Like a good Neighbor

Both Marc and James hold that Horn died in the pit. Marc says that Horn was somehow eaten by a tree that left behind a body that looked just like the Horn who fell into the pit, with the spirit of Horn intact. James has it that Horn's spirit died in the pit, along with the body, but the body was repaired and a Neighbor's spirit replaced Horn's. In the latter case, who brutally raped Seawrack, soon after getting out of the pit? A good Neighbor? While staying at Inclito's house, Silkhorn was yet again contacted by Mucor, sans body, to tell him that Babbie had come back to her and Marble. She greeted Silkhorn with, "There you are, Silk. There you are, Horn. I've been looking everywhere for you." (IGJ, 146-47) Did she not know who she was talking to, close to two years after sending her spirit to the Long Sun Whorl to search for Silk at Horn's behest? At the end of IGJ, Silkhorn was visited by two Neighbors. He asked them, "Will the inhumi really drive us away as they did you?" He was answered with, "You cannot go where we are." (381) At this point, Silkhorn had made astral trips to both Green and Urth. If Silkhorn was being animated by a Neighbor at that time, one implication is that the Neighbors had not gone away to either Green or Urth when they left the Blue-Green solar system, regardless of whether or not Silkhorn possessed an innate Neighbor's assumed ability to travel astrally and/or in time. Another implication is that those two Neighbors didn't know that they were talking to a fellow Neighbor, which strikes me as strange since Neighbors knew where to find Horn in the pit, on Green and, apparently, Silk on the LSW, and Silkhorn there in Blanko territory and still later in Dorp. I suppose they could have been lying or just bad guys, but Oreb, generally taken to be a good judge of character, greeted those two Neighbors with, "Good things. Things come." -Roy

my 2 cents ...

Any male human body would respond to Seawrack's singing with rape. That's what it does to the male of the species. So it matters less what is actually animating that body. Maybe Silk would have found a way to avoid it (Ulysses did) but if he didn't he would have killed himself afterward out of guilt. Lucky he wasn't there.

Seems to rule out her being involved in transferring Horn to Babbie. But even if that happened, there must be enough Horn in Incanto to be visible to her extrasensory perceptions. It suggests that she doesn't see the face at all, but rather the alpha persona followed by the beta.

I think they went either sideways or up, whatever that means. One way to leave the system physically is via the Whorl.

I don't think they were talking to a fellow Neighbor any more than Silk was the ruler of Urth. I think the Neighbor who resurrected Horn gave of himself but not all of himself; that the Horn that went back to his boat was Neighbor but not 100% Neighbor (difficult to parse the practical distinction between 100% Neighbor/100% Man and 50% of each), and that the Neighbor who later said "I am Horn" was the same Neighbor, meaning only "I created the (then-?)living Horn out of myself."

1) Seawrack was designed to be irresistible. 2) Why do you find it impossible that Neighbors would be fallible? You don't need me to point these things out. Why be provocative?

If she did, she apparently didn't feel the need to greet him, because they weren't friends. Maybe she didn't know his name. Maybe she doesn't know all there is to know about Neighbors. Maybe the only reason she knows that Horn is there is because she has already met the Rajan during her mission to the Whorl. So she has some background information.

I'll buy that.

Well, I hardly think those are the only two implications. At least one other is that they know they are not talking to a Neighbor nor a human but something utterly unique: a merging of the two. So they were speaking about limitations reflected in his humanity. Even if they didn't know they were talking to Neighborish entity (which I doubt) and others did, what of it? Who says the Neighbors know everything about each other's business? This is similar to Gerry's refutation about the fact that the Rajan claimed to know something about the Mother's worshippers but not /everything/. You're human, Roy. So obviously you know everything about the church services of Primitive Baptists or the Bahai. J.

No dia 20/11/2011, ?s 02:16, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> escreveu:

If her astral powers are at all to make any sense, what she is able to locate are spirits. If the spirits of Horn and Silk weren't there, she wouldn't find them. And meeting the Rajan in the Whorl raises the exact same question. This can be explained away. Just not convincingly, so far.

There's the little bit that we're not 'psychic' as they supposedly are, which renders any comparison with us pointless. Again, that can be explained away, only not so far convincingly.

My thought exactly.

I don't think the prerequisite declared in the first clause of the first sentence of the above to be true.

Once again, there's no reason to suppose being a Neighbor makes one omniscient. One is free to make the objection. But all it warrants from me is a shrug. I simply don't find Roy's competing theory (implied by the sum of his objections) at all acceptable: That Horn didn't die in the pit. If a fellow can't catch this hint from Wolfe, I probably won't be able to convince him of the rest of it anyway.

Perhaps her astral powers are not spiritual as the Neighbors are but only mental. She finds physical souls (mental patterns). She can find Silk's. She knows that Horn's is in the Neighbor because of her previous experiences with the Neighbor.

My answer exactly. Sexuality is of the flesh. A spirit entering a gendered body will respond according to the house it finds itself in. A demon becomes an incubus or succubus depending on the sort of body it possesses while on earth. I think something similar is going on with the sexuality of inhumi. Hm. Horn in OBW does seem a bit like Odysseus, who leaves his faithful wife and loyal son to go on a mandated oceanic journey. Unfortunately Horn didn't have quite the same large and experienced crew, who filled their ears with wax and lashed Odysseus to the mast as they passed the sirens, iirc. Odysseus begged them to free him (but they couldn't hear). Anyway, giving Horn protection from attacks by non-human creatures seems to be at least part of Babbie's role. I consider Seawrack to be such an attack. Krait also, and that crusty, multi-limbed thing from the sea too. Babbie does his best in each case.

If you guys are right, it occurs to me that she might have found the Rajan in her search because the Rajan was the only living version of Silk at the time she went looking.

That makes a lot of sense.

From: Ant?nio Pedro Marques

As you know very well, that was just intended as one of many examples of how he seems to know essentially diddley squat about the Neighbours. Having read as far as the chapter “Krait”, the idea that he was replaced by a Neighbour in the pit seems bizarre to me. Just consider the most obvious point: he needs the help of an inhumu to get out! And to get it he betrays his wife and family. Unless you think this Neighbour is a spy for his race and a rather nasty piece of work, or a very impulsive and impulsive creature with no conscience, how do you explain this? The “glittering eyes” he sees while lying semi-conscious, and the “long nosed man or spider” that he apparently sees with his eyes closed are presumably Neighbours. [Are we supposed to think of Severian? Doesn’t make much sense for him to be there though.] The long-nosed man seemingly uses a device on him that sends him on a short astral excursion. I think it is likely that this device changed him in some way by granting him or causing him to develop certain psychic abilities (they probably developed as a consequence of his temporary exposure as well as subsequent experimentation and other events). But he is still Horn. Assuming the Neighbours were present and are essentially benevolent, it seems they could not help him in the obvious way, i.e. by getting him out of the pit, as Krait did. But this ties in very well with the notion that they are half-in, half-out of our dimension, and are limited in their physical abilities (see also the corpses in the sewer on Green). So that’s my working theory so far. I don’t disagree with James’s assertion that the Neighbours have something of Faerie about them, but Horn ain’t no changeling. - Gerry Quinn

So what? You'll have to outline your objection a little better. When does a Wolfe character ever take complete moral responsibility for everything? What do the Neighbors owe him after unkilling him?

As fairies always are.

From: James Wynn

She sees Quetzal as “the man who isn’t there”. And she sees Silk as “filled” during her exorcism, where everyone else looks hollow. Don’t know how those fit, but just noting it. It would be interesting to know how she sees chems, but I don’t think we are told. I guess it may be something Wolfe has decided to leave a little vague anyway. I’m not sure there is a super-consistent model to find. - Gerry Quinn

From: David Stockhoff

You’re missing the point. If they were trying to help him, they didn’t do a very good job of it, but that’s consistent with them doing as much as they could (the astral projection device). But if they were sending one of their own to replace him, they did a really terrible job insofar as after the replacement he was still stuck in the pit — that requires an astounding degree of impulsiveness and irrationality! And finally if they intended to replace him and offer Krait his family to get him out, that makes them downright non-benevolent, and doesn’t work with the whole storyline. Only the first option is really tenable.

Sure. Like I said, I agree with James that they have some things in common with fairies. But they have characteristics that are quite untypical of fairies, too. - Gerry Quinn

I agree. You're missing your own point. Fairies are notoriously amoral and, as you say, limited in their powers. Why expect the Neighbors to be perfectly moral and powerful? When are fairies ever that?

From: David Stockhoff

All but the Increate are limited in their powers. If you want to argue that the Neighbours are subject to mad impulses, maybe you could say that makes them like fairies also. On the other hand, fairies don’t usually have high tech space-faring civilisations (which also reads against super-impulsiveness), and are not usually preyed upon by vampires. And the Neighbours do in fact seem to have a strong moral sense even though it certainly does not make them paragons who never do evil. In some ways, the Neighbours are quite unlike fairies, even if they resemble them in others. So while I don’t dispute that there are some Faerie-like elements in their make-up, I do not think they are fairies. - Gerry Quinn

One of the main things about fairies is that we will never entirely understand them. Hmm, whom does that remind me of ....

Okay, I have to step in here. I don't think they are entirely fairies in that they are the "next step of man" toward the hierogrammate evolution, so putting a primitive amorality on them is not consistent with their "outside and beyond" reality presence in the case of short sun, where the vanished gods watch the eucharist scene and where the Outsider's will is being done. Just my 2 cents, though I do think the destruction of man is implicit in Horn's deal with Neighbor Horn.

Well, they aren't amoral. An seemingly unending list of strange rules govern their behavior. Rather, their morality is alien to ours. So one ought expect that a human who consults with Faeries is going to behave immorally by human standards. Think of the sorceress Medea who burned her own children. From her perspective she was making them immortal, purging them of their mortal parts. (To go to Faerie is also to go to the Underworld, the Land of the Dead.) Gerry's mistake (one of them) is thinking that all the Neighbors must be acting in concert, always with larger ultimate plan in mind. If we were talking about a human character, he wouldn't make that mistake. Just because a young faerie has acted to resurrect Horn out of personal guilt does not mean he stopped to plan beyond that decision. Incidentally, I consider Horn's replacement here to be instructed by the story from the Mabinogion of Pwyll who chased a white stag into Faerie (Annwvyn) and ended up having to swap identities with a faerie.

Hm, yep. Gerry weren't you asking for fauns a while back? I think you've found them. Add some bristly hair on the arm to those eyes and that snout and multi-limbs for their faerie/Pan multiple images and Neighbors make some pretty good fauns. Moreover, Silk(y hair)+ Horn(s) also make a nice faun equation (add Hoof and Hide if you like). Thus the origin of Silver Silk and Silent Silk- the fauns Silvanus and Silenus. Silk (father-figure) is a man and Horn (son-figure) is a man but some third essence is needed to make him a god. A bit of Neighbor maybe?

But the Neighbors do show amorality in their treatment of each other and humans, at least in the past. They may have had cities and spaceships in the past but now they are living like primitives on Blue. Isn't this a parallel to humans on Urth and Ushas? It just seems like you have to bend and distort the story too much to get the Neighbors as the future of humanity, Marc. For me, so many elements of your theories fall perfectly and simply into place if Neighbors can be seen as a magical but primitive, previous part of human history and development as faeries and fauns are to us. It seems clear to me that Wolfe presents us with higher beings than humans in the form of the hiero-types, the angelic hierarchy. Can you imagine B, F and O and/or Tzadkiel and Apheta living in the woods, hunting and gathering around a campfire? I think they are our future and Wolfe presents everything about them in a manner which reflects that. The Green Man may (as B, F and O suggest) have more knowledge and power than they do. I completely agree that he is likely meant as a connection to The Neighbors in some way. Your "tree connection" is spot on. But The Green Man is another name for Great God Pan, a powerful, but primitive deity with plant associations (including the vines of Dionysus). No matter how powerful and mystic this god is, he can never be as spiritually advanced as we (Christians,I assume Wolfe means) are. It is the angels who are spiritually superior to us, not the rustic, pagan gods of the past. But I understand that once you have set upon a path for many years it isn't easy or even desirable to backtrack and reroute. But as I see it, doing that would allow for a shorter, simpler path to what you are aiming for. Just my 2 cents, of course. With apologies.

Has anyone noticed that B, F, and O are all spectral types that burn hotter, brighter, and more short-lived than G-class stars, such as the Sun? (is there an "A" we're missing?) Adam

From: Lee Berman

Or add fins and blowholes and they make pretty good whales. So you’re saying that Silk is a Neighbour? Because, IIRC, it was Silk you were identifying with a faun.

Whales have silky foreskins (Aristotle Onassis used them for cushions on his yacht). Thus we bring in the phallus theme too. And narwhals have horns. Ah, yes. Very like a whale. - Gerry Quinn

Well, a few things. I DO see resemblances between the city of the inhumi and nessus, from the sewer to the "grove of disintegrating towers like a noble face rotting in the grave" used to describe the city on Green. Another thing is that the whorl left in the past, may have experienced relativistic speed, and is probably in typhon's future because there is NO indication it travelled through the time distortions of the ship on Urth of the New Sun. In addition, when they show up on urth the narator says, "I wanted to take us to green, where Sinew is. I wanted to see him again, as I still do, I wanted you others ... to see wha real evil is, so that you might undestand why we on blue must come together in brotherwhood BEFORE OUR OWN WHORL BECOMES WHAT GREEN ALREADY IS.' I fell silent, forced to think myself about what I myself had just said. He wants them to see the condition that led to what Green is, to see what it was, when he winds up on Urth. There is nothing about seeing what Green will one day become. i think this is a REAL temporal inversion to see Green as a past Urth, that makes no textual sense and has no textual support. If Green is the future of Urth, the vanished people have "every right to be there" because they are actually men, it explains how the inhumi are everywhere, it explains how "man climbed up in his tree and has not come down yet" from long sun, and we don't have to worry about how everybody wound up in the past, we only have to explain how the solar system changed during the cataclysm of the coming of the new sun. And that hunter gatherer system you are describing is not an accurate picture of the neighbors - they are elsewhere. Sounds more like a description of HePenSheep and those guys, who have gone native but are not Neighbors.

No dia 2011/11/20, ?s 18:33, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> escreveu:

Excuse me, but I don't think those are higher than humans. I also don't see why Marc's neighbours bend the story too much - where's the young lady when we need her?

No dia 2011/11/20, ?s 19:07, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> escreveu:

The Neighbours, of course, are the Nox. And as for the Furlings...

From: James Wynn

I don’t think that about Neighbours and I don;t know where you think I have suggested it. Like humans, they clearly do often act in concert.

I can’t understand how you entertain this hypothesis. Are you saying Horn was dead or alive when he noticed a Neighbour bending over him? If the Neighbour waited for him to die, or actively killed him, he’d have had time to notice that Horn was stuck in a pit. Maybe he thought humans could fly. Also, if “Glittering eyes and sharp faces came and went” refers to Neighbours, there must have been more than one of them. Surely they would have dissuaded their comrade, or helped him if they could not dissuade him. Or just reminded him of what he was. Horn didn’t die in the pit. There’s nothing that strongly indicates that he did and a million things that make it obvious that he didn’t. - Gerry Quinn

Uhh ... the chapter is titled "the end" and it says "the best part of my life was oveer. The pit was its grave". In addition, doesn't she say he was dead? come on man there are at least some disturbing deathly images. --- On Sun, 11/20/11, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote: From: Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> Subject: Re: (urth) Like a good Neighbor To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Sunday, November 20, 2011, 11:18 AM From: James Wynn

in concert, always with larger ultimate plan in mind. If we were talking about

a human character, he wouldn't make that mistake. I don’t think that about Neighbours and I don;t know where you think I have suggested it. Like humans, they clearly do often act in concert.

Just because a young faerie has acted to resurrect Horn out of personal guilt

does not mean he stopped to plan beyond that decision. I can’t understand how you entertain this hypothesis. Are you saying Horn was dead or alive when he noticed a Neighbour bending over him? If the Neighbour waited for him to die, or actively killed him, he’d have had time to notice that Horn was stuck in a pit. Maybe he thought humans could fly. Also, if “Glittering eyes and sharp faces came and went” refers to Neighbours, there must have been more than one of them. Surely they would have dissuaded their comrade, or helped him if they could not dissuade him. Or just reminded him of what he was. Horn didn’t die in the pit. There’s nothing that strongly indicates that he did and a million things that make it obvious that he didn’t. - Gerry Quinn -----Inline Attachment Follows-----

No dia 2011/11/20, ?s 14:36, "Gerry Quinn" <gerry at bindweed.com> escreveu:

No, it was from someone else.

Also Gerry, the quote in chapter 10, Seawrack says, "YOU WERE DEAD". I don't know how you can say there is no evidence that he was dead when it at least ambiguously says so.

Also, she says, "dead things are food", which is kind of where my eaten thing comes in, with sharing blood to commune with neighbors, eucharist, etc. --- On Sun, 11/20/11, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote: From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> Subject: Re: (urth) Like a good Neighbor To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Sunday, November 20, 2011, 11:22 AM Uhh ... the chapter is titled "the end" and it says "the best part of my life was oveer. The pit was its grave". In addition, doesn't she say he was dead? come on man there are at least some disturbing deathly images. --- On Sun, 11/20/11, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote: From: Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> Subject: Re: (urth) Like a good Neighbor To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Sunday, November 20, 2011, 11:18 AM From: James Wynn

in concert, always with larger ultimate plan in mind. If we were talking about

a human character, he wouldn't make that mistake. I don’t think that about Neighbours and I don;t know where you think I have suggested it. Like humans, they clearly do often act in concert.

Just because a young faerie has acted to resurrect Horn out of personal guilt

does not mean he stopped to plan beyond that decision. I can’t understand how you entertain this hypothesis. Are you saying Horn was dead or alive when he noticed a Neighbour bending over him? If the Neighbour waited for him to die, or actively killed him, he’d have had time to notice that Horn was stuck in a pit. Maybe he thought humans could fly. Also, if “Glittering eyes and sharp faces came and went” refers to Neighbours, there must have been more than one of them. Surely they would have dissuaded their comrade, or helped him if they could not dissuade him. Or just reminded him of what he was. Horn didn’t die in the pit. There’s nothing that strongly indicates that he did and a million things that make it obvious that he didn’t. - Gerry Quinn -----Inline Attachment Follows-----

And if you insist there is nothing that could resurrect him after he dies, then we have been reading a very different series of books, my friend.

From: Marc Aramini

That’s why I qualified “indicates” with “strongly”. As for the first, he says the best part of his life was over, indicating that a worse part was to come. And indeed, he spent days lying semi-conscious, thirsting and abandoned in a pit, then betrayed his family to the inhumi to get out, then not too long after got kidnapped to a hell planet and killed. So it sounds like a fair assessment. Seawrack thought he was dead, but she, while she may have been born human, knows nothing of humans (except perhaps ones that are lured by sirens and are quickly killed). So yes, some deathly images. But no reason to think he actually died then, IMO. - Gerry Quinn --- On Sun, 11/20/11, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote: Horn didn’t die in the pit. There’s nothing that strongly indicates that he did and a million things that make it obvious that he didn’t.

I think the problem with your approach is that you seek the "absolute" - not similarity (in certain - important - respects), but identity; death must be death (not in a metaphorical sense); neighbours cannot just be connected to the trees (e.g. trees be their "totem"), but must be related to them in a very strong sense (e.g. be their genetical "children") etc. To me the power of Wolfe's SF is that at the same time it is very subtle psychological literature - and very precise and deep and realistic description of humanity (not only humanity). Have not many of us (I mean this list!) have such strong ties with somebody (a friend, a lover, a parent, a dog... ) that one could say that he left a part of himself in this person (or has an "imprint" of this person in himself forever)? Why discussing Babbie we need to assume that all that was left of Horn went into him? Had not some of us had situations when it was possible to say (seriously!) that a better part of us (our soul) died? But do we need after that say something like "poor NN, after his divorce all that was left of his former soul went into his dog"? We may - but why we want to understand such things literally reading Wolfe? Sergei Soloviev

Seawrack doesn't say I thought you were dead, she says, you were dead. This is why we will never ever ever read Wolfe the same way - you can dismiss these things as, Seawrack didn't know what she was takling about, while I think Wolfe is being sneaky and HORN doesn't know what he's talking about because he doesn't understand what really happened to him. The chapter is "the end"? I take it literally, you never ever ever ever will, so we can never agree, but to deny that it's in the text is to deny the text. Forever and forever and forever, the two of us must agree to disagree. --- On Sun, 11/20/11, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote: From: Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> Subject: Re: (urth) Like a good Neighbor To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Sunday, November 20, 2011, 11:39 AM From: Marc Aramini

That’s why I qualified “indicates” with “strongly”. As for the first, he says the best part of his life was over, indicating that a worse part was to come. And indeed, he spent days lying semi-conscious, thirsting and abandoned in a pit, then betrayed his family to the inhumi to get out, then not too long after got kidnapped to a hell planet and killed. So it sounds like a fair assessment. Seawrack thought he was dead, but she, while she may have been born human, knows nothing of humans (except perhaps ones that are lured by sirens and are quickly killed). So yes, some deathly images. But no reason to think he actually died then, IMO. - Gerry Quinn --- On Sun, 11/20/11, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote: Horn didn’t die in the pit. There’s nothing that strongly indicates that he did and a million things that make it obvious that he didn’t. -----Inline Attachment Follows-----

It is said in the context when Seawrack tries naively to justify herself (why she didn't help). And she knows very little about human life and the life on land. Mother said that she must learn. Sergei Soloviev

From: Marc Aramini

How would she know? She didn’t go down in the pit to check on him. She just assumed, which as we all know makes an ass out of u and me. - Gerry Quinn

And because she thinks that Horn is dead, she is afraid to come because all her undersea wild instincts may awake. She is afraid that she may want to eat Horn. She is too afraid to check whether he is alive. And she wants so much to be like "normal" humans. Sergei Soloviev

My opinion is that this "additional" resurrection does Wolfe's book harm, not good. Sergei Soloviev

so when the avern killed severian was that just a symbolic death too? Yes, I am an absolutist. Some folks are. I honstly think Gene is too, but of course, not eveeryone agrees with me.

nah, she knows he's tree food.

