vanished people and mirrors

maa32 · 26 Mar 2002, 23:31 · from urth-v0203.mbox · original

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Subject: (urth) vanished people and mirrors
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 16:31:02 -0700
Message-ID: <urth-v0203-476 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0203/476.txt.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Here is a quote that at least links the mirrors of Fr. Inire from Shadow of=20
the Torturer with In Green's Jungles:

"The vanished People are like that at times, a single individual counting a=
s=20
many, and many coalescing into two or three.  Or one.  At such times it see=
med=20
to the nman with the black sword that they stood between mirrors that they=20
carried with them.  Or rather, that they had stood so once but had stepped=20
away long ago, and that the doubled and redoubled images they had left begi=
nd=20
had taken on lives of their own." (pg 263 SFBC BOTSS, In Green's Jungles ch=
.=20
4)

He then talks about "cruel saw grass" and "twisted bushes" that obscure the=20
city and tunr it into an illusion.

Here is another example of the low G of green cathcing up with the narrator:
"They came to a steep stairway after long walking, and the man with the bla=
ck=20
sword, who had supposed that he trod level ground, was amazed to behold a=20
lower city beneath the City of the Inhumi ... there was a walkway beside th=
e=20
river, narrow in places and narrower yet in others.  And in some wholly=20
crumbled away, leaving only small stones that rolled beneath the feet of th=
e=20
man with the black sword, threatenting to carry him into the water." after =
he=20
gets washed away, he sees trees whose "topmost leaves were among the stars"=20
(266).  these are very tall trees, taller even than California's. Small sto=
nes=20
that roll don't seem very passable for a man of horn's stockiness, unless t=
hey=20
aren't as treacherous as they sound.

Also, "The man who had been leader lay beside him, and it seemed to him tha=
t=20
the TREES AND VINES LEANED TOWARD THEM TO OVERHEAR THEIR TALK, and wept.  I=20
will not tell you how tall those trees are, or their thickness through the=20
trunk; you woulnd not credit anything I said.  But I will say this.  The tr=
ees=20
you have seen are bushes, and the roots of many of the great trees on Green=20
could geave the soild of this big farm from one end to the other and from o=
ne=20
side to the other making hills and valleys of its flat land." (300).

Later, "Horn" in fava's story threatens "Mee" with a tree: all he has to do=
 is=20
swing her into one to take care of her.

Also, describing Fava in astral travel: "I had said that she could no longe=
r=20
fly, but she seemed to fly as she raced back to me. 'some men' she dropped=20
breathless to the floor. ' Are coming. They saw me kiss you. ...'" (346)
Doesn't this sound like low G stuff? Does she say "some men" before she lan=
ds,=20
or does she actually drop to the floor?  Later a slug gun is fired and the=20
bullet "ricocheted again and agin, echoing and re-echoing up and down the=20
sewer as it screamed through the reeking air." (361) How much can a slug=20
ricochet in normal gravity? =20
I've really tried to find a definitive reaction that will indicate that=20
gravity is not normal on Green, but I can't seem to for sure if you won't=20
except the astral travel cliff incidents, even though Silk claims that the=20
staff he creates gains substance and real "weight". (and no scenes on Green=20
are directly narrated except through astral travel -> a few memories, and t=
he=20
third person stories of Incanto, but no coherent narrative thrust in the fi=
rst=20
person like we get in On Blue's Waters for Blue, so if you don't accept ast=
ral=20
scenes it is very hard to prove anything about the gravity of green at all)
Marc

--=20

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net