Codename: Alex

Alice Turner · 01 Oct 1999, 19:07 · from whorl-v0010.mbox · original

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From: "Alice Turner" <akt at ibm.net>
Subject: (whorl) Codename: Alex
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 19:07:51
Message-ID: <whorl-v0010-0046 at digest.urth.net>
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> No spoilers for after what Alga's read, btw.

You are a gent, Alex, but I suggest that we take off the gloves. People who
haven't read the new book simply shouldn't download the Whorl list for a
while; they can cavort around in Urth if they need a Wolfe fix. We need to
talk!

So say I after blowing off most of my day to steam all the way through it. I
will go back more carefully, but I was carried away.

What Alex was protecting me from was my shock at the live burial of the
inhumi, which seemed a truly inhumane death--of course I didn't know at that
point what would happen later in the plot. And what I suggest to you at
*this* point is that this is Krait's secret, simply that, imprisoned and
deprived of food and stimulus, the inhumi can survive for a long time in a
kind of shriveled hibernation from which they quickly recover when given
fresh blood. We have to assume that Horn almost improbably early on realizes
that he can use this knowledge to his strategic advantage--but why not
assume this? Horn seems to have a natural military bent, like Mint and
Severian. (Well, I guess Mint's is not entirely natural.) He is quick and
decisive and drives a hard but fair bargain with the inhumi when the time
comes. Is it so illogical to think that he foresees how he can do this?
After all, he is perhaps the one person on Blue who can contemplate an
inhumu without complete involuntary horror. David Lebling's funny blurb is
also true.

-alga

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