Well well well ... and Severian's fall in the ship on urth? his sacrifice in the temple of apupunchau? the themati drowning, the death by flower, did all these deaths and resurrections in the same series do the work harm? This is a mystical work, but there are occasionally explanations to the at first inexplicable.

I don' think it was symbolic death to Severian. In BotNS resurrections play a very different role, there is a series of them and compositionally the importance of each episode grows until Severian understands that they are resurrections. Moreover, he doesn't understand what energy is involved until the moment (in the UotNS) when he tries to heal inside the Tzadkiel spaceship. Sergei Soloviev

What gets me is the points where the narrators ponder if they understand what they are saying: "I had to think about what I myself had just said ... it is possible no one understands" that leads me to believe they mysteries are soluble, not just open ended mysteries. " I have given only scattered hints in spite of all my efforts" Those are metatextual statements that the structure is indicated through those scattered hints. "not my words, not my words" --- On Sun, 11/20/11, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote: From: Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> Subject: Re: (urth) Like a good Neighbor To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Sunday, November 20, 2011, 11:39 AM From: Marc Aramini

That’s why I qualified “indicates” with “strongly”. As for the first, he says the best part of his life was over, indicating that a worse part was to come. And indeed, he spent days lying semi-conscious, thirsting and abandoned in a pit, then betrayed his family to the inhumi to get out, then not too long after got kidnapped to a hell planet and killed. So it sounds like a fair assessment. Seawrack thought he was dead, but she, while she may have been born human, knows nothing of humans (except perhaps ones that are lured by sirens and are quickly killed). So yes, some deathly images. But no reason to think he actually died then, IMO. - Gerry Quinn --- On Sun, 11/20/11, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote: Horn didn’t die in the pit. There’s nothing that strongly indicates that he did and a million things that make it obvious that he didn’t. -----Inline Attachment Follows-----

Horn is a very different character, and what is good for the development of the character of Severian, is not good for Horn. Sergei

But Horn re-enacts Sevs flooding when he gets a light, a dark sword, and cleans out corpses to make way for a flood of purifying water. So how different are they, really?

I agree with this - but as we see, my interpretation of concrete text is different of yours (we agreed to disagree). I think that open questions sometimes are more important that the answers suggested in haste - and so many theories come to suggest just that - answers, without meditation on the questions. Sergei

This is the point - he re-enacts him differently! Sergei

No, you don't understand how I came to the tree apotheosis theory, it was a rigorous crossreferencing that took months almost a decade ago, and it wasn't composed in haste. I do not hastily propose anything.

Once I found a dead cat on a winter road - a cat killed by car, pressed flat and frozen, with intestines around. I felt that I have to take it off and give it a more decent burial. Believe me, it was not pleasant or easy. Maybe I could do what Horn did - cut corpses by sword and clean the sewer, though it would be harder. I could not be a torturer and executioner, like Severian. I think that they are very different, and when you say that they are similar, it is imagination, not experience. There is similarity, but difference is important. Sergei

That ought to count as amorality right there, although no one said it was "primitive." Even if they ARE being moral, why should we understand their morality? They are aliens after all.

THANK you. Their amorality is "apparent" to humans because it's not human morality and certainly not Christian.

See below. I do think that Neighbors are culturally less divided than we humans are, but this doesn't mean they all work in the same Office of Intervention in Human Affairs.

In fact, fairies are always doing things "apparently" on a whim---they often go against their own code (the "seemingly unending list of strange rules [that] govern their behavior"). Usually this is in what you might call "literary" fairy stories rather than the traditional ones, but the precedent exists.

Yep. Although the exact deployment of "swap" is left pretty open.

As I said before, ambiguity is a central element of Wolfe's fiction. The stories are filled with events that the reader knows occurs but have reasonable altenate explanations. Number Five does not find his fathers books on the W shelf in the library, so maybe he was wrong about the last name. But if Seawrack did not truly believe Horn was dead--because she had some genuine reason solid reason for believing he was dead--then I have never read a Wolfe story. I honestly cannot imagine why there is any debate on this issue. This is about as emphatic a signal that Wolfe offers. Arguing about what it means that Horn was resurrected...I get that. Arguing about whether Silk killed himself? I get that as well. Arguing about whether Horn died when he fell in to the pit? Come on. Seawrack is the witness. She doesn't even feel the need to justify her assessment even after Horn return alive. She's been a carrion eater. She knows dead things.

No dia 2011/11/20, ?s 23:34, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> escreveu:

All drowned ones. No, if you want to take as evidence any character's impression on this, I don't think Seawrack cuts it. But maybe Babbie does on account of his psychicness - the same that makes it odd that a Neighbour should be out of touch with other Neighbours. . And there's the issue of whether he could have physically survived the fall.

Well, Babbie agreed with Seawrack. If you want to argue that it is impossible for a Neighbor to be out of touch with other Neighbors, fine. I don't see it, but have at it. Horns death and resurrection is a mystery in the novel. But whether it happened is not.

Hmmm...I did not catch this implication in your theory. I do not like. I mean, how does this comport with your concept of the Rajan as a Christ-figure (which I definitely agree with)? I have other reasons be unhappy with the man-eating tree theory, but this implication pushes me further down that hallway.

From: James Wynn

She knows nothing about human life except that humans die easily and are eaten. She saw it happen her human, and she turned away without investigating. She didn’t go down in the pit. How could she have known he was dead?

We have the testimony of Horn himself, who clearly was not dead. When do you think he died, exactly? When he fell? At a certain point when he was lying there? Did the Neighbour — if it was a Neighbour - kill him when he touched his forehead with his device?

Get real. She didn’t get within twenty feet of him. Silk thought Oreb was dead when he had him right in his hands, and he’s a professional animal sacrificer. Do you think Oreb was dead then? Smart bird! Play dead. No cut! - Gerry Quinn

James has it as 'God pwm!' :(

From: James Wynn

Babbie got it wrong, unless he died at a very specific time: *********************************************************** Sunlight warmed me. I kept my eyes closed, knowing that it would be painful to look at the sun. It vanished, and I opened them to see what had become of it, and saw Babbie’s familiar, hairy mask peering at me over the edge of the pit. I closed them again, and the next time I opened them he had gone. I think it was not long afterward that I came to myself. I sat up, cold, full of pain, and terribly thirsty. It was as if my spirit had gone and left my body unoccupied as it did on Green; but in this case it had returned, and my memories (such as they were) were those of the body and not those of the spirit. It was day again, perhaps mid afternoon. I was sitting among earth and fallen leaves in a pit about twelve cubits deep. *********************************************************** Now you will say that the second paragraph even talks about his spirit going! But there’s a problem. When the long-nose man bent over him, he was already suffering thirst, so if he died then it happened after this time, in which case Babbie saw him alive. How do you make sense of that? The long-nose man bends over a Neighbour? Who and why? When does Horn die? - Gerry Quinn

Not to play the devil's advocate, but 'I closed them again, and the next time I opened them he had gone.' followed by a paragrapsh break, followed by 'I think it was not long afterward that I came to myself.' can not unreasonably be interpreted as his dying, or getting to the brink of, under Babbie's gaze, Babbie leaving convinced he was dead, and his coming back to life (or his body being reanimated by a Neighbour spirit, but I don't like hat) slowly a bit later. Long loss of conscience which seems like a short while when waking is quite normal.

Well, if say his head were turned at a wrong angle. Yeah, she's no doctor. And yet she doesn't seem to doubt her assessment even when Horn comes marching back alive.

I believe Oreb was possessed. Whether he was clinically dead for a short time is beyond our ability to discern from the text. I believe he was close enough to dead that even an experienced augur could not tell the difference. Pas (or whatever other god was possessing him) did not want to be sacrificed. You're right that it doesn't make sense that he was faking or fainted. Are you saying that a god or Neighbor was possessing Horn so he could escape from, uh, Seawrack?

Babbie saw him alive.

Neighbour? Who and why?

Full text for analysis: *************************** From OBW, end of Chapter 8, "The End" I threw my slug gun to my shoulder and was able to get off one quick shot. The greenbuck broke stride and stumbled to its knees, but in less than a breath it had bounded up again, cutting right and running hard. It vanished into brush, and I sprinted after it, all my fatigue forgotten, guided by Babbie's agitated hunck-hunck-bunck! Very suddenly I was falling into darkness. Ambiguity is inextricable from Wolfe's stories, but I am going to posit that he dies right here. Here and thus baldly I had intended to end both tonight's labor and this whole section of my narrative. I wiped this new quill of Oreb's and put it away, shut up the scuffed little pen case I found where my father must have left it in the ashes of our old shop, and locked the drawer that holds this record, a thick sheaf of paper already. The following three sentences is why I think Horn died at this point. I think the rest of the story is essentially told from the POV of a new character, whom we have previously met only as a greenbuck. In this, Wolfe has perfect the first-person ambiguity that he had been experimenting with at least since the Fifth Head of Cerberus. But whatever one believes, there has clear been a traumatic break in the story. *But it cannot be. It cannot be a mere incident like Wijzer's drawing his map and the rest.* *Either that fall must be the end of the entire work (which might be wisest) or else it cannot close at all.* So let me say this to whoever may read. With that fall, the best part of my life was over. The pit was its grave. It must be very late, but I cannot sleep. Somewhere very far away, Seawrack is singing to her waves. ********************************* *************************** From OBW, from the beginning of Chapter 9, "Krait" I posit that the rest of the memories are during the time Horn's body was being repaired by the Neighbor. Thus they are memories from Horn's perspective. But he is not truly revived yet. When I regained consciousness it must have been almost shadelow. I lay on my back for a long while then, occasionally opening my eyes and shutting them again, seeing without thinking at all about anything I saw. The sky darkened, and the stars came out. I remember seeing Green directly above my up-turned face, and later seeing it no longer, but only the innocent stars that had fled before it and returned when it had gone. It was at about that time that I felt the cold. I knew I was cold and wished that I were not. I may have moved, rubbing myself with my hands or hugging myself and shivering; I cannot be sure. Glittering eyes and sharp faces came and went, but I appealed for no help and received none. Sunlight warmed me. I kept my eyes closed, knowing that it would be painful to look at the sun. It vanished, and I opened them to see what had become of it, and saw Babbie's familiar, hairy mask peering at me over the edge of the pit. I closed them again, and the next time I opened them he had gone. I think it was not long afterward that I came to myself. I sat up, cold, full of pain, and terribly thirsty. [...] This is what I least wished to write about last night, but I am going to try to write it down this evening. Once, as I lay there at the bottom of the pit, it seemed to me that a man with a long nose (a tall man or an immense spider) stood over me. I did not move or even open my eyes, knowing that if I did he would be gone. He touched my forehead with something he held, and the pit vanished. This fellow with the prominent nose is our narrator. When this scene occurs is not stated. Perhaps it occurred in the seconds before Horn died. It might have occurred after Horn was repaired but just as the Neighbor took the final act to reanimate him. For the sake of argument, I'll say the former. ****************************************

No Gerry. Try to focus please. Neighbors are fauns, not whales. No fins, no blowholes. Just horns and hairy arms and a bit of magic.

Were you unaware of James' theory that Silk is combined with the essence of a Neighbor (who are faerie and fauns). If you grasp that Silk was possessed by The Outsider, who is akin to Dionysus, you wouldn't struggle and become so frustrated by it. Nobody expects you to understand the Dionysisan connection to the trinity but Neighbor=faun is perfectly within your abilities. I swear.

I shouldn't have said the Neighbors hunt, true. Horn finds them while on a hunt. But they are gathered around a fire. If they were living as advanced spaceage beings, wouldn't they have a ship and some warmth/light technology greater than fire? Now, they used to have spaceships. That's how they got to Green. I take the circle of glass Horn encounters to be fused sand from a rocket launch. They used to have cities also, on Blue, but they are ruins beneath the waves. I know we differ on this point, Marc but that's how I see the situation. Green is Urth, a corrupt, infested planet which needs to be cleansed. Blue has been cleansed. Severian first detects human life on Ushas by the glow of their fires. Horn first detects Neighbors by the dots of light of their fires also.

I have no problem with your thoughts about angels, Entonio. But Gene Wolfe does think they are higher than humans.

Lee Berman wrote (21-11-2011 04:43):

Where did you get that?

From: James Wynn

She’s rationalising her guilt, I think. Here’s one scenario I think possible: Horn fell in and was badly concussed. [As with Auk before him, this was the prelude to a mystical evolution, but that’s not germane to the episode, it’s just a trope that Wolfe recycles.] The Neighbours did their best to help him but they live in another dimension and can’t move anything physical or bring him water. What they did was touch his forehead with a mental amplifier that temporarily gave him the ability to astrally travel and get help. Unfortunately he went to Nettle who could not help him and indeed became frightened, thinking I suppose that he was a ghost or inhumu. The only other human or quasi-human entity on the island at that time was Seawrack (Krait may have been hanging around already, but even if the Neighbours knew that, they wouldn’t have expected him to help). It is possible that they didn’t recognise Seawrack as human. It’s also possible that they tried to communicate with her but she fled. We know she is terrified of Neighbour constructions at least — it’s probable that she is even more terrified of Neighbours. It was this abandonment of Horn due to her fear that she is rationalising. Of course the simple scenario that she is ignorant of human life and ordinary death — everyone she has met has quickly died and stayed dead — is also perfectly possible. It was his experience with the mental amplifier that initiated Horn’s subsequent development of extraordinary psychic powers. We already see that he has changed when he is going with Krait to find Seawrack — he sees the world with “a sharpness of detail born of a consciousness of detail”. He’s changed — but nothing about the change is the sort of thing we might particularly expect to associate with a Neighbour psyche — affinity with trees, consciousness of other dimensions, feeling he’s missing limbs, whatever. He doesn’t develop superpowers just like that, it requires other events and experiences — his experiences on Green, his death, his experiments on inhumi which he is contemplating carrying out in the future during his time as Rajan of Gaon. Anyway, that’s my working theory for the moment. I think it fits the facts and involves the swallowing of fewer camels than scenarios in which Horn died in the pit.

No, I’m saying that an experienced observer thinking someone is dead when they’re not is a scenario that has already happened in the story, so you can hardly discount it as ridiculous! And in Silk’s case the observer was better experienced and had the dead person in their hand, instead of looking down twenty feet over a dangerous drop in a place that terrifies the observer.

************************ I threw my slug gun to my shoulder and was able to get off one quick shot. The greenbuck broke stride and stumbled to its knees, but in less than a breath it had bounded up again, cutting right and running hard. It vanished into brush, and I sprinted after it, all my fatigue forgotten, guided by Babbie’s agitated hunck-hunck-bunck! Very suddenly I was falling into darkness. ************************

So all this time while he’s opening and shutting his eyes, and watching stuff going on around him like Babbie’s appearance.... he’s dead? *********************************** Sunlight warmed me. I kept my eyes closed, knowing that it would be painful to look at the sun. It vanished, and I opened them to see what had become of it, and saw Babbie’s familiar, hairy mask peering at me over the edge of the pit. I closed them again, and the next time I opened them he had gone. I think it was not long afterward that I came to myself. I sat up, cold, full of pain, and terribly thirsty. [...] This is what I least wished to write about last night, but I am going to try to write it down this evening. Once, as I lay there at the bottom of the pit, it seemed to me that a man with a long nose (a tall man or an immense spider) stood over me. I did not move or even open my eyes, knowing that if I did he would be gone. He touched my forehead with something he held, and the pit vanished. ******************************

Ah, but we do know something about when it happened — that was the very point I was making in my post! When it happened Horn went to Nettle (in his mind at least) and told her he was dying of thirst. So it must have happened after the events of the previous paragraph above! It happened after Horn came to himself and sat up. That seems like a very serious problem for any “Horn died” scenario, IMO - Gerry Quinn

From: Lee Berman

Yes, but as I understand it James’s theory supposes that this combination happened when Horn returned to the Whorl. Your attempts to identify Silk with a faun are based on certain syllables of epithets he was given by the inhabitants of the Whorl [for unrelated reasons clearly explained in the text, which you chose to completely ignore] at a period before Horn returned. - Gerry Quinn

Gerry, that's not what he wrote. He explicitly says, "Once, as I lay there at the bottom of the pit". The point in the story is undetermined but it is BEFORE he sat up. It straightforwardly the opposite of your reading.

Associating fauns (or any other half animal/human being) with faerie creatures is no great leap as anyone who has read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (or An Evil Guest) should know.

The Wolfe quote about angels and Apheta was from the James Jordan interview, toward the end. http://mysite.verizon.net/~vze2tmhh/wolfejbj.html#urth2

I respect your view, Gerry and have no interest in changing it. The issue, as always, is whether you respect the views of others or not and that you find the need for others to change their view to yours. I don't understand why chapter titles and formatting are not part of the text for you. The first definition I find is:

In allseriousness, I think you miss much if you don't read the chapter titles. Wolfe makes important use of them.

I don't think you are very good at understanding Marc, Gerry. But I do think that was a very honest post on your part by calling his theories "out to lunch" and a "torrent of unthought out drivel". I can see why you don't find those insulting words to be offensive. You, yourself, seem to relish and thrive on personal attacks against you so it makes sense that you are trying to follow The Golden Rule. You also honestly make it clear you hope to make this an uncomfortable environment for certain people. I really appreciate that blunt statement of your intentions and goals here. It is what I've been saying about you for a while and I appreciate your affirmation. This "sowing seeds of discontent among your enemies" is a new tactic for you Gerry. It will be interesting where you go with it. Marc and I differ mostly on one key point. He views the Sun Series as depicting the chronological and spiritual future of our own earth. I view it as an alternate universe which depicts our spiritual past in a futuristic light. This small difference leads to a number of interesting disagreements on interpretation. We have discussed this and there is no dishonesty involved. Moreover, I have no interest in making this board and uncomfortable environment for him because, 1. his insights and observations increase my own understanding; 2. I like the guy, as much as that has meaning in this forum. He is pleasant, thoughtful and intelligent. Why would I ever want to chase him (or anyone else) away?

Lee Berman wrote (21-11-2011 14:19):

The sense of 'higher' in the interview is not the same as the one in your argument. 'Angels' are certainly 'closer to God' in Christian view, but it's 'Humans' that Creation exists for. You'll find that in every Christian work, including Tolkien's. Angels are not a stage Humans are supposed to climb to. Now, certainly, Gene Wolfe isn't chained to that view, and the hierofolk aren't even presented as analogues to angels in what regards their origin, but they actually are quite similar in their function.

From: James Wynn From OBW: "Once, as I lay there at the bottom of the pit,...

You’re forgetting the thirst. It was when he came to himself and sat up that he noticed he was thirsty. When the long-nosed man sent him on his astral voyage, he told Nettle he was dying of thirst. So the long-nosed man must have come after Horn came to himself and sat up. He lay there both before and after sitting up that time. What else would he do to rest? He could not climb walls or lick dew for days on end. So “once as I lay there” tells us nothing. But the thirst tells us the sequence of events. - Gerry Quinn

Good lord.

From: Lee Berman

Marc’s theories, whatever one thinks about their likelihood and coherence, are thought out. He does not babble daily in a new direction based on a new bit of random noise.

Interesting that you admit for the first time your history of personal attacks on me, rather than accusing me of what is your technique, not mine. Why the change?

I shan’t comment further. I think everyone on this list can see your tactics for what they are. - Gerry Quinn

Seawrack is INTIMATELY familiar with dead humans. She knows how water treats them and how they taste, and their texture. it's the living ones where she has knowledge gaps.

That is at least plausible. Why do you think a death here harms the story? How do you explain Horn's newfound abilities?

David Stockhoff wrote (21-11-2011 15:25):

I think the problem with Horn dying at this point is the consequence - that either there is no more Horn or Horn resurrects. The first makes the whole story a sham (not so much for us as for the characters), the second introduces an element that not only seems to be otherwise absent from LS/SS, but is applied to Horn in particular with no justification.

You're right, Gerry. This is merely a clumsy metaphor. Wolfe should know better than to expose hapless readers to such misleading cues. He meant to say that Horn felt really awful.

For that matter, it is really easy to imagine the Green Man (Man of Green?) in his natural habitat, behaving very much like a faun. He's not quite a fairy, as those people are beings of power and pomp. Fauns have none. But he lives in the green wood like a being more of it than in it. Neighbors do seem to be a little of both. I'm skeptical of conflating them, but fauns are plainly an important literary forerunner to the Sun Cycle.

Gerry, are you saying a man can't be thirsty twice before he has a drink?

OK. What justification is needed for a character on a great, impossible quest to die and be resurrected before he achieves his goal?

Just a reminder that your own tactics are on full view as well.

From: David Stockhoff

You can take it literally, if you like. He’s talking of the period when he lay semi-conscious in the pit, and his fragmented memories of that time are dissociated from his returned spirit. He even contrasts it with the time he actually died. Why not tackle the more substantive issues? Do you think Horn died, and if so when? Before or after the time he “saw” the long-nosed man? Before or after he got thirsty? - Gerry Quinn

From: David Stockhoff

When he came to himself and sat up (after a period in which he was not really conscious at all — his spirit wasn’t present, as he puts it), he was “terribly thirsty”. [Also cold and full of pain, which he mentions first.] Some days went by, in which (as he tells us) he desperately tried to scrape droplets of dew from the walls. When the long-nosed man came and sent him on his astral jaunt, he told Nettle that he was “dying of thirst”. Not that he was “terribly thirsty”. - Gerry Quinn

David Stockhoff wrote (21-11-2011 16:31):

His thrist should refer to internal bleeding. Whether it is before or after the Neighbours start repairing him cannot be deduced from it alone.

