Overthinking/Underthinking "The Fifth Head of Cerberus"

David Stockhoff · 12 Aug 2014, 22:49 · from 2014-August.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 18:49:43 -0400
Subject: (urth) Overthinking/Underthinking "The Fifth Head of Cerberus"
In-Reply-To: <BLU175-W2356E1A65652578D9D0D4CCFEA0 at phx.gbl>
References: <BLU175-W2356E1A65652578D9D0D4CCFEA0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <53EA9A07.1040600 at verizon.net>

On 8/12/2014 12:20 PM, Lee wrote:
> Third, your post implies that "simpler is better" a premise I don't
> think holds true in fiction. Looking at the entire body of Wolfe's
> work, are we really expected to always find the simplest answer
> possible? Is his fiction really meant to be a science laboratory with
> Occam's Razor as our primary tool of understanding?

A complex explanation should explain more, better, than the simple one
it replaces. In this case, the apparent possibility of two races is
maddening, and especially because it seems binary.

But were there not two waves of colonization on the planets? Two planets
to evolve on? Seems to me a single imitative species that evolves twice
or even splits into two or more fits this very well---after all, when
has there ever been a migration where there were not those left behind?
And "two worlds" or "twins" (not quite like one another) has always been
a Wolfean motif. A single alien species (and a single human contingent)
isn't enough. But . . .

It seems to me that 5HC is most forcefully about two coexisting worlds.
Not two planets, but the one we see and the real one: at a minimum, a
/doubling /of perspectives. The two waves on the two worlds suggests two
waves of something else. (If not four.)

---We see French colonizers and think of European seizure of the New
World; what do the natives see? Prey? Gods?

---We see another wave of colonists and gunships; what do the natives
see? Themselves? Their old selves and the new? Parasites?

---What do the French colonists see when their fellow Euros arrive? (if
they are still French?)

I agree with Gerry that humans-to-SC and natives-to-abos is simpler.
It's almost TOO simple. It's like a first-order (i.e., second-level)
twist in a colonial narrative where the white men become
worse-than-natives and the savage natives prove themselves
better-than-(white)men. What's needed here is a narrative theory with at
least two orders of "twist." Maybe even five, as Marc hints.

Marc's mites theory is factually compelling and has the requisite
story-twisted-to-the-fourth-power, but I admit I can't stand it. It has
no meaning for me. This leaves me stuck in the same limbo where the
did-inhumi-really-fly-between-worlds problem left me: I'm sentimentally
attached to an interpretation that yields some scrap of meaning for me.
In this case, that means a doubling of everything. The theory Gerry
rejects feels better to me, and it allows one species to be a parasite
on the other as well as other possibilities.

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