'll be the first to agree that there's more in the Rajan than Silks 
and Horn, and the obvious candidate is Neighbourly (and to vastly prefer the 
appellation 'Rajan' over the 'SilkHorn' one).

A big problem in SS is that while the setting is much closer to us than in 
LS - real planets, real people, real societies, real technology, instead of 
the artificiality of most things aboard the Whorl - there are definitely 
truly alien elements which we can make little sense of - Babbie, the Mother, 
Seawrack, giant rays, the island of the pit, Neighbours, the Inhumi. In LS 
all is comfortably man-made, albeit 'made'.

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