I absolutely see that. But I think we need go where the text is taking us. As I said, Horn dying and being resurrected is a mystery that we should discuss. WHETHER he dies and resurrects is pretty straightforward. Nothing is more undermining of Wolfe criticism than taking one of his stories and saying, "This is such-and-such kind of story." Wolfe is about subverting those expectations.

No more a sham than discovering at the end of Long Sun that the whole thing was written by Horn and Nettle. It doesn't require rejecting what the narrator says, only reinterpreting it. After all, the whole book the narrator is saying "I am Horn" as the all the other characters condescendingly smile and say "No, you aren't. You're just a little mad." But there IS a Horn. His memories persist...or at least the memory of his memories.

Well, there IS an awful lot of justification for resurrection in the Long Sun/Short Sun. I don't prefer the theory, but there is foundation laid for that.

David Stockhoff wrote (21-11-2011 16:33):

The one that explains why it isn't done to every such character in History.

David Stockhoff wrote (21-11-2011 16:34):

What would they be?

Yes. But it sounds like you have a good sense of how Dionysus, Pan and fauns of the Greeks evolved through the Roman, spread across Europe and eventually became such characters as Oberon, Titania and Puck for a certain Elizabethan playwright.

Skeptical you should be. That's what Wolfe wants. Horn describes the Neighbor's hand as hard and with short stiff hairs. Then he says, "I will say no more". Meaning there is more to say. But if Wolfe says it, it will render his work ridiculous, in his own eyes. I mean, what if Wolfe had said "the hand had a resemblance to a cloven hoof, the eyes had a vertical slit pupil. Short horns sprouted behind the ears and there was a bleat to his voice as he sang a greek hymn and drank from his jug of wine"? That's the sort of thing that might make Gerry happy but Wolfe wouldn't have made such avid devotees of readers such as you and me and many others if he did stuff like that.

I detect a note of pain. My apologies Gerry, for any cutting, hurtful remarks I may have made.

Good luck with that.

Are you asking when Horn died, or when he saw Nettle? That is related after Krait comes, so it could be after Krait comes. It could be earlier too. And what's the difference between "dying" and "terribly"? I guess he didn't tell Nettle he was cold, so he must have been nice and toasty warm at that point. Right?

I was just reading that and I realized the short stiff hairs there perfectly match the description of Babbie Hoof gives later when he brushes against his short stiff hairs in astral travel at the end of RTTW. Interesting.

Gerry, Gerry, Gerry... Sigh. I post the text again with the (what I mistakenly thought was unnecessary) excised text. : *************** The first paragraph relates events AFTER he encountered and discoursed with Krait. Last night I stopped writing because I could not bring myself to describe the rest of that day, or the night that followed it, or the day that followed that, the day on which I licked dew from the sides of the pit, lying on my belly at first, then kneeling, then standing---and at last, when the Short Sun peeped over the rim and the dew was almost gone, wiping the stone above my head with fingers that I thrust into my mouth the moment they felt damp. Altogether I got two mouthfuls of water, at most. No more than that, certainly, and very likely it was less. The next event relates to EARLIER only shortly after he had encountered Krait. Earlier I had prayed, then cursed every god in my heart when the rescuer they sent had proved to be Krait. On that day I did not pray, or curse, or any such thing. NOW the rhythm of is telling upended. You have been tricked by Wolfe's subtle story-telling (you are not the first, we've all been there). The next event takes place even earlier. This is what I least wished to write about last night, but I am going to try to write it down this evening. Once, as I lay there at the bottom of the pit, it seemed to me that a man with a long nose (a tall man or an immense spider) stood over me. I did not move or even open my eyes, knowing that if I did he would be gone. He touched my forehead with something he held, and the pit vanished. I was standing in Nettle's kitchen. She was making soup, and I watched her add a whole plateful of chopped meat to her kettle and shake the fire. She turned and saw me, and we kissed and embraced. I explained to her that I was not really in her kitchen at all, that I lay at the bottom of a pit in a ruin of the Vanished People on an island far away, and that I was dying of thirst. "Oh," Nettle said, "I'll get you some water." She went to the millstream and brought back a dipper of clean, cool water for me; but I could not drink. "Come with me," I told her. "I'll show you where I am, and when you give me your water there I'll be able to drink it." I took her hand (yes, Nettle my darling, I took your hard, hardworking little hand in mine) and tried to lead her back to the pit in which I lay. She stared at me then as if I were some horror from the grave, and screamed. I can never forget that scream. And I lay in the pit, as before. The Short Sun was burning gold. This likely places the events with the long-nosed fellow (our narrator) on the night before THIS happens (at the beginning of the chapter: "Sunlight warmed me. I kept my eyes closed, knowing that it would be painful to look at the sun." ****************************

From: David Stockhoff

He saw Nettle directly after the “long-nosed man” touched something to his forehead. If he has already died and been resurrected as a Neighbour, who is the long-nosed man and what is he up to?

He wasn’t dying of cold. He was dying of thirst. - Gerry Quinn

And the substantive issues are always those that Gerry focuses on. By definition. I can't help but observe that you yourself have made not the slightest attempt to show how you see the timing of that event and how it proves your theory, except to assert, absurdly, that: "When the long-nose man bent over him, he was already suffering thirst, so if he died then it happened after this time, in which case Babbie saw him alive." When the Neighbor bent over Horn and sent Horn to Nettle, he WAS dying of thirst. Krait then brings him water, so obviously he didn't die after that, from thirst. A freshman in English could work this out without even appealing to supernatural intervention. I am not familiar with the Neighbors' resurrection technologies so I can't say for sure, but the Neighbors' process appears to require some time and involve several steps. He died instantly. He then had "memories of the body" involving his physical state. He was at that time an animated corpse, which any reader of Pet Sematary knows is not the same thing as being alive. Babbie saw him in this state. After that, he "came to himself." It could not be clearer. His spirit had then returned or was "returned" to him, in what condition is anybody's guess. But I can state a few things with certainty: (1) If the Neighbors snagged his original spirit, they have more pull or stronger mojo/juju than I suspected. If they constructed a new one out of materials they had at hand, I am less wonderstruck. (2) The story follows the Mabinogion's episode of a swap, as James said. The new Horn is in some way at least part Neighbor and all human; it may contain a Neighbor spirit and his memories and a repaired body. The new Horn's trailblazing abilities are a consequence of this. In the only way that matters, the old Horn is dead; he's crossed to the other side and has returned with a little of it with him. (3) Horn's trip to Nettle was a test (drive) of sorts of the resurrected Horn. If he was to find help, he failed, but naturally he first thought of Nettle. It shows he now has that power as well. (4) Seawrack thinks Horn is dead because he was dead when she saw him, probably after Babbie did. (5) The Neighbors are either unable or not allowed to pick him up and move him out of the pit. It may be that he had to save himself to prove himself worthy of saving, and to do this he had to appeal to Krait. Faerie stories work in strange ways.

Sure. However, he also lay there for days. If he was physically alive, he was thirsty for that reason.

From: James Wynn

Last night I stopped writing because I could not bring myself to describe the rest of that day, or the night that followed it, or the day that followed that, the day on which I licked dew from the sides of the pit, lying on my belly at first, then kneeling, then standing and at last, when the Short Sun peeped over the rim and the dew was almost gone, wiping the stone above my head with fingers that I thrust into my mouth the moment they felt damp. Altogether I got two mouthfuls of water, at most. No more than that, certainly, and very likely it was less. Yes.

Earlier I had prayed, then cursed every god in my heart when the rescuer they sent had proved to be Krait. On that day I did not pray, or curse, or any such thing.

That paragraph seems to refer to two separate days: the day he prayed and cursed and encountered Krait, and the next day, when he scraped dew getting only two mouthfuls, and did not pray. And on which, I think, the long-nosed man appeared. [Edit: I wrote “I think”, but read to the end — it is proven.] This is what I least wished to write about last night, but I am going to try to write it down this evening. Once, as I lay there at the bottom of the pit, it seemed to me that a man with a long nose (a tall man or an immense spider) stood over me. I did not move or even open my eyes, knowing that if I did he would be gone. He touched my forehead with something he held, and the pit vanished. I was standing in Nettle’s kitchen. She was making soup, and I watched her add a whole plateful of chopped meat to her kettle and shake the fire. She turned and saw me, and we kissed and embraced. I explained to her that I was not really in her kitchen at all, that I lay at the bottom of a pit in a ruin of the Vanished People on an island far away, and that I was dying of thirst. “Oh,” Nettle said, “I’ll get you some water.” She went to the millstream and brought back a dipper of clean, cool water for me; but I could not drink. “Come with me,” I told her. “I’ll show you where I am, and when you give me your water there I’ll be able to drink it.” I took her hand (yes, Nettle my darling, I took your hard, hardworking little hand in mine) and tried to lead her back to the pit in which I lay. She stared at me then as if I were some horror from the grave, and screamed. I can never forget that scream. And I lay in the pit, as before. The Short Sun was burning gold.

How does that follow? ?Once? does not designate any particular time. Nor does he say the weather was cloudy on the day after Krait came. And come to think of it, he tells us right there! ********************************************************** And I lay in the pit, as before. The Short Sun was burning gold. It had crossed the pit and vanished on the other side an hour or two before, when the inhumu returned. *********************************************************** So we have an exact timeline. The long-nosed man visited him the day after Krait’s visit, and Krait visited for the second time some hours after his astral trip. This confirms what was already clear from the “thirst” clue. - Gerry Quinn

James Wynn wrote (21-11-2011 16:42):

Oh, I'm all for that discussion. The only thing I'm not for - here as in other other place - is positing some idea and then remain satisfied with the positing itself, not exploring the consequences.

James Wynn wrote (21-11-2011 16:42):

Oh, I'm all for that discussion. The only thing I'm not for - here as in other other place - is positing some idea and then remain satisfied with the positing itself, not exploring the consequences.

This fellow is our Neighbor Narrator. I think the easiest version is to say that this is Horn's last memories right after he has fallen into the pit...the last seconds before his death. There are other possible other constructions, I'm sure. What isn't very highly mysterious is whether Horn died in that pit. Antonio is right, I think, why people have trouble getting there. They don't like the implications. They have this way of viewing the story and they prefer it to what is inexorably implied by Horn dying in a stupid mishap a few days out of New Viron. This is the same reason people have a problem with Pike's ghost being the Rajan. It brings up all sorts of unexpected and (for some, unappealing) implications about the narrative. As Alice K. Turner said regarding whether the Rajan Time-travels (paraphrasing) "There is no time travel in the Long Sun/Short Sun. It's not that kind of story." Heck, Horn dies a few days after his adventure starts and (as I suspect) Silk is already dead as he is beginning. If one really, really liked the story without those elements, I can see why one would have a problem with exchanging it for either of these. But think of he alternate narrative: The main character falls in a pit, his companions look over him and say "That boy's dead" and leave, and then the fellow wakes and returns to his companions. His companions say "But...but...you were dead!" He responds, "No I wasn't". And so everyone just moves a long. NO ONE would write that story (other than say a seven-year-old). Certainly not Wolfe.

I think he goes to Nettle in her dreams. Otherwise, why is she not surprised to see him there?

I see. Yes, that's a good question ... IF you assume that whoever holds that power can do it for everyone. I have not seen such a theory stated here, and I assume that we are not actually speaking of God so I don't expect to see one. The simple answer is the Sun Cycle does not exist in an intertextual vacuum. As in any tale of a quest, forces who possess a limited ability to resurrect humans have an interest in keeping the hero alive. So they do, albeit at great cost to themselves. In this case, they had to give up a Neighbor. So you know they wanted Silk pretty bad. Why this might be the case is a far larger question than I will take up here. Plainly we don't need to answer the "why" before we answer the "how" because we already know it happened. To put it another way, as I implied, a hero on a great impossible mission needs no further justification whatsoever to be resurrected if he dies. It is the death and resurrection that are the point of the story, not the achievement of the quest.

I agree. Unprovable, but likely. I don't think it matters to the argument anyway, since the point where it's related is the latest point where it could have happened. Either way, he's back from the totally dead and is very thirsty for various reasons.

Those short stiff hairs got me thinking that maybe the long nosed spider fellow is some manifestation of Babbie. I need to look at short stiff hair on hands throughout the text. If he then becomes the narrator, then perhaps the conflation of Babbie and Horn begins there. Later Babbie's reanimating soul can return to its original owner + the majority of Horn (huh). But whose sould would Babbie have to begin with? Huh. Huh.

Not an answer to the question.

Clearly he is not resurrecting him.

There was a question there you decided not to answer.

From: James Wynn

These two sentences do not hang well together. - Gerry Quinn

Look, Gerry, I'm willing to debate when he sees the Neighbor and why. But not without establishing that Horn has died. We simply are not going to agree about the meaning of any portion of this scenario or most of the rest of the novel without agreement on that. Further discussion is pointless. I think I understand why people have a problem getting over this hurdle, but I can't pretend anymore that I respect their Short Sun theories which essentially reflect that they have failed to do so. I respect the criticism of many Listers who hold that view, but I don't think their interpretations are going to help me more fully understand what is going on in this novel. I think there is little point in discussing Short Sun without agreement on this point. It is THE pivotal event as the narrator states, and their interpretations fail to appreciate that fact. In a very real sense, the novel ends at chapter 8.

Possibly, although she does scream. What kind of "travel" is that, then?

From: Marc Aramini

Maybe they are characteristic of a large group of species on Blue, just as mammals have certain characteristics in common on Earth? - Gerry Quinn

I considered that as well, thinking that we have no idea what Babbie really is or will be, or how Neighbors are animals too. If a greenbuck can be a Neighbor, so can a hus. But maybe greenbucks have the same short stiff hairs. The problem becomes ... how is it that Babbie is still around? Multiple limbs, multiple personalities, multiple bodies ... ?

I think it's when he says goodbye at the end of OBW, but chapter 8 is the second most pivotal event for me. :) (Both are final, somehow. Whether it be Babbie who reanimates Horn with his extra soul, or the neighbor tree the island might be composed of, or the greenbuck, something reanimates him)

The QUEST ends there. HORN ends there. The novel, thank Wolfe, continues ....

maybe he's got a spare soul laying around in there? Most confusing.

From: David Stockhoff

I don’t really know what. He told her the most salient facts regarding his condition, i.e. that he was stuck in a pit literally dying of thirst. When he awoke, the Sun was overhead, so perhaps he was toasty warm for that matter. - Gerry Quinn

David Stockhoff wrote (21-11-2011 17:55):

And who is Wyndcloude?

Yes, after she gets a look at him. It was not the Horn she remembered, I think. The same kind of travel Fava engages in after she died.

Gerry just cleared it up! The sun overhead, of course, is the New Sun. Sev did it. (that's a joke, of course ... mostly a joke [mechanically if not actually])

Yes yes yes! The wind in the chimney! I have been looking for an explanation for that for years! wind and double darkness haunt the skies, etc.

From: James Wynn

Well, then it is up to you to present an explanation of the long-nosed man, because as I said — and you seem to be tacitly conceding — a ?late? appearance by him is not easily made compatible with the hypothesis [and I’m sorry, but it IS only a hypothesis, one I do not share] that Horn died and was replaced by him. He’s a big problem for the “Horn died in the pit” theory.

And nothing will shake your belief in your theory, even being shown how events clearly described in the narrative contradict it. - Gerry Quinn

I get it now. Horn didn't tell Nettle he was a Neighbor, so ... he wasn't! I also failed to fully answer a question. I think the Neighbor was seeing what the new Horn would do when granted astral/dream travel. He went to Nettle rather than to his favorite tree. Resurrection (or transubstantiation) complete.

I forget---does Nettle later relate being haunted by Horn? I know they got the manuscript eventually.

In some mysterious way you refuse to reveal so that no one can prove you wrong. How do you know which Neighbor it was? Why do you assume the Neighbor who resurrected him is no longer also still a non-Horn Neighbor? Do you know more about resurrection than you let on?

I made no such concession. I said I prefer an earlier appearance. I still do. I have no problem presenting a theory to tie the events together and allow people to shoot at it. Even for people who are better at shooting than presenting. I don't have explain him. He's a Neighbor. I believe him to be OUR Neighbor. Marc, thinks differently for his own reasons.

Actually, the long-nosed fellow's appearance is only significant in a time-line, mechanism discussion. If someone is using it to construct a theory that Horn didn't die, that's equivalent to constructing theories to show that Hy was never really a prostitute or that Blood was not Pike's son. You've gone off the rails in that case.

The problem with someone not being very good at reading Wolfe is that they are always declaring how "events clearly described in the narrative" prove this or that, when in fact they don't prove anything and don't describe what they think they do. They've misinterpreted everything. No doubt you will shout "tu quoque!" Fine. But with you I inevitably find myself feeling like Psyche trying to prove to Orual that Apollo's palace is all around her. In fact, I half-way suspect that if we were discussing the novel "Til We Have Faces" you would be asserting that Psyche was mad. Not only do I not value your approach to Wolfe, I don't even understand why anyone would enjoy reading him with that approach/

From: David Stockhoff

He is an obvious problem. James previously argued that he was a Neighbour who replaced Horn, and that fits okay with his theory. But if it can’t be that Neighbour, it must be someone else, and the question is who? If it was another Neighbour, why did he leave him stuck in the pit to die again? Why didn’t he say anything?

I think James is proposing that a Neighbour’s spirit went into him, presumably rendering that particular Neighbour hors de combat. - Gerry Quinn

What an absurd presumption. I would never make it. Certainly, not considering Horn is going to soon meet a Neighbor who claims his name is also "Horn". There is no reason that the Neighbor who repairs Horn's body would not be seen by his body and recorded to memory. I don't prefer that scenario, but it is possible. Even regarding other people's theories on Wolfe's stories, you are bound by self-imposed walls of what is possible.

Why are those problems? Did you read anything I proposed on those topics?

Presumably, yes. Based on .... ?

From: James Wynn On 11/21/2011 12:13 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote: Well, then it is up to you to present an explanation of the long-nosed man, because as I said — and you seem to be tacitly conceding — a ?late? appearance by him is not easily made compatible with the hypothesis I made no such concession. I said I prefer an earlier appearance. I still do. I have no problem presenting a theory to tie the events together and allow people to shoot at it. Even for people who are better at shooting than presenting. I don't have explain him. He's a Neighbor. I believe him to be OUR Neighbor. Marc, thinks differently for his own reasons. I’ve presented my theory of events in the pit. Shoot away, if you can. If by “OUR Neighbour” you mean that he replaced Horn, it seems you must conclude that he replaced a Horn who was alive and healthy, albeit in a bad situation, because surely Horn was substantially recovered from his fall — however he recovered — by the time Krait came. This need be nothing to do with me. If you want to make your theory work, you need to answer this even if you think my idea that the narrator who didn’t die and didn’t say he died didn’t actually die is too crazy to be considered. [and I’m sorry, but it IS only a hypothesis, one I do not share] that Horn died and was replaced by him. [The long nosed fellow is] a big problem for the “Horn died in the pit” theory. Actually, the long-nosed fellow's appearance is only significant in a time-line, mechanism discussion. Right... so it’s irrelevant to discussions where we make up theories we like and ignore where they contradict the narrative. I get you. Silly me, always reading the text and trying to interpret what happens. I’ll never understand Wolfe that way. If someone is using it to construct a theory that Horn didn't die, that's equivalent to constructing theories to show that Hy was never really a prostitute or that Blood was not Pike's son. You've gone off the rails in that case. Actually I’m using it to shoot down a theory in which Horn did die. But it does work fine with my theory of what happened in the pit which I posted earlier. It’s not very dependent on when the long-nosed man appeared. And nothing will shake your belief in your theory, even being shown how events clearly described in the narrative contradict it. The problem with someone not being very good at reading Wolfe is that they are always declaring how "events clearly described in the narrative" prove this or that, when in fact they don't prove anything and don't describe what they think they do. They've misinterpreted everything. No doubt you will shout "tu quoque!" Fine. But with you I inevitably find myself feeling like Psyche trying to prove to Orual that Apollo's palace is all around her. In fact, I half-way suspect that if we were discussing the novel "Til We Have Faces" you would be asserting that Psyche was mad. Not only do I not value your approach to Wolfe, I don't even understand why anyone would enjoy reading him with that approach/ I haven’t read that novel so I can’t comment on your analogy. But I do dispute your contention that your ability to read Wolfe is superior to mine. Your ability to make up often rather strange theories which can find little or no justification in the text is unquestionable, though. - Gerry Quinn

From: David Stockhoff

I saw nothing but gnomic questions and inane sarcasm. They are problems unless the “rescue Horn” mission proposed by James is scripted by the Marx Bothers.

One body per soul, that kind of thing. Sure, you can argue around it, and say the Neighbour made a copy of himself and injected it into Horn as a new soul. And then left him in the pit with no water. Why not? Those crazy, crazy Neighbours. They’ll do anything for a lark. - Gerry Quinn

Okay. It happened after Krait went away and before he came back. I don't think so. I'm pretty certain that is a faulty reading. But fine. AND before that Horn died in the pit and was resurrected.

How could anyone assert that as a rule in the Long Sun/Short Sun?

Well, goats, pigs and deer all have short stiff hairs, hooves (hides and sinew) and horns (if you count tusks). I see little problem in Wolfe spreading his fauns across a range of ungulates.

Phea's? The soldier named Babirousa's?

Well yes, and no. Normally we think of a person's soul as individual and indivisible. But that is not the case in this story. They are like a deck of cards, able to be shuffled and dealt out in different combinations and portions.

