5HC

Gerry Quinn · 27 Aug 2014, 10:14 · from 2014-August.txt.gz

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From: gerry at bindweed.com (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 11:14:53 +0100
Subject: (urth) 5HC
In-Reply-To: <BLU175-W35A4B4A8E6305D73FA3BDFCFDC0 at phx.gbl>
References: <BLU175-W35A4B4A8E6305D73FA3BDFCFDC0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <53FDAF9D.8050509 at bindweed.com>

On 26/08/2014 18:31, Lee wrote:
>> Gerry Quinn: She's (Dr. Veil) an amateur.  Probably barely heard of on Earth.
> Apparently somebody has heard of her and is aware of her work. And to assume only
> one person in the universe is familiar with her seems rather unlikely. If Dr.
> Marsch was preparing for an anthropological trip to St. Croix/Ste. Anne it seems
> unlikely he would not have encountered her work. If I am going to study the
> Yanomamo there is no way I am not going to be familiar with Chagnon's work.

Read his interrogation, about pp205-215.  He goes into a fair amount of 
detail (of course, for the period when he was Victor, he may have had 
ulterior motives, but I think he is genuinely interested - even more 
than the original Marsch - in teasing out the story of his people.  I 
see 'A Story' as possibly something he wrote much later, after being 
released.

Anyway, he did visit the university at Ronceveaux on Sainte Anne after 
he splashed down, and after three years in the hills he spent a year 
there, and "caught up on the literature of my profession" (of course 
neo-Marsch needed this more than the original).  But he was disappointed 
in the academic standards.  "I was anxious to taolk to anyone in this 
system who was interested in its archaeological puzzles.  The situation 
there [at Roncevaux] was hopeless, so I boarded the starcrosser."

However, regardless of Veil's fame or otherwise, the simplest 
explanation is that - as explained to No. 5 and his father - the twin 
planets are twenty light years from Earth.  Thus if the current year is 
2900, Marsch departed from Earth in 2880, and would have been familiar 
only with scientific reports from the twin planets dating from 2860 and 
before.  Travelling to Sainte Anne, he effectively travelled forty years 
into the future.

>
>> And anyway, her theory is wrong and even a bit silly.
> so you have decided that Dr. Marsch had not been replaced by an abo?
> Because if he was, it renders Veil's hypothesis at least partially correct.
> And if something has happened once, why is it silly to consider that it has
> happened more than once?

He has been replaced, but he is aware of his nature, even if he "tries 
to convince himself he is human" as Wolfe puts it.  Two planets full of 
completely insane creatures who think they are individual humans they 
copied is silly.  And Victor's imitation of Marsch did not happen in a 
flash, it took him some time.  (Also it was three years before he came 
down from the hills, suggesting he was not confident walking back into 
human society as Marsch after mere months.  Anyone who knew Marsch would 
have spotted him as an imposter straight away.  The police on Sainte 
Croix knew there was something 'off' about him, as did No. 5.  He 
avoided Victor's father.)

It is the wholesale replacement invoked by Veil's Hypothesis that is silly.

- Gerry Quinn

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