Urth Net
5HOC
↰ answers Alice K. Turner
· by quotation
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alga wrote:
Without following the argument very closely, let me suggest that with the Annese, GW references the fairy tradition--he is not alone among good sf writers to do so. Faries are flummoxed by "cold iron"--i.e.tools. They can sometimes shapeshift. And they have been known to interbreed with humans, as well has to kidnap human children.
And are polymorphic: short and ugly, taller and fair.
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Yes, of course there is the Australian "dreamtime," quite
specifically.
It is the obvious link, given the "abo" terminology, which I think is unique to Australian vernacular, but there is little material specific to indigenous Australian traditions in "A Story". The Dreamtime ended long before 1788, though it is a nice conceit to imagining stopping with the introduction of European time. I think it is a nod to Bradbury, not The Exiles but a similar short.
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Adam wrote:
I can turn the question around, though: why, if Wolfe wants us to believe in prehistoric starcrossers and Shadow Children telepathically hiding the St. Anne, does he put this information in a document entitled simply "A Story" whose purpose is unknown, and which is mostly fictional in any case (unless you believe that the oral tradition preserved all Sandwalker's words and thoughts)?
To be tricksy and ambiguous ;) I can't believe anyone would be gullible enough to believe Wolfe when he tells an interviewer Marsch was a shadow child! Unfortunately he is not so fervent a modernist as to provide a key to his works cf Joyce (writing to mates to tell them what each chapter of Ulysses is really about, and almost btw what David is reading ;)).
Of course, we are allowed to have multiple worldviews simultaneously "true" in this postmodern era.
"A Story" is pretty Wolfean in its' equation of simplicity and godliness versus the more technologically adept and nasty Mars(c)hmen, see the epigraph from StJotC. Aside from VRT, one could easily believe that No. 5 wrote it:
1) killing and replacing a twin -- the twin in this case is the
other No 5 personality that runs things while the narrator is blacked out. It is presumably been inculcated by the father as in
2) The castration, and nightly examination of dreams and visions by Lastwind, a surrogate father.
3) cultural details: flails, ordeal by fire, mating with trees, drowning to honour rivers, stone tools not being needed
4) Etruscans, Atlantis and Gondwanaland
5) Veil: in where did the slavery and cruelty come from -- Marshmen
David Duffy.
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