I absolutely agree. But unpleasant thematic or narrative consequences is not a reason to reject the obvious direction the story has taken. I miss a lot of cues the first time when reading Wolfe. I didn't miss this one though. It's just not subtle. And I disagree that it harms the storm at all. It is classic Wolfean to have a narrator is that is fundamentally different --in nature or identity-- than the one superficially presented: 1) Dr. Marsch's diary, 2) dead Weer, 3) Latro (who cannot verify the veracity of anything in his own diary), 4) Severian who has been multiple people throughout his life, 5) the translator of the Book of the New Sun, 5) Able who cannot remember the years he spent in Aelfrice, 6) the narrator of Seven American Nights... The Book of the Short Sun is the essential Wolfe novel.

From: James Wynn

*************************** She stared at me then as if I were some horror from the grave, and screamed. I can never forget that scream. And I lay in the pit, as before. The Short Sun was burning gold. It had crossed the pit and vanished on the other side an hour or two before, when the inhumu returned. *************************** Good luck finding a better reading. It looks pretty watertight to me.

Your theory would seem to demand that. So who is long-nose and what is his purpose? - Gerry Quinn

From: James Wynn

Just a default assumption, given the general run of things. You can certainly posit otherwise. This young, guilt-ridden Neighbour of yours starts to look like a joyrider, though. - Gerry Quinn

In a very real sense, all creatures of Faerie are faeries. In An Evil Guest, there are bizarre animals in Woldercon (analogous to Faerie) who are descendents of the Wolderconese. I believe that all the animals Dr Marsch encounters in the outback of St. Anne were formed from the same source material as the Annese/abos. The cat is an abo.

Correct. It doesn't appear to depend on anything. As far as I can tell---you haven't actually posted it.

That may explain why you're so hostile---you read looking for sarcasm. And btw James did not propose a "rescue mission." To even say that says more about you than you realize. You still haven't explained why they are problems. You may also not realize this, but to propose a theory you need to actually state your position on a few basic things. I see why you haven't, because then your assumptions would be vulnerable. See, I still don't know why you think those are problems for James's (and my, and Marc's) theory. You dodged it again, this time pleading incomprehension. Why are they problems?

For example, your "theory" assumes that "Neighbors are exactly like humans." Good luck defending that.

This means the sun had set 2 hours before Krait returned. When it was burning gold, it was dawn---any dawn. Wolfe jumps around, you see.

A Neighbor who seeks to give some part of himself to return Horn to his quest.

From: David Stockhoff

I posted it today in a reply to James. I think I had it in a couple of posts. Here it is again anyway: Horn fell in and was badly concussed. [As with Auk before him, this was the prelude to a mystical evolution, but that’s not germane to the episode, it’s just a trope that Wolfe recycles.] The Neighbours did their best to help him but they live in another dimension and can’t move anything physical or bring him water. What they did was touch his forehead with a mental amplifier that temporarily gave him the ability to astrally travel and get help. Unfortunately he went to Nettle who could not help him and indeed became frightened, thinking I suppose that he was a ghost or inhumu. The only other human or quasi-human entity on the island at that time was Seawrack (Krait may have been hanging around already, but even if the Neighbours knew that, they wouldn’t have expected him to help). It is possible that they didn’t recognise Seawrack as human. It’s also possible that they tried to communicate with her but she fled. We know she is terrified of Neighbour constructions at least — it’s probable that she is even more terrified of Neighbours. It was this abandonment of Horn due to her fear that she is rationalising. Of course the simple scenario that she is ignorant of human life and ordinary death — everyone she has met has quickly died and stayed dead — is also perfectly possible. It was his experience with the mental amplifier that initiated Horn’s subsequent development of extraordinary psychic powers. We already see that he has changed when he is going with Krait to find Seawrack — he sees the world with “a sharpness of detail born of a consciousness of detail”. He’s changed — but nothing about the change is the sort of thing we might particularly expect to associate with a Neighbour psyche — affinity with trees, consciousness of other dimensions, feeling he’s missing limbs, whatever. He doesn’t develop superpowers just like that, it requires other events and experiences — his experiences on Green, his death, his experiments on inhumi which he is contemplating carrying out in the future during his time as Rajan of Gaon. Anyway, that’s my working theory for the moment. I think it fits the facts and involves the swallowing of fewer camels than scenarios in which Horn died in the pit. - Gerry Quinn

Agreed. Resurrection is surely not a power to be handed out equally among them, but who knows. Maybe Babbie sees him alive (yes, he told Seawrack he was dead but he didn't say he stayed dead) and, knowing him better than the Neighbor Horn, sends him to Nettle. Babbie is after all about as guilty as the greenbuck in getting Horn into the pit.

Yes, James. And the original source of them were the dark things curled around the root of plants or whatever it was. A clear thematic connection to inhumi and Neigbors, vines and trees.

Yes, as all versions of Tzadkiel are Tzadkiel, all Shadow Children and all Neighbors are, in some sense, as one. Divided yet united (in a way humans are not). Heh. We humans share 99.9% of our DNA with each other but not our souls. We remain islands of individuality, unable to communicate with each other on such simple issues as a work of SF/Fantasy ;- ).

Well, a good point to consider. Though not as good at it as Neighbors, perhaps humans have a limited ability to share their soul with each other? If so, Horn and Nettle have surely done so, if anyone has.

I'm not sure how you know this but I agree. Typical Faerie behavior.

Possibly. I said much the same thing (you called it "inane sarcasm") and suggested that it was a test of sorts, whether of Horn or of his "recovery."

Why do you think the Neighbors do not know the inhumi?

Why would either Krait or Seawrack have anything to do with it? Why wouldn't she have told Horn if they appeared to her? What is their motivation in helping Horn if they are not willing to appear to his friends like Lassie barking that Tommy is down the well? Are they moral people at all, even to the extent of helping themselves?

Easily disproved, but to you, possible.

And your evidence for this expectation of "whatever" is where? Give page numbers. Where did he get his trailblazing ability from---is that not to be expected from association with "a Neighbour psyche"? What do you think that "sharpness" is?

Thanks, but you failed to outline in detail how the timing of events in the pit helps your case, just as you have failed to detail why it hurts ours. It seems to me that what you do is find the easiest path to the lowest place and amaze yourself at how easy it is to defend it. You are Wolfe's ideal foolish reader---you fall for every single one of his plausible surface explanations, which are ALWAYS provided. It's as though he makes a place where one can stand and see nothing going on in all directions; you seek that place and on finding it feel you have done real work getting there. Remarkably, all one really needs to do to achieve this state is to never, ever have read another book of literature. Literature has only camels to offer anyway.

Fair enough.

heh heh heh. they are fun on a second reading to see through, but those plausible surface explanations get old when you are trying to delineate a very simple point. "Babbie is asking for a weapon there cuz Hoof sayz so." ARGH

To be fair, some are quite sneaky. You read through, seeing through a few, then come to a passage that makes you uncomfortable, but you HAVE to accept it and go on. It's like a default low-energy state. You can only process so much in one reading. I knew Babbie was Horn on first read, but I couldn't say how or why so I had to put it away. Only on second reading, when you confirm your readings, you can look at them again.

From: David Stockhoff

I know it because we are told it in the text. I haven't reached IGJ in my re-read yet, but I remember the sewer.

I don't think that was one of the comments I was thinking of as sarcasm. Of course a "test-drive" might seem a bit ludicrous in some ways but that's what you get with resurrection theories. My theory is simpler - they do what they can to help, but Horn isn't able to take advantage by going to Seawrack as he should have. (Or she might have already left the boat, in which case maybe he couldn't have gone to her anyway.)

[Note: I know now he was already hanging around; I hadn't spotted the timeline clues then.]

They know the inhumi very well. They don't think asking one to save the life of an injured human will do anything more than give the inhumu a good laugh.

She's the obvious person to ask for help for Horn, but they may not have recognised her as such. But if they did, and she fled from them, thereby condemning Horn to death if Krait had not intervened, it wouldn't be an easy thing to admit.

I've proposed that they probably did try that, and if they didn't it's pecause they didn't recognise the possibility. Your question would be better addressed to James, whose theory has considerable issues of exactly this kind. Their actions according to his theory seem remarkably whimsical, and I think Horn would have resented them if asked.

Disproved? How? I am only on the next chamber, but I understand Seawrack (if she started human) was taken as a small child and used to lure seamen to their death.

You've been going on about Faerie. Everyone agrees they like trees (Mark thinks they ARE trees). The Neighbours seem to live in an adjacent dimension. They have eight limbs. Is your question serious?

I think it awakened certain powers innate in humans. He got his initial jaunt as a consequence of some device pressed to his forehead.

I said my theory doesn't depend too much on the timing. I think the timing (late long-nose) causes obvious problems for James's theory of an impetuous young Neighbour who kills Horn by accident, then decides to leap into his body and continue his mission. Perhaps James will modify his theory to be more consistent with the timing.

The explanation I provided is no more a surface explanation than James's. Little of it is stated explicitly by Wolfe. The question is, which explanation works? I've noticed that some posters don't even see explanations that are clearly given. They dream up absurd farragoes based on a word here and a syllable there. When challenged they take refuge in a standard mantra: "Oh, Wolfe is such an incredibly subtle and ambiguous writer, nobody can understand him. Let me ignore his text some more and slather out yet another great dollop of unsupported nonsense." - Gerry Quinn

Except that their response to the arrival of the whorl is to send Quetzal. It isn't impossible that Krait was always part of their rescue plan. David Duffy.

People who insist that Horn died in the pit apparently never lost consciousness themselves - and do not remember how often in literature it is compared to death. And what about people in so called "vegetable state"? Is it easy to distinguish even medically? Some awake after many years (without outside help!). Some are killed legally. Sergei Soloviev

You call this "intimate knowledge"?! Tasting some drowned people? I think it's my turn to cry "Good Lord"!

I don't know what to say to this, Sergei. I think people who claim that Seawrack was wrong need to explain why Wolfe would have her make such a false diagnosis in the first place. After all, he could have just had Horn get separated from Seawrack and Babbie, to allow his encounter with Krait. Additionally, they need to explain why the text is justified at the end of Chapter 8, entitled "The End". *************** Very suddenly I was falling into darkness. Here and thus baldly I had intended to end both tonight’s labor and this whole section of my narrative. I wiped this new quill of Oreb’s and put it away, shut up the scuffed little pen case I found where my father must have left it in the ashes of our old shop, and locked the drawer that holds this record, a thick sheaf of paper already. But it cannot be. It cannot be a mere incident like Wijzer’s drawing his map and the rest. Either that fall must be the end of the entire work (which might be wisest) or else it cannot close at all. So let me say this to whoever may read. With that fall, the best part of my life was over. The pit was its grave. ***************

My main objection is to the "binary logics" - pushing of everything to absolute extreme (absolute "yes" or "no"). How anybody acquires new abilities is very interesting. But it is possible without dying. E.g., Jorge Luis Borges started to write novels after he was hit in the head. Mystics often compared their prophetic experience with death. (Muhammad got the Quran in one second when he had an epileptic fit. ) Some traces of this remain in the ritual when somebody becomes monk - he has to die to the world, his name is changed etc. Sergei Soloviev

Because it is undermining his second "resurrection" - central to the book - his spirit passing into the body of Silk and guiding him to Blue. Sergei

I think Gerry is often in the role of "underdog" - you are many, and it looks like (for a participant who has no animosity or personal interest to take sides) you often immediately (and aggressively) support each other just from friendship or whatever - Sergei Soloviev

Yes. That Neighbor says they COULD do it themselves, but Horn would do it better. Perhaps it is in some strange way also true of Horn in the pit, even though it doesn't seem that way.

It makes sense.

I think they think much better of the sentient inhumi than we do at first and Horn does, and they (the Neighbors) aren't nearly as sentimental about life and death as we are.

Or to hide.

Not at all. They obey iron laws that are invisible to us. I think I know why they interfered and why they didn't physically help him or get help for him. Sometimes it's really important to do things yourself in Faerie.

We apparently disagree, but Seawrack clearly knows corpses when she sees them.

Where is the evidence that people who hang with fairies like trees, see other dimensions, and feel like limbs are missing? The page numbers don't need to be in BSS. I have read about Faerie from age 7 through graduate school and these are not familiar to me. Show me.

Trailblazing through Faerie is an "innate human power"? Gerry, I don;t think you and I use words the same way. Horn was what we Dungeons and Dragons players in high school would have called "blessed." He gets a +150 in trailblazing and a -200% chance to ever get lost in woods. Thorny branches caress him and hedges part before him. These ... are ... not ... innate ... human ... powers.

We've said our theory doesn't depend on the timing at all. You may be right about one thing: maybe the trap was deliberate, not impetuous.

Yours least of all, as I have explained.

Not at all. Even if they simply let it unfold.

No. It only necessarily undermines a particular reading of that event. On the first reading, the audience assumes that Horn made it to Green and is then transported to Silk. But the narrator has said throughout the book that he horribly failed in his task. Understanding that Horn failed in his quest even before reaching Pajarocu. Just as we thought the narrator of LS was a omniscient narrator but turned out to be a couple of kids who went to Silk's school, we find out eventually the narrator of SS is not Horn but someone else. In this case, the second resurrection is caused to make sense because we realize that the Horn who went to Green, who negotiated with the Neighbors, is not human. A changeling has been inserted into the story.

Gerry is a provocative fellow. I have many times proclaimed that I just won't read is posts. I'm pretty sure I've read posts from both David and Lee that declare the same. But then I'll note that he has asked a really good question and I respond to. But it invariably comes to the fact that Gerry's approach to Wolfe is so alien to mine and so useless to mine, that he takes such open pleasure in being ornery, that every time I just kick myself for being engaged again. He's like a crazy girlfriend I once had.

I think most authors CAN be read meaningfully on the surface level, even supposedly highbrow ones like Tolstoy et al, but Wolfe is THE most obscure, clever, tricky, cryptic fellow - the stories don't make as much sense until you start to do the analysis, it's just clear he likes to be tricksy. (for example, making green and blue colored green and blue like urth and lune, you know he wants people to TRY to map the planets to them, and FAIL.)

From: David Duffy

I suppose that might be so if they observed thefirst conversation between Krait and Horn. I don’t think they’d have asked a random inhumu to help, though. - Gerry Quinn

From: James Wynn

To explain why she abandoned Horn in the pit?

He’d have to be separated for days, to be in such a state that he betrayed his wife and children to the inhumu to save his life.

*************** Very suddenly I was falling into darkness. [?] But it cannot be. It cannot be a mere incident like Wijzer’s drawing his map and the rest. Either that fall must be the end of the entire work (which might be wisest) or else it cannot close at all. So let me say this to whoever may read. With that fall, the best part of my life was over. The pit was its grave. *************** Well, it is literally true, isn’t it? The best part of his life was over. Soon be betrayed Nettle and his sons. He travelled with an inhumu. He was abducted to a hell planet and died there. There might have been something about finding his girlfriend was a mass murdering cannibal too, but I’m not sure of that part yet. You’ve got to admit, his life after that moment was a bit of a bummer. And why is he so coy about it, if he died in the pit anyway? He’s been telling us all along about that other time he died. What was different that time? - Gerry Quinn

From: David Stockhoff

She knows they don’t move if you stick a fork in them. I don’t know how you deduce she knows much more than that. She didn’t get close enough to Horn to try him out. There’s no evidence that she has some special corpse-identification ability.

Who cares about fairies? We’re talking about Neighbours, not fairies. Maybe they have some things in common, but we only know those from our knowledge of the Neighbours anyway. The trees, the other dimensions, the extra limbs — these are Neighbour associations. You think Horn has acquired a Neighbour soul — you’d expect any changes in his psyche to fit with what we know of Neighbours. And the changes don’t seem to fit fairies much anyway, if it matters.

Wasn’t that much later, after further encounters with the Neighbours? [And he was trailblazing through Blue, not Faerie. There are no indications he ever went to Faerie. That applies to the Neighbours? dimension too, which may be analogous in some ways to Faerie but does not appear identical.] - Gerry Quinn

From: Marc Aramini

I don’t think such a mapping is intended to be suggested at all. For a start, Lune is a satellite of Urth, not a full-sized planet. The stories may make more sense if you read them and don’t try to superimpose impossibilities. Far, far too much is made of Wolfe’s supposed ambiguity and obscurity. If Wolfe gave you a shopping list that said bacon and potatoes and cabbage, you’d ponder it for half a day and return from the shops with a bar of soap, a cat, and a left-handed can-opener! - Gerry Quinn

What else would you call it?

I remember thinking that's what happened to Severian. Fool me twice!

This is science fiction.

Fair enough.

Maybe, except that James and I actually can't stand each other for political reasons. ;)

They would never ask anyone for help, ever.

Much the same reason I can't stand myself.

But to what purpose? To merely emphasize that Horn was knocked really, really unconscious---hard enough to acquire Faerie powers? And Babbie was also really impressed---oh, but they have no medical experience with humans.

yeah. He didn't need to complicate things by having both her and Babbie check him out and say, "Well, I guess dead. No sense trying to listen to his heart or anything. <cue the Stupid People music: Doy duh dum dum ding dang daaaaah>

He was separated for days. Two days and an afternoon, if I recall my previous count correctly. But he only needed to be separated for a few hours for Seawrack and Babbie not to know where to find him. He does not betray them to the inhumu. Nor, by the time he writes this account, view his time with Krait and something to be regretted. He sees him as his true son. (I realize you haven't got to that places yet. Spoiler.)

I didn't notice that his life before that was so great. He knew this mission would be no picnic. But the narrator makes more of it. Falling into the pit is not just another event. It would be a fitting place to end the novel, he says...or else it just goes on and on. He nowhere bemoans dying on Green. He knew Seawrack was no ordinary girl already. "Mass-murdering?"

Why did the King of Annwvyn not tell Pwyll's family that he had switched identities with him? He has declared over and over that he is motivated to BE Horn. Anyway, you still have not justified that very hard underlining that the narrator places on this incident...why above all others--even his death on Green-- this event is so significant. We'll restart this conversation again when you are able to do that.

What, because it's not listed next to her name in the character list?

You've completely backed away abandoned any pretense of discussion on that point. You've left all questions unanswered and just repeat yourself. You know nothing of the Neighbors.

We've already learned you know nothing of Faerie.

And I'm so dense I didn't even realize I was supposed to do that.

We are all Fools in our own ways! No, I kid.

I am wondering if this "vegetative state" is your explanation for Jesus' death and resurrection 3 days later. Nothing wrong with that explanation, but I don't think that's the point WOlfe is trying to make in this story. Quite the opposite. Gerry is working as a covert atheist warrior, and thus can be expected to try to argue away all wisps of myth and religion wherever he may find them, including Wolfe stories. I don't get the sense you are operating with the same goals, Sergei. It is nice of you to side with the "underdog" btw. That is a caring, sympathetic stance. But do be aware that the roles were reversed only a few short years ago. Anyone attempting to investigate the deeper structure of these works was quickly shouted down by a chorus of Gerry types. A heroic effort rescued the board from those days. It was pretty bad. It could go weeks and months without anything of greater substance than notice of an article about Wolfe in some SF magazine. If the pendulum swings too far in the "creative" direction and the board becomes filled with Gerry's greatest fear-"unthought out drivel", things will swing back. But right now I think there is a nice balance of thought and criticism. Don't you?

Heh. That's pretty funny! But isn't political disagreement between you two expected, given your respective home states? ;- )

--- On Mon, 11/21/11, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote: . Anyone attempting

In theory, I don't mind Gerry's skepticism; everyone has their roles. Yet the weirdest accusation was leveled at me today when Wolfe's grocery list came up today: that I would turn potatoes into a left handed socket wrenches. But Gene DID write me a very simple three word sentence that is a noun, a linking verb, and a predicate nominative, and I, contrary to that accusation, was the only person in the universe to take it at face value instead of taking it as some engineering joke, a metaphor, etc. I feel like hard nosed metaphorical dismissal of evidence is more like turning a potato into something else - not what I do. I believe in symbols of course, but those symbols are something more than just useless metaphor, they can be applied to shape character with their hard, defining edges. Don't you remember the literary technique Severian talked about? A torturer paid by one side to make it quick, the other to make it painful, and by positioning them just right, he succeeds - thus does Wolfe speak of narrative, and I see it on this board, (until time holds my own severed head up for inspection.)

Aren't you overlooking a word? IIRC, it said, "No, Green is URTH!" or did it say, "No Green is URTH!"

Dear James,

I think that Wolfe is step by step "building" (for us) her character. Mostly she is shown through the eyes of Horn. False diagnosis says a lot about her - her naivety, but also her "partly animal" nature acquired when she was living with Mother and her cruelty - and simple way to look at live and death. In the beginning she is just dazzlingly beautiful naked girl with one hand (we quickly understand that it was eaten by Babbie, but this was not said directly), but soon we start to understand her as a complex personality. The idea that Horn literally died in the pit adds much less from the point of view of understanding of his personality and quest. I think that Wolfe himself is interested in various nuances on the border of life and death. In the pit died the best part of Horn's life. What part of his life died when he met his father in the Whorl? I think that this encounter has to be considered under this angle as well. Something died when he met (during a "ghost visit" to Green) chained Chenille and learned what happened to her and Auk on Green. (I am not sure, was it some part of Horn or Silk's soul that was in danger there.) In the end of the OBW, the scene where one hypothesis says that Horn's soul went into Babbie, I see a possibility of different reading. I think the Outsider is involved, and in some sense Silkhorn runs to him in the forest LIKE Babbie did (or would) run to himself. And if Horn completely died (departed) in the very end (after Remora quoted the lines about Hyacinth), who (he or Silk) wanted so much to call Seawrack - and why Silk (if only Silk remains) departed with her? Did she replace in some way Hyacinth for him? Why did she accept him, instead of Horn?

As I explain, it is one of many ends. And I think the reading is richer if you do not see maximal "yes" or maximal "no" on any occasion. Best Sergei

Marc, you have to calm down a bit. Gerry's grocery list remark was NOT leveled/directed/whatever at you. He has taken the time to say more than once that your ideas (yours, specifically, Marc's), no matter how outrageous they may seem to most here, are NOT random but methodical. I have said as much. Perhaps you're looking too hard for contrariness.

