followup on lander's destination--who decided?

Ron Crown · 27 Jun 1997, 11:52 · from whorl-v0006.mbox · original

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From: Ron Crown <crownrw at slu.edu>
Subject: (whorl) followup on lander's destination--who decided?
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 11:52:56
Message-ID: <whorl-v0006-0481 at digest.urth.net>
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[Posted from WHORL, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

After Kevin McGuire's post on his question similar to mine during the
PEOPLE interview, I checked the transcript for Wolfe's answer which is
given as follows: (emphasis added)

	"Quetzal, on his deathbed so to speak, advises them to land on 	Green.=20
When they discover that he's an alien, _they_ reverse 	his decision and
land on Blue, and I thought that was clear."

I guess this is an example of how even an author can lose track of the
details of his text because the text of that section in Exodus makes it
quite clear that the _colonists_, following Remora's advice, decided to
continue on course to Green and only discovered three days later "that
the _monitor_ had overruled him [i.e. Remora].  No one questions _its_
decision now."  (emphasis added).

So Wolfe's online answer appears to make things even murkier!

Details and memory!  (two important desiderata for Wolfe and his
readers, I should have thought)

Ron Crown
crownrw at slu.edu

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