Fifth Head of Cerberus

Marc Aramini · 20 Mar 2013, 19:02 · from 2013-March.txt.gz

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From: marcaramini at yahoo.com (Marc Aramini)
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:02:18 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) Fifth Head of Cerberus
In-Reply-To: <C87DE712-2FB0-46C6-B195-82709FC9A3CC at yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <1363806138.98455.YahooMailClassic at web160703.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>

I am perusing some secondary sources, and the take on political colonialism and imperialism I find to be exagerrated in importance - the real theme at stake is that a man contradictorily wants exactly the same version of himself to ultimately succeed at something where he himself has not, but has set up a cog of self-defeating repetition.? The ship doesn't go anywhere - does our Number Five have his own unique soul or is he just repeating a cycle of stagnation?? 

I still think objective observation in Wolfe is almost always more trustworthy than the almost ironically poor?self awareness of our narrators/principal characters - "Now I don't know if I am Sandwalker or Eastwind in his dream" - I still fancy that a grab at the testes should probably give?"Sandwalker" some objective answers to that.
?
Of other note is the reference to The Mile Long Spaceship, an sf story, as a misplaced astronautics text.? In this, aliens communicate with a man in his dreams, but the dreams are real.? Lots of dreams in the span of FHOC, but interestingly that is not the kind of story that could be easily classified as a "real" astronautics text unless that kind of stuff was going on (and it seems to be, with the Shadow Children's perception planet screen in "A Story")
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