If a changeling was inserted, it is not interesting for the history of humans. Of neighbours, maybe...

Possible, but in the group it is customary to praise each other, and it creates a (sometimes false) impression of the strength of arguments. He tries all the time to present an independent opinion. S.

Sergei SOLOVIEV wrote (22-11-2011 11:40):

I've asked this twice without reply. What's Seawrack doing with a Rajan than has nothing of Horn in him - neither body nor soul? Yes, I know, there's 'always' 'something' 'left' - but the point is we're precisely discussing whether in the very end there's anything left.

I consider this question as much more important than many questions fiercely discussed (like whether Horn did really die in the pit). I do not see any obvious answer, except, maybe, that she is replacing in some sense Hyacinth for him (that it is is part of his soul recovery). About Hyacinth, by the way: what do you think, was she "bad" or "good" for Silk's soul? I think it is more important from Wolfe's point of view than was she physically a transsexual or a woman. It seems that while in BoTLS it is not obvious (and the love story is very "romantic"), the beginning of the RttW implies that she was a positive mortal danger, a catastrophe. Sergei

I dunno. I think Mary said he looked a little "green" after he rolled away the stone!

From: Sergei SOLOVIEV

I think in some cases individuals who like to put forward theories with not too strong a basis, and which are very vulnerable to challenge based on a careful reading of Wolfe’s work, find common ground with others who put forward different theories with similar problems... - Gerry Quinn

From: David Stockhoff

I don’t think he acquired Neighbour-like powers just from being knocked out. But that’s beside the point. Horn had to be alone for days to be in such a state that he would betray his family to an inhumi. Seawrack deciding he was dead works for this, and also indicates something about her, i.e. that she is relatively clueless about such matters, and perhaps also decides too easily that she has lost her man. As for Babbie, he actually sees him when he is alive. Horn shuts his eyes. Unless you think Horn died exactly then, Babbie got it wrong. But like you say, neither is human even if Seawrack may have been once. Would it be surprising if Horn saw a Neighbour from twenty feet and thought he was dead, then later found out he wasn’t? Nobody’s even sure how to kill inhumi! - Gerry Quinn

I agree fully, Marc. I have used the old/young woman optical illusion and the House Absolute/Secret House as analogies for the same principle. It is to no avail for some people. They are exclusionary readers and for them there is one and only one best answer and once determined, it excludes the possibility of multiple meaning. "GREEN is Urth!!!" (I think that is the proper quote, caps to designate BLUE is not Urth). Marc I think you recognize there is metaphorical meaning in that. But you also find literal meaning. Why can't it be both, depending on which perspective you are taking in regard to space, time and dreams. Likewise this pointless debate on whether Horn died in the pit. If there is a tranferrable soul being considered, the definition of death is no longer as cut and tried as we, in our world, define it. Why can't Horn be dead in one way of looking at things and not really dead from another perspective. Moreover, why can't it be recognized that Wolfe writes in a way in which both can be true?

Sergei, I think you are on the right track. But you are trying to compromise and thus losing something on both ends. If we are trying to understand our own human existence, the concept of yes or no is needed. Either yes, someone is alive or no, they are not. But if we are trying to understand God, that is too limiting. Jesus is both dead AND alive. God is both maximal yes AND maximal no. This is what makes Gene Wolfe a special author. He is simultaneously trying to explore human existence and an understanding of the divine. We shouldn't ignore either one of these.

From: James Wynn From: James Wynn

No, he didn’t need to do that. Or he thought he didn’t.

I think he was three full days in the pit. If you want to see that as further support for your resurrection idea, be my guest. He fell in during the day. A night passed. The next day he saw Babbie. The day after, Krait came. The day after that he licked dew, and the long-nose man came. That night he got out.

<Shrug> If Wolfe had written the story differently, and he had gone off wandering alone and fallen into a pit in some secret valley, I guess. I don’t see what makes it better.

He gives Krait the key. For all he knew, Krait would fly off with it and dine well at Maison Horn. It’s true he did not think Krait would do that. But it was still a major betrayal.

No problem, I read the books before, but it’s Wolfe, so now I’m reading them for real, i.e. a second read. - Gerry Quinn

*************** Very suddenly I was falling into darkness. [?] But it cannot be. It cannot be a mere incident like Wijzer’s drawing his map and the rest. Either that fall must be the end of the entire work (which might be wisest) or else it cannot close at all. So let me say this to whoever may read. With that fall, the best part of my life was over. The pit was its grave. *************** Well, it is literally true, isn’t it? The best part of his life was over. Soon be betrayed Nettle and his sons. He travelled with an inhumu. He was abducted to a hell planet and died there. There might have been something about finding his girlfriend was a mass murdering cannibal too, but I’m not sure of that part yet. You’ve got to admit, his life after that moment was a bit of a bummer. I didn't notice that his life before that was so great. He knew this mission would be no picnic. But the narrator makes more of it. Falling into the pit is not just another event. It would be a fitting place to end the novel, he says...or else it just goes on and on. He nowhere bemoans dying on Green. He knew Seawrack was no ordinary girl already. "Mass-murdering?" And why is he so coy about it, if he died in the pit anyway? He’s been telling us all along about that other time he died. What was different that time? Why did the King of Annwvyn not tell Pwyll's family that he had switched identities with him? He has declared over and over that he is motivated to BE Horn. Anyway, you still have not justified that very hard underlining that the narrator places on this incident...why above all others--even his death on Green-- this event is so significant. We'll restart this conversation again when you are able to do that. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: David Stockhoff

Remember what I said about silly sarcasm? That’s an example. Tell me how you know she has that ability.

You’re making yourself look silly now. It’s one thing to say the Neighbours have some Faerie-like aspects. It’s another to refuse to discuss them unless I pretend they are not Neighbours but fairies.

Where did we learn that? And if it were true, why would it matter? - Gerry Quinn

No dia 2011/11/22, ?s 13:19, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> escreveu:

I don't think Marc has said it can't be also metaphorical. It's everybody else who say it can't be also literal.

Aiui James considers that the definiteness of Horn dying in the pit is an important element in itself - not the death, but its definiteness.

Antonio, Marc has devoted years of thought, research and writing to his theory. Is he really not supposed to be offended when someone acknowledges his years of thought and method but tells him his efforts have not only been a complete waste of time but also have produced ridiculous, mentally deranged solutions. Here is Gerry's statement:

Have you never spent years working on a project? Are you saying you would not take any offense if someone evaluated your years of work in such a fashion? Marc is not manufacturing "contrariness". It is right there, on clear display. Marc is being told his years of effort to understand Wolfe were a waste of his time and a waste of space on this board. FWIW, I have the opposite view from Gerry's, in every way. (except that we are both atheists ;- ))

From: Marc Aramini

A little joke, and not directed just as you. There would have to be a spot on the paper that if you looked closely seemed like a left-handed can-opener. That’s how you’d know the potatoes were just misdirection and trickery.

A nice metaphor — but I’m not trying to torture you, Marc. I just don’t think the books support the notion that inhumi are vegetables. - Gerry Quinn

But why on Earth, Lee, do you think Gerry's remark was about Marc? No dia 2011/11/22, ?s 13:31, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> escreveu:

From: Ant?nio Pedro Marques

This reminds me of another problem with the “Neighbour replaced Horn in the pit theory”. Wolfe sets up a little mystery about the identity of |Silk and Horn, and drops many little clues throughout. It’s been discussed on the list many times: when is he Horn and when does he become Silk? Are we really going to be interested in when a Neighbour masquerading as Horn turns into a Neighbour masquerading as Silk? - Gerry Quinn

No dia 2011/11/22, ?s 13:31, entonio at gmail.com escreveu:

And it's a fact that in literature sometimes it's important that a thing should be a certain thing and nor other thing.

No dia 2011/11/22, ?s 13:31, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> escreveu:

That goes to show that one's religion isn't necessarily important.

From: Lee Berman

Pathethic. Actually I’ve supported the view that there is a strong religious thread running through Wolfe’s entire canon, and nowhere (in long works) is it stronger than in the Solar Cycle. What I do not do is make a mockery of it with a hotchpotch of unrelated symbols of every myth, arguments that God is an evil demiurge, and the like. If anyone is a “covert atheist warrior”, it is you.

I don’t know what you mean by a “Gerry type”. I wasn’t here. But if by “shouting down” you mean “pointing out problems” I can well imagine it.

Then why so defensive when I and others criticise ideas? Because we’re good at it? Perhaps what you’d like is a nice little flock of token critics whose objections can easily be brushed aside? - Gerry Quinn

I have thought this as well. However, it has nothing to do with plot, which is what is being worked out here.

I've asked the same question, more or less, not really expecting a reply. To put it another way: if, say, 10% of a mind is always left behind, is 10% enough? Is it enough for some things (recognition) and not for others (speaking for humanity). It is probably not an entirely fair question, especially trying to quantify like that, but it needs at least a provisional answer.

NO. Horn was a spiritless corpse. Babbie was right.

I see. So again, humans and Neighbors are exactly the same and you can switch their positions to get really useful answers.

Osiris was both living AND dead, and that's why he became king of the underworld.

Gerry, see Marc's and Lee's posts on reading between two simultaneous interpretations. Ever see Rashomon? Ever read "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"?

Gerry, no sarcasm is silly if it gets an extremely stubborn person to pay a tiny bit of attention. Seawrack tells us. Read the text you adore so much. And by the way, YOU invented "special corpse-identification ability" just to be a sarcastic prick. I make no argument for its specialness---the bar is much lower than you pretend.

YOU are refusing to discuss the text. As usual. Because you have no idea how X can "be" Y and yet not "be" Y in a work of fiction. I can't help you there.

Books, books, books, my friend. Read them and come back to the discussion you have fled because the big kids are using concepts you don't understand.

There was an exclamation point after No, no, No! Green is Urth! Two sentences - or a fragment and a sentence.

Once again you twist others' words to make them appear silly. You don't even bother to pretend the level of respect for others that requires you to properly quote their ideas. I'm beginning to think you can't help it---that you just have no idea of the standards of behavior for adult intellectual engagement.

Marc Aramini wrote (22-11-2011 14:55):

If we must be precise, it was similar to No,no, N0! Green is Urth. NB the second N is not cursive as the first one. I for one take that message very seriously. I just can't understand how Green is Urth. I know your theory. But it doesn't make the coins drop for me.

Yes, that's what I was trying to say. Though it isn't "everybody else". I think Marc could be right though I don't currently come to the same conclusion as he. Perhaps Gene Wolfe will tell us before he passes on (or after?). But that seems unlikely.

What is "definite death"? The heart and brain have stopped working? The soul is departed? The soul is departed with no chance of return? The soul is partially departed and partially there? The soul has found residence in a new body, in part or in full? A lot of options for death here. IIRC, it was Marc who thought Horn was completely gone, and completely replaced by a Neighbor imitating him while James thinks Horn remains in some manner. In my view, by the end, the main narrator is a combination of identities in both body and spirit. Most people can see at least Horn and Silk there. I see them plus there seems to be something else. How each one got there is not really a question of much interest for me. For me, "who" is more than "how". So I appreciate James' suggestion of a Neighbor to fill the gaps. It works better than anything else and makes a lot of sense to me. (especially considering that ring....)

Agreed, but are you really going to argue that the death of the narrator is a certain and clearly defined event in the Sun Series? How many times and in how many ways does Severian die and become resurrected? (5-6 I think). Yet never does he really THINK he died at the time, even when he sees his own dead body. He is (understandably) in deep denial, not acknowledging his many deaths until the final pages of UotNS. As Horn dies (or whatever) "the Short Sun was burning gold". You could ignore that as a not very disguised nod to Severian, the New Sun who died and came back so many times. Or you could notice it as such. Just as Horn is obviously in denial of his Silk aspect, he seems (understandably) in denial of his own death, like our other narrator, Severian. You can read the story as though Horn is just some guy who gets hurt then gets better. And you can read the story as a resurrection and soul recombination tale. I see no reason we must restrict it to one and exclude the other. There are material and spiritual ways of looking at the world. And we are made of both. If intelligent, sound-minded people see that Horn was hurt and then recovered in the pit then that's what happened. If other intelligent, sound-minded people see that he died and was resurrected, that too happened. That is the correct way to undertand art: multi-levelled and different when viewed from different perspectives.

Lee Berman wrote (22-11-2011 15:13):

But there's an intelligent, sound-minded bloke here saying that he died and never came back... and we were left to witness the attempt of a completely different entity to fulfill his quest. In a way that's an interesting idea; but it does take away from the theme of Horn-trying-to-be-Silk and Silk-trying-to-be-Horn if after all he is neither one nor the other. Nor does one get the feeling of 'character growing out of his inborn limitations' (as applied to a Neighbour) which is present of so much of Gene Wolfe's work. Though I'll be the first to agree that there's more in the Rajan than Silks and Horn, and the obvious candidate is Neighbourly (and to vastly prefer the appellation 'Rajan' over the 'SilkHorn' one). A big problem in SS is that while the setting is much closer to us than in LS - real planets, real people, real societies, real technology, instead of the artificiality of most things aboard the Whorl - there are definitely truly alien elements which we can make little sense of - Babbie, the Mother, Seawrack, giant rays, the island of the pit, Neighbours, the Inhumi. In LS all is comfortably man-made, albeit 'made'.

That's absolutely true. Blue especially is deceptively simple.

Yes. So what to do with that? You can try to discuss the evidence you see that Horn is still there. Perhaps he will see that he has missed some things and say he was wrong (heh. how often does THAT happen?). If he doesn't change his mind, the question has changed. It is no longer whether Horn is gone or not. The question becomes, "why does Marc think he is gone". Review his evidence. Perhaps you will see you have missed some things and say you were wrong. But if neither changes their mind then we have still all benefitted from the dialog. We now all have access to all the relevant evidence that people see and we are free to come to our own conclusions based on that full range of evidence. The problem comes when some people insist on continuing the argument after this point. All the evidence is out there for review but some people still insist that they know the right way to interpret it and that other ways are simply wrong.

I think the whole Sun Series (and Soldier and Wizard/Knight, actually) has a sameness of underlying message. That message does take on a different feel when put into different packages but the continuity can be discerned. The relationships between gods, monsters and humanity are similar on Earth, Urth, Ushas, Whorl, Green and Blue. This does not imply Gerry is completely wrong to focus solely on the package and ignore the inner contents. Consider the creative process: Gene Wolfe's religious and social philosophy are a part of him. He doesn't have to work hard to include them in his stories; they flow easily and naturally from him. The real work and effort Wolfe puts into his stories IS in the packaging. Gerry and others are quite right to devote the majority of their efforts winnowing out the complex and detailed features of each package. I don't even consider it Gerry's mistake to ignore the contents of the package. His mistake is incessantly telling others there is nothing in the box and making fun of them and calling them names for seeing what is inside. Of course Gerry is free to use such terms as "worst theory ever", "out to lunch", "purile", "thoughtless", "drivel" etc. But does he have a valid right to complain when others are offended by such language and lash back? Nobody else (currently) talks like that. Why should Gerry get a free pass to do so? We are represented in here by our ideas. Disagreement is one thing. Using derrogatory labels for other people's ideas is another. In here, that is a form of personal attack. I join Mo and Ryan and Antonio in their distaste for it and their denouncement of it.

I don't think there is any "group". I 've never met any of these people. I feel my arguments have been more systematically critical of Marc's Tree Theory as well as his Green Urth theory than anybody. Gerry thinks he's done a capital job at it. Maybe you do to. But from where I'm standing he's just been insulting and, overall, has done little to advance the discussion or address the problems and weakness in the theories, because he is congenitally incapable of addressing the Flags that are important to the theories. In fact, I suspect nothing has caused ME to want to rally to Marc's theory and find support for it than posts like the following: On 11/22/2011 7:02 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote: I think in some cases individuals who like to put forward theories with not too strong a basis, and which are very vulnerable to challenge based on a careful reading of Wolfe's work, find common ground with others who put forward different theories with similar problems...

Sure. This is not like the end OBW where Marc believes he detects a death. The death on Green is not treated this way. The narrator makes a big freakin deal over the moment Horn falls in to the pit. Saying "Well, there are lots of deaths in this story" doesn't cut it for me. I think this is one of the biggest non-secret secrets in Wolfe literature. He never waves flags like this. But apparently it wasn't enough.

Me too. Arguments should be kept separate from personalities as much as possible---in both directions. I don't participate in this list for the scintillating personalities.

That "definiteness" is an interesting problem. I agree that the narrator waves a big flag about it and that this is a critical aspect of the event. But you must also agree that this flag has some fine print---that it subverts itself, it's waved so hard. By this I mean simply that not only has a death occurred---though under rules we do not yet know---but a supernatural event has occurred as well. Horn continues, in some form, and the story goes on. But note that the story has almost just begun---the reader will be jolted, and will be instructed too. "Do not trust deaths." Much is NOT told here beyond the death itself. And a comparison to the "death" at the end of OBW is useful too. I think there is a flag raised here that is much more subtle and there are reasons for this. (1) It's been done already and can't be repeated (2) the reader should know now not to trust (3) it's a more natural ending. Horn has reached Pajarocu and Rajan has fled Gaon and the personality he cultivated there; the book ends. Major shift coming. I think however the event is much the same: a death has occurred that is largely real although but barely physical---working under rules we do not yet know---but a supernatural event has occurred as well. Horn does continue in some form but the story changes a bit more than it did last time. In a sense, I argue that this death must be MORE important, though it is accompanied by less vigorous flagwaving. In a way (or several ways, both narratively and plotwise at least), it was made possible by the first death, which was a template for it. Its lack of definition makes sense to me, since the reader now knows or guesses a little more about how death works here. Looking ahead to the NEXT death .... !

I don't know whether the inhumi are the lianas or not, but I think it's beyond clear that there is some vital connection between them.

Nicely put, Dan'l. I'll mention again the Wolfe video interview on Wizard Knight in which Gene feels no need to hem and haw and qualify and explain the relationship between "vitally connected" characters. He says "the ValFather is Odin or Wodin". Michael is the archangel Michael. I guess as author, he can get away with that. Nobody here is gonna call his ideas about his own work "puerile crapola" or whatever. Still, be it Father Inire or Typhon or Dionysus a lot of time is devoted to explaining what the meaning of "is" is. I don't mind saying "there is a vital connection" between Echidna and The Mother or Thelxiepeia (mythic siren) and Seawrack the first time. But it would be nice if I could shorthand it to "is" on further elaboration.

Yeah, we seem to need some notation to bracket and specify some simple associative ideas, like "is" but you get tired of doing that. Analyzing Wolfe requires so many different "is" 'es: Silk is Typhon (genetically) Sand is Silk (personality) Marble is Rose (er...) Marble is Maggie (flat-out lying, according to her, as Rose) Krait is Sinew (by parentage/feeding/relation to Horn) Green is Urth (actually, or just metaphorically?) Horn is a Neighbor (indeterminate) Neighbors are Faeries (as a literary template) and on and on .... Funny, not too many actual imposters come to mind.

Well, that's still a resurrection. But I get your point that the concept of the narrator's identity is completely subverted by my reading. And that is what is so Wolfean about it.

I'd have to look at the text you are referring to in context. I think you are getting two names mixed up. Marble's name before he was inducted was Magnesia and she takes that name on Blue. When she married Hammerstone, she claimed to be his fiance Moly. On Blue, after having left Hammerstone, she says "It was I, the one who prayed, who lied and lied too. I know that must seem illogical, yet it was so." I believe that Rose's hands came from a chem who worked at the Sun Sun St. Mantaion named Molybdenum (Moly). She was dismantled to provide parts for Betel and which eventually went to Rose. The tin box in the cenoby attic was her's. So what Marble was saying was "I lied when I said I was Moly and I lied when I said I wasn't".

Yes, that's right. Moly.

Over and over, the narrator reminds us of what a miserable failure his mission was. Thus we know that Horn is not completely gone in the Rajan. His spirit fled when he tumbled in the pit (I say) and his body was ultimately destroyed on Green. But there is a sense in which he persists, like the hyacinth Remora refers to at the end of RttW. We all assumed Remora was referring to the Rajan's grief over the death of Hy (and maybe the Silk in him was). It is still a strange scene with that interpretation I think. But I think primarily it is the loss of Horn who we are intended to grieve over. A man who set out on a mission and failed at it --hardly before he had begun--by a fluke accident. But by some miraculous method he persisted. A lot of Wolfe heroes are pre-determined...over-determined...to succeed against all who stand against them. Severian, Latro, Able. Eventually, Horn becomes a character like that. But the original Horn (I say) was not. He was a man with a good, brave heart who was as subject as anyone to catastrophic misfortunes. It is a rather hopeful story seen that way.

Yes. He was helped after he set off, not before. He's recursive in a different dimension from the others.

Indeed.

Yes. We trust he doesn't say it unless the figures /are/ the same in his mind and not just connected.

The solution might be to avoid unusual senses of "is".

I'd say there's a vital connection between Severian and Jesus. But the difference is important to Wolfe and to many readers, including you, if I'm not mistaken. I'm glad people don't shorthand "Severian echoes Jesus in some ways" to "Severian is Jesus". Jery Friedman

My feeling is that while in Severian Wolfe investigates a personalty that in some ways echoes Jesus, in the story of Horn and Silk he explores a "growth" of a saint (from very imperfect "seeds"). Sergei Soloviev

Well, it is a point worth mentioning, Jerry. But as you note, I would not be tempted to say "Severian is Jesus" (nor would anyone else here, I think). The problem crops up in trying to describe beings who are plural identities in the story. We have the easiest time of it with Tzadkiel, because we are shown so much of him/her. Still, we are forced to resort to such slashed gender pronouns and descriptors such as "mirror book Tzadkiel", "fairy Tzadkiel" and "hairy blob Zak", "caveman Zak", etc. All the same being yet all significantly different in size, appearance and function. It becomes much more difficult to describe other plural beings who are not depicted as clearly such as Scylla/Cilinia, Echidna/The Mother, Abaia/undines, Neighbors and Father Inire (I think). It gets even worse when the identity cards get shuffled and redealt as for Typhon/Pas, Silk, Horn, and Pig/Babbie.

I agree Sergei, except on one point. All saints are dead. Severian shows no signs of being able to die. I suspect he never will. He will merely fade away into legend as all the other mythological immortals have done.

Sent from my iPhone

Honestly, as my understanding of what is going on SS has developed, I have come to see the echoes in Sev to be of a gnostic Jesus but the echoes in the Rajan to be the more Orthodox version: mediator, divine Incarnate, Trinity...

You already know my reading of that final symbol: the blood spilled into the ground springs up as vegetable life that endures even though ancient man is dead. And Horn too, really.

Well, my problem with this assessment of Silk is that he has no real power to heal the sick and the dying, as Severian occasionally showed. He can only spiritually abet them - he seems much more like an individual who might become a saint to me than a Jesus. Sergei seems right on the money on that one. Also, I know I've said this before, but I really don't like the clone Typhon-Silk because it does complicate the four parents on the aureate path: we CAN identify them if Silk is a son and that fits the details better (assuming the final picture of Silk with his head on Typhon is one of ascension and apotheosis of a son overtaking the demiurge, which actually seems a bit gnostic, no?). The details of the text are also better fitted with Tussah as a being distinct from Typhon, honestly. There are no dream sequences equating them in the way that Mamelta/Hy/Kypris/Chenille are equated. The best evidence for cloning is found in statements like "Pas grew himself from a seed" and the idea of a nightside and regular Silk, but the particulars of the text make it much more tenable to identify the parents if we are dealing with a son, which is, as Lemur said, what Typhon wanted to replace him. One of us is taking the statement of Tussah's parenthood and subjecting it to misprision. I just really, really, really, no matter how I try, can't read it as you do - I don't think it's even a mysterious statement this particular time.

From: David Stockhoff

A spiritless corpse that can open and close its eyes and remember stuff that happened around it, and next day can sit up and “come back to itself”. I wouldn’t want Babbie for a doctor, he could have me buried if I overslept. Also, if Babbie really is so perspicacious about the presence of absence of spirits, when he defends Horn the next day doesn’t that show it was Horn in Horn’s body, not a Neighbour?

I think a symmetry applies. Let me phrase it in more abstract terms: would aliens from different planets typically be expected to be able to identify each other’s state of health with total accuracy from twenty feet? - Gerry Quinn

From: David Stockhoff

I see. Are you saying that there is an interpretation in which he did not give the key to his house to a vampiric alien, explaining when and how best to use it? Or one in which he did do that, but it was not a major betrayal? [Assuming he was Horn, obviously.] Because I’m not seeing that alternative interpretation for this event. - Gerry Quinn

Is it impossible to equate a clone with a son? After all, if you or I cloned ourselves, we would raise the result as a son. All we'd be doing is cutting out the middle, er, middlewoman (at least her genetic contribution). We wouldn't expect this son to be identical to us---he'd have different parents, a different history, scars, everything. Was Athena not the daughter of Zeus? If this semantic distinction causes such a problem, why not just let it go?

From: David Stockhoff

She tells us she has that ability? I remember her telling us that Horn was dead, and apparently being wrong. I don’t remember her saying she has the ability to unerringly tell when somebody is dead, from twenty feet. I wasn’t being sarcastic when I referred to a “special corpse-identification ability”. I was paraphrasing your assertion that she “clearly knows corpses when she sees them” in the context of the situation in which she supposedly knew (and was, at least ostensibly, proved completely wrong).

You are really getting off on Lee’s latest mantra about how two plus two can really be five. There are Neighbours in the books, not fairies. If they share certain characteristics with fairies like interdimensionality and an affinity for trees, well and good. I’ll discuss those characteristics in context. I will also mention characteristics they don’t share with most fairies, like having eight limbs (yes, there are probably some eight-legged goblins in legend somewhere, but does that get us anywhere?:). Very well then. Fairies have wings. Horn doesn’t feel he is missing his wings either.

The only word that has any application there is “kids”. - Gerry Quinn

From: David Stockhoff

Marc has repeatedly asserted that a staff made from a liana on Blue is an inhumu, and that lianas on Green are also inhumi. And things that are even less biologically plausible. I’m twisting nothing, just pointing out that Marc’s theory has aspects that I find difficult to make compatible with the ostensibly reptilian nature of the inhumi. - Gerry Quinn

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

Maybe I’ll feel the same when I complete my re-read. Right now I don’t see anything but metaphor — lianas prey on trees as inhumi prey on people and Neighbours. There’s a puzzle here if you think there is a biological connection, though. Lianas exist on both planets, and presumably always did, though I suppose one could make a theory that the lianas arrived on Blue at the same time as the inhumi, and the Neighbours just failed to mention it. So why don’t they develop into inhumi on Blue? Also, Quetzal had a tree in his garden. Not a liana. - Gerry Quinn

Well, in Severian Wolfe doesn't deal with the Incarnation. He doesn't present an example of a Trinity...how Three can be separate but One. The concept of resurrection is much more closely paralleled with that of Jesus (even Gerry recognizes the Three Days In the Grave incidence). With the Rajan, Wolfe is providing placing a Christ-figure in a different sense. To a much greater extent than with Severian, Horn dies so that mankind can live. And after all, saints heal as well.

As you know, I had my own reasons for not liking Silk as Typhon's clone. But even when I was strongly arguing that Silk was /surely/ a clone of Typhon's son, I recognized that there were a /lot/ of hints equating them both as the Big Man himself. Ultimately, I have to go where the text leads and if that makes the scene on the Aureate path a mystery? Well, it was a bit of a mystery already.

Alas! Were that the only hint that Silk and Typhon are equated. Silk as Typhon's son works well in a lot of ways. In a few ways it breaks down. Silk as Typhon works in a lot of ways, bringing in references that the Son Theory has to ignore. Ultimately, I think it is better. It does make the Aureate Path scene problematic. Incidentally, what role, if any, does Quetzal play in Silk's resurrection?

Yeah, having accepted that Silk is /merely/ a clone of Typhon (rather than in someone both a clone and a son) I admit that there is just no way Tussah can be equated to Typhon. The assertion that Silk is Tussah's son entirely and solely by mere adoption is B.S., I think. I could fudge things by saying that Tussah was wholly possessed by Typhon when he said that, and that the gods engineered his death for that reason--that works. I'm not entirely satisfied that that is the answer but it works. On the other hand....hmmm....I'm going to start a new thread on this.

This post is kind of a backsliding from my rejection of Silk As Typhon's Son in favor of Silk As Typhon. They still could BOTH be true.

Typhon /had/ such a son...whoever was the original Hierax. Lemur claims that he was "so" like his father in every way. Suppose that Typhon, wearying of trying to produce a suitable male heir, had himself cloned? Suppose that Silk is a clone of that clone. There is a scene in RttW in which is it stated that Hierax is "dead" -- that he has been entirely wiped from the Mainframe and It has always struck me that the scene is intentionally suggestive. ************************ [Rajan says,] "You know, just as Pig and I do, what was said earlier; and we're none of us children. For an augur to die before his Sacred Window, and particularly for him to die by a steel blade as sacrifices die, is a great honor. It is the death every augur yearns for. I don't intend to imply that it isn't wrong to kill an augur under those circumstances; but when an augur dies in such a manner, other augurs and many pious laymen must wonder whether that death was not arranged by Hierax, as a reward." Pig said, "Hierax is dead." Hound stared at him. [Rajan says] "I see. I didn't know that, though I surmised that it might be the case. No doubt it's for the best." RttW, chpt 10, Through Quadifon's Door ****************** The reason that I have always considered the scene suggestive is that Echidna and Scylla have also been wiped. Everyone directly involved in Pas's murder is on the lam. Why is it supposedly so shocking that Hierax is dead? Well, it is significant that the body of one of the people standing there has also died. Of course, the implication of this theory is that one of the mothers on the Aureate path is Echidna.

Perhaps it would help (help you stop arguing with Marc) if you just consider it a spiritual connection and stop dwelling on the biology.

Perhaps they do. I see no evidence that they don't. Are we shown any means by which inhumi get to Blue?

Aren't gardens supposed to provide a food source? Why would it have a liana? And if it did previously have one on that tree, perhaps it is gone because it turned into Quetzal ;- ).

Well, we are told pretty directly that they (inhumi) can only breed on Green.

Heh, I don't remember that. Did I ever repeat that phrase over and over, "2+2=5 ommm... 2+2=5 omm...". Don't you maintain a website of math puzzles Gerry? If so I can understand that comment a bit better and your approach to interpreting Gene Wolfe. I hate to use cliches like "to a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" but if the shoe fits..;- ). Just for fun, I'm wondering which mathematical function would be used to solve the problem: "How many people is Tzadkiel?". Addition? Division? Let me know if there is an answer. I am interested.

Alternatively, how many people ARE Tzadkiel? A very different question...

VERY directly. Blue is not warm enough for ... their seeds to hatch? eggs to sprout?

I think his nickname was "Legion" in middle school.

On 11/22/2011 11:45 AM,

Let me take another shot at their connection (although I don't think I'm there yet): The Neighbors are trees. Not like the Ents of Tolkien. They are like dryads. As their bodies sleep (particularly in the winter) they dream-travel in the form that "Horn" encounters them during his meeting and in the pit. In that form, they built cities and technology and traveled to Green, bearing their seeds with them. If a Neighbor dies in dream-travel, the same thing happens as happens for humans. Their soul is dead but their body lives on. A tree body can grow for hundreds of years and (presumably) reproduce without a soul. Perhaps their children have no souls as well. On Green they encountered inhumi who fed on them. Their children are ensouled by Neighbors. Now what will such a being do? Perhaps they will lay in wait for a Neighbor to come along, but in the meantime, they will not disguise themselves with makeup and old clothes. Instead, they assume a woody form as they go without food, leaning on the Neighbors sleeping bodies. There is a problem with this model: It is suggested that the Rajan needs an inhumi to dream-travel. That's why he needs his staff. On the other hand, maybe that isn't the case.

And he was voted most likely two?

Not that I'm buying this model, but that problem is easily overcome. Silk/the Rajan constantly underestimates himself. He believes that he needs an inhumu to dream-travel, but he doesn't really.

Return to the Whorl From: James Wynn

Hound appears surprised, but he’s a shopkeeper and not religious. Horn doesn’t seem all that shocked. - Gerry Quinn

--- On Wed, 11/23/11, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote: From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> Subject: Re: (urth) Heirax is dead To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Wednesday, November 23, 2011, 9:08 AM This? post is kind of a backsliding from my rejection of Silk As Typhon's Son in favor of Silk As Typhon. They still could BOTH be true. On 11/23/2011 9:02 AM, Marc Aramini wrote: The best evidence for cloning is found in statements like "Pas grew himself from a seed" and the idea of a nightside and regular Silk, but the particulars of the text make it much more tenable to identify the parents if we are dealing with a son, which is, as Lemur said, what Typhon wanted to replace him. Typhon /had/ such a son...whoever was the original Hierax. Lemur claims that he was "so" like his father in every way. Suppose that Typhon, wearying of trying to produce a suitable male heir, had himself cloned? Suppose that Silk is a clone of that clone. There is a scene in RttW in which is it stated that Hierax is "dead" -- that he has been entirely wiped from the Mainframe and It has always struck me that the scene is intentionally suggestive. ************************ [Rajan says,] "You know, just as Pig and I do, what was said earlier; and we’re none of us children. For an augur to die before his Sacred Window, and particularly for him to die by a steel blade as sacrifices die, is a great honor. It is the death every augur yearns for. I don’t intend to imply that it isn’t wrong to kill an augur under those circumstances; but when an augur dies in such a manner, other augurs and many pious laymen must wonder whether that death was not arranged by Hierax, as a reward. Pig said, ?Hierax is dead. Hound stared at him. [Rajan says] ?I see. I didn’t know that, though I surmised that it might be the case. No doubt it’s for the best. RttW, chpt 10, Through Quadifon's Door ****************** The reason that I have always considered the scene suggestive is that Echidna and Scylla have also been wiped. Everyone directly involved in Pas's murder is on the lam. Why is it supposedly so shocking that Hierax is dead? Well, it is significant that the body of one of the people standing there has also died. Of course, the implication of this theory is that one of the mothers on the Aureate path is Echidna. You remember that blind guy who reminds Horn of Auk that he kills in the purging of the sewer on Green? (or maybe he's swept away, I need to recheck -can't remember how that scene ends)? I always thought maybe that somehow had some connection to the death of Hierax, because it WASN'T Auk, as far as I remember.

My theory accounts for the fact that the recombinatorial power of the trees is incompletely bequeathed to their parasites, the lianas. They make a more degenerate race, but the trees would still be "the parents" (Quetzal ponders that man has climbed up the tree in a myth in Long Sun, he just hasn't climbed down yet - this could be a double symbol for the whorl and for mankind's future state) Without human blood, the lianas that feed on reptillian life would be reptillian: they are like what they eat. Remember the war between the laurel and the vines mentioned in Empires of Foliage and Flower.

The format got screwed up on the bottom, the part that is the second to last paragraph was not what I wrote, sorry. Also, I think I confused Hierax and tartaros, so sorry. --- On Wed, 11/23/11, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote: From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> Subject: Re: (urth) Heirax is dead To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Wednesday, November 23, 2011, 9:53 AM --- On Wed, 11/23/11, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote: From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> Subject: Re: (urth) Heirax is dead To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Wednesday, November 23, 2011, 9:08 AM This? post is kind of a backsliding from my rejection of Silk As Typhon's Son in favor of Silk As Typhon. They still could BOTH be true. On 11/23/2011 9:02 AM, Marc Aramini wrote: The best evidence for cloning is found in statements like "Pas grew himself from a seed" and the idea of a nightside and regular Silk, but the particulars of the text make it much more tenable to identify the parents if we are dealing with a son, which is, as Lemur said, what Typhon wanted to replace him. Typhon /had/ such a son...whoever was the original Hierax. Lemur claims that he was "so" like his father in every way. Suppose that Typhon, wearying of trying to produce a suitable male heir, had himself cloned? Suppose that Silk is a clone of that clone. There is a scene in RttW in which is it stated that Hierax is "dead" -- that he has been entirely wiped from the Mainframe and It has always struck me that the scene is intentionally suggestive. ************************ [Rajan says,] "You know, just as Pig and I do, what was said earlier; and we’re none of us children. For an augur to die before his Sacred Window, and particularly for him to die by a steel blade as sacrifices die, is a great honor. It is the death every augur yearns for. I don’t intend to imply that it isn’t wrong to kill an augur under those circumstances; but when an augur dies in such a manner, other augurs and many pious laymen must wonder whether that death was not arranged by Hierax, as a reward. Pig said, ?Hierax is dead. Hound stared at him. [Rajan says] ?I see. I didn’t know that, though I surmised that it might be the case. No doubt it’s for the best. RttW, chpt 10, Through Quadifon's Door ****************** The reason that I have always considered the scene suggestive is that Echidna and Scylla have also been wiped. Everyone directly involved in Pas's murder is on the lam. Why is it supposedly so shocking that Hierax is dead? Well, it is significant that the body of one of the people standing there has also died. Of course, the implication of this theory is that one of the mothers on the Aureate path is Echidna. You remember that blind guy who reminds Horn of Auk that he kills in the purging of the sewer on Green? (or maybe he's swept away, I need to recheck -can't remember how that scene ends)? I always thought maybe that somehow had some connection to the death of Hierax, because it WASN'T Auk, as far as I remember. -----Inline Attachment Follows-----

In order to answer this question, we'd really have to know what the purpose in sending Seawrack was in the first place. Was her purpose solely for Horn? Did Mother decide Horn was a "worshipper" because he killed that pirate woman and caused her to be dumped in the water? I think it is significant that the Narrator does not reconnect with Seawrack in his non-Horn body until the end when the Rajan returns to the Whorl with Marble, Nettle, and Seawrack. (and Oreb, of course). Of course, I'm not sure what the reconnection means any more than I know what the separation means.

Perhaps not enough shallow swampy water for those eggs and their external fertilization method either. But..that is for the reptilian form of inhumi. At the end of RttW, there is a whole swarm of Inhumi flying around. Where did they come from? Happily, Gerry has pointed out that lianas do grow on Blue. So there it is. Support from Gerry for the biological basis of Marc and James' liana theory. It is such a pleasure to see the kids playing together so nicely.

From: Lee Berman

If Marc proposes a spiritual, non-biological connection, I’m perfectly willing to discuss that. But that’s not what he’s been proposing so far. For that matter, I haven’t been all that active in discussing Marc’s theories. But when I do, I do him the honour of discussing the theories he actually puts forward, and not some alternative, selected by you.

We’re told they fly. You are correct in that it is conceivable that they cannot (and would sit better with known laws of physics), and lie about it. It is puzzling, if so, that their numbers appear to increase at conjunction, but perhaps they are more active then. Horn himself says something about many or most of them staying over between conjunctions. There are further problems, though. We are also told baby inhumi need certain life forms that are only found in pools on Green. And that’s plausible because they do appear to originate on Green. - Gerry Quinn

And don't forget Juganu's or some other inhumi's truimphant "We are everywhere!" after going to Urth. I am sure they ARE native to Green. --- On Wed, 11/23/11, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote: From: Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> Subject: Re: (urth) Like a good Neighbor To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Wednesday, November 23, 2011, 10:08 AM From: Lee Berman

If Marc proposes a spiritual, non-biological connection, I’m perfectly willing to discuss that. But that’s not what he’s been proposing so far. For that matter, I haven’t been all that active in discussing Marc’s theories. But when I do, I do him the honour of discussing the theories he actually puts forward, and not some alternative, selected by you.

We’re told they fly. You are correct in that it is conceivable that they cannot (and would sit better with known laws of physics), and lie about it. It is puzzling, if so, that their numbers appear to increase at conjunction, but perhaps they are more active then. Horn himself says something about many or most of them staying over between conjunctions. There are further problems, though. We are also told baby inhumi need certain life forms that are only found in pools on Green. And that’s plausible because they do appear to originate on Green. - Gerry Quinn -----Inline Attachment Follows-----

I have more unrecorded thoughts at this point. Yet, they are still discernible to the to careful reader I think.

From: Lee Berman

Is it conjunction yet? It can’t be far away. - Gerry Quinn

Green? I know that there is a theory floating about that their claim to fly between the worlds is a lie, but they do tend to appear in great numbers during conjunction.

Wolfe is playing tricks on us here. If inhumi can survive being buried underground for months or years, perhaps they can survive the void. But if they are killed merely by the cold of snow, they can't. Since it is is too cold for their eggs to hatch on Blue, I tend to believe that cold does them in, and their space travel is a lie. Moreover, in every conversation we hear, for every inhumu, Wolfe makes it clear that they are reflexively, inherently liars. I don't and never have thought they really fly through space. More moreover, we are told there is a deep, hidden secret of the inhumi. That their essence is of whatever they feed upon is simply too banal. Plus that secret is given to us. It makes sense that there is another inhumi secret that we must figure out for ourselves. I think perhaps James and Marc have done this. If inhumi are increasing in numbers on Blue without egg hatching or space travel, the secret may well be that inhumi are, at their most basic essence, lianas. Gerry's notice of a tree in Quetzal's garden only lends further support to this.

Many animals can live in conditions where their eggs can't successfully hatch.

How, then, do you account for their appearance in great numbers at conjunction?

I disagree. I think that it is much deeper than you're giving credit for; it is of the essence of Wolfe's frequent theme that you become what you pretend to be. In the case of the inhumi, they pretend to be what they are becoming.

Because we want there to be something else? Or because the text indicates that there must be one? If so, where does it do so?

Because, God knows, a tree is an unusual thing to find in a garden...

This isn't really my theory. I have proposed that the inhumi /become/ vines by feeding Neighbors. I really doubt they started out that way. The lianna inhumi are on Blue for the same reason other inhumi are on Blue and by the same method. If they don't fly there, then they use some other method.

Lee, not Dan'l, sent this original message. Sorry Dan'l.

I suppose. But isn't Fava really dead in the snow? Plus, if inhumi are feeding on blood it seems like they are water-based and cellular in nature. How could inhumi survive in the void with all the water in their bodies frozen and all their cells burst? (hasn't this been discussed before?) We are given the choice on whether to believe the words of liars about a biological impossibility or to accept that liars are lying. It is a choice, but I think this time we are expected to choose correctly.

This seems an easy one. Plant and animal sprouting and migrations are usually prompted by celestial events involving the sun and moon. It would make a lot of sense for inhumi vines to sprout or inhumi animals to fly based on Green's activities. Doesn't Green function as something of a moon for Blue? Moreover aren't mythical creatures like vampires and werewolves also deeply affected by the moon?

OK, let's see if I can summarize this correctly. You believe that (a) the Neighbors are sentient trees native to Blue, who can astrally project into the form the Narrator meets; (b) the inhumi are not-natively-sentient reptiles or amphibians native to Green, who take on the nature of what they feed on (at least in their offspring); (c) because they fed on Neighbors, who are trees, the inhumi "take on" a sort of tree-ishness and become lianas. Is that correct?

The Neighbors and Incanto's tale: When Horn clears the sewer, is that his real body or a dream one? I note the Neighbor tells him during that episode that there are two of him: I assume Horn and Neighbor. Is that right? The narrator seems to make up things Horn would not likely do, like pray at the Vanished Goddess's altar. Is that right? Finally, Incanto recalls a dream in which he (Horn) is in the pit. When he wakes, he is in his father's shop. Do you make sense of that?

aaaarrgh!

Precisely correct except that "reptile" is an analogy. One should not assume a true reptile nature. As the Rajan says: "These people, like people everywhere here, seem to fear that an inhumu may live on even with its head severed. That is not the case, of course; but I cannot help wondering how the superstition originated and became so widespread. Certainly the inhumi have no bones as we understand them. Possibly their skeletons are cartilage, as those of some sea-creatures are. On Green, Geier maintained that the inhumi are akin to slugs and leeches. No one, I believe, took him seriously; yet it is certain that once dead they decay very quickly, though they are difficult to kill and can survive for weeks and even months without the blood that is their only food. " ~ OBW chapter 4 Additionally, the Rajan notes that there is a general belief that inhumi can survive even after decapitation. He asserts that this is not true, but ponders how it came to be so generally believed. This might be reference to the Rajan's lianna staff that (it is implied) is still sentient. Additionally, HePenSheep says that the Neighbors fires are burning liannas.

And it explains the fires on the plain on Blue's western continent.

Insects and plants have all sort of tricks to fight the cold, including antifreezes and allowing themselves to be covered with ice. Since we know they can't fly through the void (no air) they may simply launch themselves and drift until they fall. Then, of course, they have potentially burning up to contend with.

I think a serious objection to the theory of Neighbours as trees is that they like fires. Trees should not like fires ... Sergei Soloviev

From: James Wynn

But then why were they such a threat to the Neighbours? - Gerry Quinn

My theory is that they are the morlocks of what becomes of the people of Urth, more or less, when the vines share human blood; vines sentient through preying on the man through their shared but flawed recombination of the trees, eventually becoming all that was left of man before the recolonization.

From: James Wynn

Are you sure? I can’t find the reference. - Gerry Quinn

I think this is confusing chicken and egg, honestly. ontogeny recapitulates philogeny: the reptile stage of evolution shows that in the past they fed on reptiles before becoming man feeders, but the "being buried and not dying" etc is a function of their vinish origin.

And from the statements that the inhuni lose with every triumph over the men on Green, it is certain they will regress with no sentient food: back to their animal/vinish origin. They NEED fresh supplies of food to remain sophisticated sentient beings.

I don't remember anything of the kind. Sergei Soloviev

Interestingly, that is much more true of slugs than of most plants and plant parts. Even fruits stick around unless they are opened. I have always assumed that at base the inhumi were indeed soft parasitic bugs. They still could be---the forests of Green are evolutionarily impossible without bugs of some kind. You need a long war between predator and prey to evolve new forms. And I think this is thematically possible as well---after all, no one knew 2000 years ago that grapes became wine because they have yeast bacteria embedded in their skins. Such bugs---slugs---blugs---could have merged with plants millennia ago and provided some basic genetic coding like the bacteria needed in the gut to break down food. We know a species of seaslug contains algae; this is but the reverse. That was "then." Inhumi could be closer to plants now.

Depends. Chinese farmers use their feces in their fields and are not sentimental about it; dry brush threatens trees. Why not burn your own fingernails and hair if it keeps you warm, or kills parasites?

By that theory, Pajarocu would be full of inhumi who do not feed on humans or prefer trees to humans, and the Neighbors would naturally burn the lianas that result.

I think this is backwards. The trees and vines both fed on sentient beings in the past and revert to their natural primitive state without that influx of sentience. The inhumi really are what they consume, and that is very very clear from the text. They started as lianas then became animals through consuming animals.

And that isn't my theory quoted below, the lianas are the starting point for inhumi, the trees are the starting point for vanished people, both of which originate with old school humanity.

Seems like either path is biologically possible! Except that only trees stand still long enough for a vine to feed on it. Are you and James open to a long evolutionary history of transfers of DNA in both directions? If not, why not? Once the "become what you eat" kicked in, what's to stop it? How could any planimal/aniplant ever truly regress except in losing sentience, a single "soft" feature? Evolution does not go backwards---but a species can lose traits as well as evolve them repeatedly in different ways. (Such I believe is Wolfe's model for human moral evolution anyway.)

Yes, I know.

Well, admittedly it is not emphatic. But it was the reading I gleaned from the following exchange: **************** He nodded solemnly. "Afraid Neighbor-man." When I asked what a Neighbor-man was, he laughed and pointed to the ring Seawrack had given me. "You Neighbor-man." "Many Neighbor here," his wife told Seawrack. She paused to moisten the sinew with which she sewed, running it through her mouth. "Build many fire. Neighbor-man," she pointed to me, "come, talk Neighbor." I indicated the wilderness of sand and scrub through which we had walked for most of the day. "Are there many Neighbors down there?" Without looking up from her sewing, she nodded emphatically. "Many Neighbor. Many fire." Her son displayed both palms. "No kill Neighbor." His father laughed again. "He no kill. Change blood Neighbor," to which he added what seemed to be several sentences in a tongue that I had never heard before. "Neighbor kill you?" I suggested. He shook his head. "Kill inhumu." ~OBW, chptr 11 *************** Additionally, burning seems to be the most widely understood as the effective way of killing an inhumi: ****************** An inhuma was caught last night, and today I was forced to watch as she was buried alive. There is no trial for these monsters, and understandably so---we burn them in New Viron... ~OBW, chapter 4 ******************* ********* Inhumi are burned alive in Skany... ~OBW, chpt 10 ***************

I don't think there is any exchange of DNA between humans and inhumi (or with Neighbors so far as I know). Only souls are transferred. Is the transfer only one way? I don't know. I've always wondered about Quetzal standing over Silk when he is brought back from the dead when his vehicle crashed.

Hmm...I've always considered it a dream state. Was there an inhumi nearby? I must ponder.

Possibly. There was that guy the he shook hands with at the meeting with the Neighbors. Post the quote.

That seems Neighborly. I doubt it would convinced the unconvinced.

Post the quote.

Nah. Those tricks are for fighting cold temperatures on earth. None would work in outer space. The best ethylene glycol (car antifreeze) could do would be to stay liquid at -51C (at highly toxic levels, mind you). The void is -273 C. I think the only chance a living thing might have of surviving extended void exposure might be the spore stage of bacteria (and even there, the chances are slim). But that's the thing. A spore can only be produced by a single cell organism. Multicelled creatures require an internal liquid medium. I guess, since this is SF, you could postulate that the inhumi completely dehydrate themselves and their dry, mummified husks drift through space and manage to re-enter and rehydrate on Blue. But why would you want to? I don't get this. I swear this is Wolfe's commentary on politics and demogoguery. People will swallow ten tons of crap from a politician just to avoid admitting the simple truth that they are lying. Don't drink the inhumi kool-aid! They travel through space the way we are shown they travel- using deception to become an unwanted hitchhiker. Better check the cargo hold of that lander for stray lianas too ;- ).

Insofar as one may be a model for the other, I am not sure it matters. However, I was thinking of their early evolution. Which crash was that---the floater?

Yeah, when Silk meets his parents. I think their early evolution was a fluke as the Rajan says. They had this psychic ability to mimic and then one day they happened to feed on sentient life...and then it got weird.

Well, they had just landed and were put underground by the inhumi. So there may have been somewhere.

p63: "How many of us are there?" the man with the black sword asked. He looked about him as he spoke, and saw no one. "There are two of you," the man of the Vanished People said; and as he did, the man with the black sword saw a corpse face down in the water. Either "the man with the black sword" is two people or he counts almost as a corpse to the Neighbor. Ambiguous!

I was thinking Silkly, but that's better! Silk would understand it though, and tell it like that even f he wasn't there.

p58: I was in the pit, sitting in the middle of it as I actually did for so many hours. [He's reading the Writings, sees Scylla, and reveals it's a dream.] I sat up and stared around at the little stationery shop as if I had never seen paper or ledgers before; and in the [sic] precisely the same voice Oreb exclaimed ... "Watch out!" Oreb may be in the dream as well, using Scylla's voice, but it's not clear. It would make sense if it were all just a Horn dream, mixed with a Silk dream.

Although Fava dies in the snow, Jahlee travels with the Rajan on horseback through the winter. There are a lot of problems technically with flying high enough by flapping your wings to leave the gravitational pull of one planet to enter another.** But then there are technical problems with two planets regularly getting as close to each other as Green and Blue do. Considering how hard hardy the inhumi are understood to be, the surprising thing to me is that Fava died at all. Jahlee speaks with great reverence for the risks her mom took to obtain a soul for her. Of course, she might ACTUALLY have been referring to her hopping a lander. **The reason things burn up when they hit the atmosphere is because they have to be traveling very fast to be in ORBIT. Inhumi don't care about being in orbit. They just fall. So they would not burn up in the atmosphere.

That's the biggest, probably. They'd need to be very strong and very light with a huge surface area. They could use some other wind---like a solar wind---for lift once they reach that point.

Especially assuming they have wings at that point.

From: Lee Berman

Empty space has no temperature. (Typically the interplanetary gases are very hot in fact, but so dilute their temperature is irrelevant.) How hot or cold an object in the vacuum gets depends largely on whether the sun is shining on it. And since heat transfer is by radiation only (no conduction or convection) it will be relatively slow. Probably inhumi spin so that an equal amount of sunlight falls on every side. The average temperature of an object in space should be a little lower than the average temperature on a planetary surface, though, due to the absence of a greenhouse effect. - Gerry Quinn

From: James Wynn From: James Wynn

“Not emphatic” as in “not stated at all”. - Gerry Quinn

I forgot to mention that one trick would be to not have any water in their bodies when they fly. Problem solved.

On Earth, yes. This is SF.

You're way ahead of me!

I'm not arguing for anything but its plausibility. I think it's a cool idea. I WANT to believe ... ! For me, the most compelling argument would be that inhumi do not see---or at least are not blinded---in the human visual spectrum. Krait says he can see the stars at day. Either his vision is extremely sensitive, without protective mechanisms like irises, or it's extremely insensitive. Now, what's the evolutionary advantage of that? Sounds like a spacefaring species to me, evolved for feeding on Neighbors. (He could be lying, but if so the inhumi have a whole ad campaign worked out, complete with talking points to insert into unrelated conversations. Which is entirely possible.)

...

This, to me, is the strongest argument for believing that the inhumi fly through space. They may be liars, but they all tell the same story on this, and, unless you believe that they are in collusion, which is, I suppose, possible but seems to me to resemble a conspiracy theory like the Bavarian Illuminati controlling the Jewish Bankers, the Trilateral Commission, and the Jesuits -- unless, as I say, you believe that, or else the equally remarkable coincidence that they seem to all instinctively come up wiht the same story, then you must conclude that they are telling the truth and fly through space ... which is, indeed, a cool idea.

Do you have a page number or quote for the meeting and the crash?

Here's a few problems I have with the theory that inhumi are created from vines eating animal life: 1) Why do only the vines create inhumi? The trees produce everything else, right? And what is the chance that there would be two separate plant species on Urth that essentially perform the same function? And why did they not subsume humanity from the start. Why is there not even a threat of that until enough time has passed on Ushas for the original recolonizers from Tzadkiel to become mythology? 2) You believe Horn's resurrection is an example of the mechanism that transformed humanity into Neighbors. But you don't really. You don't think the Horn that crawled out of the pit is a Neighbor. You think he was somehow resurrected after the tree ate him and produced the Neighbor-Horn. But that is not what is supposed to happen. 3) The Neighbors started on Blue. Yet, you believe that Green is Urth's future. But shouldn't they have started on Green where humanity died? I think your Hybrid Theory is a relic of your Blue Ushas theory...when you were trying to figure out all the signs of Urth structures on Blue, complete with its own Scylla. When you abandoned BU, you grafted a new planet in its place like Typhon grafting his head on to Piaton. But as with Typhon, there turn out to be complications. Rather than putting new wine in old bottles, I think you need to start fresh. Urth is Green. Okay. How do we get from Ushas to Green or from Green to Urth? Is Green really in Urth's future or is there another solution.

From: David Stockhoff

I read it as inhumi seeing in the infrared or microwave spectrum. Infrared vision would fit with an evolutionary ancestry of snake-like predators on warm-blooded creatures. - Gerry Quinn

Did you know it is possible to read my mind only from what YOU say?

And also gives them a way to coevolve with the Neighbors on Blue. Depending on the theory, one may imagine them crossing to feed on Neighbors and becoming parasitic vines long before they fed on humans. However, the Neighbors seem to know them in their inhumi form too, though that may just be recognition. (If the Neighbors are native to Green this all means nothing. The big trees are there but the multilimbed species are all on Blue, so I have no idea.) Another point is that their lying is supposed to be a way to "become." Evolutionarily, I assume this helps them join the society of their prey. I'm not sure what the spaceflight story does except direct human attention away from Pajarocu, which is already pretty remote and hidden. (The lander goes back and forth most easily at conjunction, but that explanation can only go back 20 years. Maybe that makes sense.) And it doesn't help them "become."

What a tantalizing series of clues. Are you thinking of ... a bloody mangled corpse? A pistol that has just been fired? I'll figure it out ....

From: David Stockhoff

But don’t the Neighbours say they only discovered the inhumi after they went to Green? - Gerry Quinn

Chapter 9 of "Calde of the Long Sun"

Ah, when Auk pushed him, yes. Quetzal is there but so is Incus, so I doubt there was any funny business.

Okay, the vines parasitized the trees and gained something of their function, but not the entire amount. When the vines feed on reptiles, they are like reptiles. And yes, the entire species of humanity was completely subsumed long long ago. They moved on, they became the original "neighbors" and stepped sidewise somewhere or when. Humanity diverged into a lower and higher path: neighbors and inhumi. In the absence of fresh blood, the inhumi revert to their more animalistic form. This is very complicated by stories of Neighborly origin on blue ... but the trees of sentience are on green.

No, i think the long nosed fellow causes the resurrection, the sharing of blood through being "dead food" is indicative of death "dead things are food". The trees eat trees on green somehow, but it is not clear that they can only eat trees, and the eucharist scene is being watched by the vanished gods.

This is the big big problem. The neighbors starting on Blue, blue in general, everything about Blue, but ITS COLDER THAN URTH and COLDER THAN GREEN, I think that is very very important.

There is no indication that it is in the past, with the decayed relics, with the towers that are space ships, with the future of humanity KNOWN to be that of the green man and, lo and behold, vegetative life here (or do you deny that the neighbors and the inhumi are related to plants?) The ship left in Typhon's past, Silk thinks of Green as it was before its present state when he winds up on Urth, etc etc. There is nothing that indicates it is in the past thematically in the book, Green is an old abandoned decayed relic.

It's such a strange coincidence that so many people pick poor little Gerry. The guy is always being backed into fights. How does one fellow end up with in so many unfortunately hostile conversation? Why can't the people who converse with him learn to be more civil?

James Wynn wrote (23-11-2011 20:45):

The Rajan does all kinds of things Silk would do. But I can't get my head around the idea that the Rajan pondered sacrificing Oreb.

You very well know that I believe the inhumi are connected somehow to the liannas. But the green man does not look like a Neighbor. I'm not absolutely certain that a Neighbor could even be captured by the Severian's people. Drawing a connection between the Neighbors and the green man has as many problems as equating Urth and Green. Let's not buy trouble for ourselves.

Yes, but not necessarily a relic of Urth. Green and Urth could be same but Green could be at the same point in the renewal cycle that Urth is in Silk's time. I'm not talking about a mantanvara. I'm talking about something like Green-->Earth-->Urth-->Ushas. Both Green and Urth are on the verge of a renewal.

I think some of you are overlooking that there is precious little evidence that the biology of the Inhumi changes with their feeding on other life-forms. It's the soul that does. Otherwise they wouldn't have to go into 'dream travel', something they are desperate to do (which suggests that they can't do it without the Rajan, and that the Neighbours are really gone), in order to be physically human. It is reasonably implied that along with impressive mimetism they have some way of mesmerising humans to achieve the illusion that they are human - but human they are not, physically. Yeah, the Inhumi could be dream-travelling lianas, but they don't exhibit the traits we associate with dream-travellers. Marc Aramini wrote (23-11-2011 22:45):

James Wynn wrote (23-11-2011 22:47):

Some guy said something about you being represented by your ideas. As such, pointing out problems with your ideas is tantamount to delegitimising you as a person. There was a time unbelievers were burned at the stake, and pretending it was because our ancestors lacked some modern qualities is getting old.

I don't think anyone is postulating this. Marc believes the vines fed on reptiles and spit out inhumi. I proposed that maybe they fed on Neighbors who were dream traveling trees (dryads) and thus their children have taken the /form/ of "vines". I don't think they are actual vines. But chopping down a chunk of a "vine" to make a staff from it has not robbed it of whatever dream-traveling powers it originally had.

James Wynn wrote (23-11-2011 23:17):

I was, for the sake of saying why I don't think we have evidence of the inhumi taking the biological form of their prey.

I don't think we have evidence of the [children of the] inhumi taking the biological form of their prey, as some of yous have been assuming.

Lee Berman wrote (23-11-2011 19:16):

Indeed. I've never understood this. If Jahlee can survive being buried for years - and the Rajan expected to find her alive there - there must be something more to Fava's death, which we irritatingly know zilch about.

Have you not heard of the Lovable Water Bears?

Antonio, did you know that there is a bacteria at the very end of a horse's digestive track that is vital to breaking down alfalfa? Without this bacteria horses could not digest alfalfa and it is only found at the very /end/ of a /horse's/ digestive tract. The reason I bring this up is that it is related to my thoughts on reading three separate responses from Gerry today.

Not entirely, entirely James. They have to feed on people or vanished people to really really be inhumi and sentient in the first place. Otherwise they are just parasitic vines who gained weird properties from their associations with the trees. Before the recolonizers they mostly just kind of ran out of people. Maybe it was time to break into the emergency food rations in orbit.

There is a chapter titled, "Why are the inhumi like us?" and there is some indication that when the colonists, there food supply, are defeated, the inhumi will defeat themselves (no more sentient children, from what I understood) need to reread.

I know you do! Argh! LMAO, I swear I am going to throw a hissy fit tantrum on this. No, NO, NO!! It isn't plausible. Only the "dry, waterless husk body" scenario would allow this sort of space travel. It isn't only temperature but also a matter of internal cellular pressure. But the effort it would take to launch Inhumi from a planet would require muscular action. Gerry's rotisserie chicken spinning to catch the sun's radiation evenly would also require muscular action. Muscles cannot work without water-filled cells and those cannot exist in the void. I can see debating possibilities for fun. But not plausibility. There isn't any. As an effective Wolfe reader one MUST become aware of the lies of unreliable narrators. And the inhumi are as unreliable as any narrator in any Wolfe story. This is our responsibility. Let's not shirk it! ;- ).

Stop right there! There is not the slightest chance of a compelling argument here once the words, "Krait says.." appears. You know this! (you acknowledge this) But still you want to believe the Great Deceivers and their pleasant, interesting, "cool" lies.

It is a veritable certainty. The campaign goes by the label of the great secret of the Inhumi. SilkHorn has promised them he would not reveal it to us. And he does not. He even provides the boondoggle of "You are what you eat" as their secret to show solidarity with any lying inhumi who happen to read (or have read to them) the text. But what Silkhorn does is provide the discerning reader with the means to determine what the real Inhumi secret is. This allows him to support the good guys against the bad guys without breaking his vow. Wolfe's science may not be perfect in his stories but it is damn good. Far, far too good to allow naked biological bodies to perform extended flight in the void. (believe the inhumi and I've got an Iraq invasion to sell you, complete with yellowcake uranium, hundreds of Iraqi nuclear warheads and 9/11 planned by Saddam Hussein ;-))

Looks to me like someone's inhumi roommate left town without kicking in on his half of the rent. Sent from my iPhone

Yes, nobody's denying that the inhumi's souls become like those of their prey. What I'm saying is that there is no evidence that I remember that suggests that their biology, their physique, as opposed to their soul, undergoes any such transformation. Marc Aramini wrote (24-11-2011 02:28):

Yes, nobody's denying that the inhumi's souls become like those of their prey. What I'm saying is that there is no evidence that I remember that suggests that their biology, their physique, as opposed to their soul, undergoes any such transformation. Marc Aramini wrote (24-11-2011 02:28):

From: Marc Aramini

Yes. As I understand it, if that happens they will then prey on unintelligent animals and regress to a similar state themselves, like they were on Green before the Neighbours came. Of course hus at least are moderately intelligent (as smart as an ape or better?) so the inhumi may not revert entirely to dumb animals, if, say, draining hus leaves them intelligent enough to fly, or if hus or similar creatures survive on Green. - Gerry Quinn

From: Lee Berman

Wolfe plays fast and loose with the laws of physics when it suits the story. Maybe inhumi can generate a hard shell for themselves while flying. An intitial spin may be maintained without muscular effort. We don’t know how long the flight takes — even a human subjected to vacuum won’t die immediately if he exhales beforehand. Can Tzadkiel fly in the vacuum? I’m sure you’ll agree that he can.

Dorcas has answered this point long ago, when Severian was inclined to doubt the undine’s claim to swim between the stars: ***************************************** "When I was with Dr. Talos and you were gone, he and Jolenta used to tell me what a simple-minded person I was for believing people we met on the road, and things that Baldanders said, and things they said themselves, too. Just the same, I think that even the people who are called liars tell the truth much more often than they lie. It's so much easier! If that story about saving you wasn't true, why tell it? It could only frighten you when you thought back on it. And if she doesn't swim between stars what a useless thing to say. ***************************************** A useful rule in interpreting Wolfe. The ultimate purpose of unreliable narrators is the same as that of reliable narrators, i.e. to tell the reader what is going on. They don’t invent stuff randomly as a rule, however naturalistic that may seem in some cases. Generally they tell the truth, with bits missing or strangely interpreted.

He has a ship fly faster than light by tacking against the photonic wind. If he can do that he can have inhumi fly in space. Or gigantic godlings and undines (who can swim in space), for that matter. So anyway, what’s the inhumi secret, according to you? - Gerry Quinn

Nobody said that Antonio. What I said is that ideas represent people in here. Disagreement is one thing. Derision and ridicule is another. We all know how to exit an argument and "agree to disagree". If instead, a poster chooses to resort to insulting the ideas of others, I find that worthy of addressing. This list is not a literary review journal but I see no reason we can't attempt to approach the standards for appropriate, professional, adult conduct found in the writings for such publications. We all have little eruptions of childish emotions in the course of our lives.. But we don't have to express them in writing and publish them on the internet every time we feel them. Do we?

Actually, he doesn't. He is as meticulous as he can be. In this case it is completely unnecessary for inhumi to fly through space. And they don't. Wolfe would not give us such an implausible scientific impossibility unless there was a desperate need for it in the story. And there isn't. The way inhumi travel through space is shown: on spaceships, using deception to stow away in one form or another. Raising the possibility of their unassisted space travel is used to illustrate the power of lying, not to encourage fantastic, non-texual biological impossibilities. The inhumi need this secret to be well-kept or they will lose the vital element of deceit they need to get onto spaceships. Listen to yourself, Gerry. You are inventing rotissirie chicken spinning in space and insulated, radiation-proof hard shells from nothing. And for what? To allow the inhumi to not be liars, when they are all, without exception, demonstrable liars.

"When I was with Dr. Talos and you were gone, he and Jolenta used to tell me what a simple-minded

Very good and appropriate quote, Gerry. But by taking it too literally you are missing the hidden significance of it. In this quote, Baldanders and Dr. Talos admit being liars. They are liars! That is a fact which must color everything they say before and everything after this passage. Same for the inhumi. If there is a grain of truth in their lies about them flying in space during the conjunction it is that they ride on short-distance landers which rely on the conjunction for the shortest travel path. FWIW, Juturna is also a liar. The passage suggests it by conflating her statement with those of Baldanders and Talos. Her lying is supported by the appearance of Idas on the Ship. She is cellular, thus she does not "swim between the stars" unassisted, like a mini-spaceship. If pinned down, perhaps she would explain that swimming between the stars is a poetic way of saying she can travel through time, "in the spaces between stars" i.e. space-time. Or something like that. This leaves Tzadkiel's space-borne image in the mirror book to consider. Her self-description of her sponge-like character seem to suggest she is cellular in nature. So what gives with the outer space Tzadkiel? My interpretation is that image was Tzadkiel's true essence. He/She is, in essence, spiritual only, not biological, as befits an angel. Tzadkiel, like angels, only takes a biological form when he/she needs to interact with others of that type.

LMAO. Yep. perhaps. Well, there are very few point in WOlfe stories I consider as sure and obvious as this one. So, I'll throw my little snit fit for a while. Actually, that is probably enough to make my point, unless there is someone who would like to continue the discussion on the purpose of Wolfean liars. There are quite a few of them and they serve a definite purpose in what Wolfe is trying to say to his readers. (that purpose includes religion as well as politics)

Lee Berman wrote (24-11-2011 16:58):

I don't think that's the reason. Of course the inhumi deceive as a way of living. The matter is that they exist on both planets so there must be a way for them to get from one to the other. It's not because they say they do, it's because we know they do. We saw one way they intended to take humans to Green. That doesn't mean they needed it if they wanted to go there themselves. Is it credible that they have so many landers at their command that they can easily move between planets as needed? You hypothesize that they can breed on Blue and that's their secret, but why would it be a secret? Why are they not dominant in Blue as they are in Green if they can breed on Blue? And we do know Jahlee was born on Green, even if we disbelieve all the others. And the issue others have pointed out is how do they all tell the same lie about their travels? James thinks there is no reason why the Neighbours should know much about one another, even though they're psychic; how should the Inhumi, who do not appear to be psychic in the same extent, if at all, get their lie synchronised? To the point of being able to see the stars during daytime? Is it a genetic lie that suffers no mutations? I'm ready to believe the Inhumi don't cross the void unaided, but I haven't yet seen convincing aid.

From: Lee Berman

Even if that’s correct, what difference does it make? It does suggest, I suppose, that humans on Blue have less to worry about than they might have thought, given that their collapsing tech level will soon render space flight very rare or non-existent, and assuming that inhumi can indeed breed only on Green. If they can breed on Blue, it makes no difference at all unless they can be exterminated there. Personally I think they can fly through space. Wolfe often uses cool but physically implausible ideas, even when they are not strictly necessary to the story. And the spaceship theory doesn’t explain why they appear in increased numbers on Blue during Conjunction. While it might save fuel, there’s no indication that many ships are launched then. In fact they wouldn’t be, there is more to worry about.

But spaceflight is almost dead anyway.

Liars do not lie all the time, as Dorcas points out. And the things I invented are just the ordinary methods our primitive satellites use.

Are you saying inhumi have their own landers? Of course they have captured one, but it seems improbable that they have much of a space fleet.

I am not so certain. If she can allow Severian to breathe underwater with a kiss, perhaps by expressing nanobots which will create gills for him, as the Mother somehow created gills for Seawrack, she may well be able to adapt to periods in vacuum without difficulty. Of course, neither ability is proven, but neither is disproven either. Erebus and Abaia may be post-Singularity beings of almost unimaginable capabilities, and some of these capabilities may be loaned to their more senior slaves.

So Wolfe sticks rigorously to physics, except when he doesn’t? - Gerry Quinn

And the idea that Green and Blue come so close (in the "conjunction" ) that their atmospheres touch does not come from inhumi, it comes from Wolfe, and it is said (as common knowledge) that this allows the inhumi to cross. I think this idea is not less doubtful from the points of view of physics than inhumi crossing through the void. The tides would be much more catastrophic than described by Wolfe. There is Roche limit (about 9000 km for Earth) when the orbiting planet will be destroyed by tidal forces. Since this is not correctly described by Wolfe (and it is not a story told by inhumi, but Wolfe's description of the system), I rather agree that in this case it is loose physics (or maybe GW is amusing himself with some "naive" errors). Sergei Soloviev

I thought Krait's similarity to Sinew was due to that feeding near reproduction cycle, but then later when Jahlee resembles Chenille and is drunk its because she fed on the greiving Chenille who was released from Green, the lander repaired, and escaped to blue to mourn the murder of her children (she indulges in drink and drugs when bothered, from Long Sun). I don't know.

I don't have a problem with inhumi jumping from planet to planet because astral travel is a pretty "unnatural" property anyway: they are not entirely normal physical creatures and this is SF, so it would have to serve a purpose for them to lie about it, and I just don't see that purpose. I do think they are beings that are not entirely bound by natural physical laws, as the vanished people seem to have become as well, stepping "sideways". My impression of the secret of the inhumi is that they are all that is left of the humans who did not "advance", doomed like the zooanthropes or whatever who willfully reduced themselves to an animalistic state, though this might not have been a choice.

Marc Aramini wrote (24-11-2011 17:54):

We know they are able to visually mimic humans, but not the precise mechanics. Makeup, pose and optical illusion seem to be involved. But who they mimic is an interesting point. The null hypothesis is that they just disguise themselves as best they can, with no great choice in outcome, but the Chenille case casts doubt on that. Are you sure Krait resembles Sinew?

Marc Aramini wrote (24-11-2011 17:54):

Wait a minute, wasn't it the real Chenille, only possessed by dream-travelling Jahlee? Or two separate scenes, drunk real Chenille and Chenille-resembling Jahlee later on (which I don't recall)? I don't remember that bit very clearly.

Sorry for the intervention, I do not remember Chenille possessed by Jahlee. As far as I remember the text, she didn't escape Green. (Nothing of the kind is mentioned.) She is in captivity at Sinew's and Bala house in Abanja village, and in a very bad condition. Sergei Soloviev

The earth where Jahlee was buried is in Gaon, not some permafrost. Maybe they cannot survive when the water freezes. Sergei Soloviev

But the fact remains - there is no such reference - Sergei

no, chenille is not possessed by Jahlee. Jahlee is running amok in dorp and feeds on the offscreen Chenille. Jahlee reminds the narrator of chenille, acting drunk. The reason is that she has fed on the drunken Chenille who is mourning her children. The narrator has not failed her and left her in that basement. They have repaired the lander and come to Blue.

No, Jahlee was feeding on a drunken woman offscreen and she reminds the narrator of Chenille. It's because Chenille really did escape the basement, the narrator just doesn't run into her there.

It's at the end of chapter 7 in RttW. Jahlee drinks and drinks from a "big woman" drunk on rust. This matches chenille's description very well, a big woman who takes rust when she is depressed. the narrator is concerned that maybe Jahlee killed her, but she says she didn't.

Someone wrote me off list that they believe it best that I be more critical in my theories, because clearly Chenille was just on Green and there was no time to get to Blue, but they did not factor in my belief that astral travel is not necessarily separate from a displacement in time. A big woman on rust in an alley who, when fed upon, makes Jahlee be mistaken for Chenille, is enough for me to assert, yes, that's Chenille in the alley, and TIME IS NOT AN ISSUE TO ME WHEN ASTRAL TRAVEL IS CONCERNED. If you call it a misprision, then explain why he mistakes her for Chenille there. Mine does attempt to fit the facts of the story, I wish the allegation of uncritical reading were not leveled at me so often.

Also, one more thing: in dorp, Oreb returns and the ring the body of Horn was wearing shows up. The narrator realizes its his old ring. How did the black ring get there? That being Chenille explains how the ring got there (Lander from green repaired), who the big lady is, explains why he might mistake Jahlee for Chenille, and also goes back to her characteristics from Long Sun: if her children were killed or separated from her, she has in distress before drowned herself in rust and drinking. Without that shuttle being fixed, you NEED TO EXPLAIN how Horn's ring got to Blue from his body AND WHY HE MISTOOK HER FROM CHENILLE. It clears up more inexplicable stuff than it leaves unexplained, otherwise we just accept Silk let her rot in the basement.

I don't see that you are less careful than average. When elaborating an important point, then of course it would be crucial to get the facts straight , but this was merely chat. And I don't see why Chenille couldn't be on Blue, though by that I don't mean any kind of time displacement (I think dream travel may be a little imprecise in terms of time without enabling time travel in itself). I'd like someone to point out the part where the murder of Chenille's children is mentioned. All I saw was a cryptic reference of intent by Jahlee. No dia 2011/11/25, ?s 02:06, Marc Aramin <marcaramini at yahoo.com> escreveu:

This is the main difficulty, I agree. I don't see how it could be accomplished without just ignoring the problem. You also make a good pint when you refer to "the great secret of the inhumi." If they have a secret, that implies some degree of concerted action. But the existence of another secret beyond the secret we know is unproven. I have the same intuition you do, however---that there is something else they hide. Maybe that they can be burned as lianas?

Agreed. But what did they do before the Whorl came? Did they never go to Blue?

I forgot to point out that the lander (there is only one) is not used just to move inhumi to Blue. It's used to move humans to Green. This can't be done via void-flight.

It's as plain as it could be. You can't have a translator's note for everything.

From: David Stockhoff

Apparently there was no sapient life on Green before the Neighbours developed space technology and went there. Inhumi were just like animals, and even if they flew by accident to Blue they never caused a problem there. After the Neighbours came to Green, the inhumi preyed upon them and became intelligent. This was long before the arrival of the Whorl. - Gerry Quinn

From: David Stockhoff

James does not ordinarily imagine or assert non-existent textual evidence for his ideas (not everyone is so careful/scrupulous). In this case, however, he got it wrong as we all do sometimes. - Gerry Quinn

Conjunction doesn't need to be THAT close. Since the atmospheres can't actually touch (although that would be cool), the planets just need to be closer than usual. if the inhumi evolved for space flight between Green and Blue at conjunction they only need to be able to accomplish space flight between Green and Blue at conjunction.

This could not be more wrong. Wolfe practices science fantasy, not engineering. If the bar is "desperate need," then he must be pretty desperate because all his works feature physical impossibilities. In fact, you could say they feature miracles. Wolfe is only meticulous in his lying.

Right. Another thing those adamant about inhumi really flying through space ignore is that Wolfe casts doubt on the reality of this not only through the physical impossibility but also because text itself raises the possiblity it is a lie. Why would Wolfe do this if inhumi space flying was simply a super-neato science thingie we are supposed to find wonder and amazement in. Wolfe puts super-neato stuff in his stories here and there like amazing ray guns in BotNS or a Mainframe full of gods. But we are not called to question whether these really exist or not.

Yes I agree. Their liana phase may be part of the secret also. The secret must involve species preservation or it wouldn't be such an important secret. How does revealing "you are what you eat" threaten the inhumi in any way? Cutting off inhumi space travel and revealing the vine-aspect of their existence both provide a mortal threat to the continued existence and spread of their race. Skepticism based on the question of how the inhumi share their great secret is not relevant. They have a great secret. The same question could be asked if the secret was "you are what you eat". Maybe some inhumi know the secret and some don't. Doesn't matter. The question is WHAT is the great secret?

I assume they only went to blue after Neighbors flew to Green and became corrupted by the parasites. Then the corrupted Neigbors were willing to decimate their own home planet and population. There is a connecting theme here to other Wolfe books. In 5HoC, we are presented with the principle than an imitative species will lie and deceive even itself to maintain the illusion of the imitation. In UotNS, Zak runs away from Severian when he recognizes that the little guy who helped him is the animal he previously encounted. Severian accepts the running away noting that such a defense mechanism must be part of the deepest instinct of such a species. Interestingly, WOlfe's principle that a vile, imitative species can, if given the right source material, become gods is duplicated in the finale of Frank Herbert's Dune series. Anyway, to sum up, I see this as a choice between a simple, cool but unexplained scientific improbability and a socio-political-religious commentary about instinctive liars and imitators which extends across numerous WOlfe stories. I guess we can have both, but the Short Sun series becomes significantly thinner if we don't catch the second possibility.

David Stockhoff wrote (25-11-2011 13:59):

Jahlee goes to the trouble of saying they can't be without air for too long (at the same time, that implies they can survive a bit of airlessness between Green and Blue), and that's why Quetzal didn't get to the Whorl that way. If the whole space-crossing thing is a lie, it certainly is one with a lot of detail.

From: Lee Berman

Because humans might change. Unlikely, but it might happen. This is the core moral theme of Short Sun, IMO. - Gerry Quinn

The implication that there is a secret beyond the secret we know is that "Nettle must not know the secret", which would be difficult if he were writing it down, unless he is writing for everyone but nettle.

So the inhumi used Neighbor ships? That's possible. Is there any evidence of any character who is an inhumu who has fed on a Neighbor?

I don't see why we can't have both. Only if we insist on determining the absolute truth---in a universe where such appears to be unattainable---does that decision need to be a binary one.

And I'm not sure what would bother Nettle so much, except the notion that her son is not her son or her husband not her husband. But both are dead by the end, so what is worse than that---except that they have been eaten and turned into vampires? Which is not quite what the inhumi do.

Something about Sinew and Krait? Krait is like Sinew in that the mother of Krait fed on the baby, I think (?)

Yes, but so what? If Nettle knows Sinew was bitten and even that he is now dead (IIRC), what secret is left?

Sinew died?

Or is he just stuck on Green? I haven't gotten there yet but I thought the Rajan said so.

If he IS just stuck on Green, then perhaps the "secret" to withhold from Nettle is that the inhumi are keeping him alive to stay sentient, i.e., using him as cattle. How that detail would bother her is unclear, if she finds out Sinew is being treated that way---why would she care about the motive?

Jahlee's mother fed on Chenille. When Jahlee fed on a drunk woman she developed a drunken slur which was more distinctly "Chenille" to the narrator than the sober version. I believe Jahlee-as-Chenille permitted Wolfe to embed a lot of clues about Chenille's relationship to Silk, even though I cannot claim to be absolutely clear on what they all mean.

You wish me to find an exact quotation where its is said that the atmospheres "touch"? I'll try. Sergei

Please help me to find where this doubt is cast? Sergei

I think the same - Sergei

No! He is very successful on Green - Sergei

This seems to me interesting idea, James - thanks - Sergei

It's a fact that Chenille is red and Jahlee's hair is constantly referred to as 'sorrel'. Sergei SOLOVIEV wrote (25-11-2011 17:29):

From: Ant?nio Pedro Marques

Seems close enough... - Gerry Quinn

Well, Chenille's hair is actually brown. It is colored red. So Jahlee's red hair would have to reflect the way Chenille thought of herself. However, I believe Wolfe /is/ sending a message regarding red hair although I can't say quite what it is (Silk's reddish-blonde beard, Rose's hair, Chenille's dyed hair). According to "The Vampire: His Kith and Kin" red-hair was a feature of the Typhonians, the human sacrificial victims of Osiris. I think the red hair is supposed to connect characters to Typhon in some way, but can't put the pieces in place.

James Wynn wrote (25-11-2011 18:42):

? She certainly says red is her colour.

OK, so somebody please answer the question of what secret must be kept from Nettle. If Sinew can't return to Blue, she's already lost her son and her husband. What else is left?

On the Trivigaunte floater Horn notes that her hair is colored red.

I say only that we need precision. If it is said that he is on Green and a successful leader it is not the same if he were dead. When we had "Iron Curtain" the parents of an emigrant (e.g., from USSR to USA) had no hope that their child will return, but it was not the same to know that the child is dead. Sergei

You've been holding out on us, James. The above is a work of Montague Summers (1928). The passage is: "Those whose hair is red, of a certain peculiar shade, are unmistakably vampires. It is significant that in ancient Egypt, as Manetho tells us, human sacrifices were offered at the grave of Osiris, and the victims were red-haired men who were burned, their ashes being scattered far and wide by winnowing-fans. It is held by some authorities that this was done to fertilize the fields and produce a bounteous harvest, red-hair symbolizing the golden wealth of the corn. But these men were called Typhonians, and were representatives not of Osiris but of his evil rival Typhon, whose hair was red.[76] Francesco Redi says: "Fra gli Egizii era tradizione che Tifone, il genio della distruzione, simile al Arimane Persiano al Satano Ebriaco fosse di pelo rosso, forse per memoria di invasioni di barbari di pelo rosso e presso noi dura tutta via la tradizione, 'Guardati dal pelo rosso n? valse a toglierla la barba rossa del Redentore.'"[77] Red was the colour of the hair of Judas Iscariot,[78] and of Cain, and an old Latin rhyme of the thirteenth century has: Monet nos haec fabula rufos euitare Quos color et fama notat, illis sociare. The Italians say: Capelli rossi O tutto foco, O tutto mosci. John Wodroephe in /The Spared Hours of a Soldier in hie Travels/, Dort, 1623, quotes: "Garde toi bien des hommes rousseaux, des femmes barbues, et des ceux qui sont marqu?s an visage."[70] I have not met with the following tradition save orally, but it is believed in Serbia, Bulgaria, and Rumania, that there are certain red-polled vampires who are called "Children of Judas," and that these, the foulest of the foul, kill their victim with one bite or kiss which drains the blood as it were at a single draught. The poisoned flesh of the victim is wounded with the Devil's stigmata, three hideous scars shaped thus, XXX, signifying the thirty pieces of silver, the price of blood." The weird thing here is that both Osiris and Typhon are Pas. Maybe Typhon had a good side and a bad side (going along with his "change of heart" regarding bookburning), and Pas (Osiris) is his good side. So then who in the Whorl is his bad side, who had red hair and was associated with corn? Should we read "good" side as a scanned, positive personality and his "bad" side as his physical, genetic aspect, capable of popping up with unexpected qualities? In that case, Tussah ... Chenille ... Silk? And how to read the betrayer of Jesus into the story? One could make a connection with serpents, the idea being that there is always one somewhere in any paradise ... but I can't see anyone but the inhumi themselves filling that slot.

Sergei, I was misremembering and I said so. Do you have an answer to the question or not?

To this, yes, but I am looking for relevant quotations concerning other questions mentioned in the recent posts. Cheers Sergei

He's just told you he only barged in in the interest of clearing up a point. I think there should be a large debate on just what the Secret of the Inhumi is. Rules: 1) It MAY be what we're told, it's no use debating that, there are no arguments that can help with it; 2) It MUST be something of immense importance, and they-use-landers, they-breed-on-Blue and they-are-lianas, don't cut it only by themselves. So, any ideas? David Stockhoff wrote (25-11-2011 19:24):

By the way, what does "mosci" mean in Italian. I'm pretty sure it does not mean "Moscow" in this instance as Google says.

And obscuring the point I was making in the process, yes. Unless Sinew has a lander, Nettle is never seeing him again.

I think there should be a large debate on just what the Secret of the Inhumi is. Rules: 1) It MAY be what we're told, it's no use debating that, there are no arguments that can help with it; 2) It MUST be something of immense importance, and they-use-landers, they-breed-on-Blue and they-are-lianas, don't cut it only by themselves. So, any ideas? I agree with that. There are other features of the secret as well, however. One is that Nettle can't be told. The Rajan certainly thought that the main thing to know about them was that they were defeatable---that they could be erased---just by not letting them feed on any humans. But I certainly don't believe that just because we know they captured one working lander (and humans to work it) that they have been doing this every two years since the Neighbors reached Green in spaceships. They don't breed on Blue, however. They can't; it's too cold. Or was that another lie?

Red hair, either all fire or all softness

No dia 2011/11/25, ?s 18:11, "Gerry Quinn" <gerry at bindweed.com> escreveu:

I did mean it as an affinity, not a difference. When I first read the BSS, the references to her hair did make an impression. What is it about red hair that impresses modern men, whereas it was traditionally despised? Just the other day I was reading a mystery book in which the main investigator on one occasion decides to write what he knows about the case, and what is one of the items? '(her name): red-headed prostitute', when in fact the colour of her hair played no role in the whole story. But for some reason at the tine I interpreted 'sorrel' as having to do with the texture or shape rather than the colour. Go figure.

I've always thought it was weird that 'Guardati dal pelo rosso n? valse a toglierla la barba rossa del Redentore' suggests a tradition that Jesus had a red beard. That's another parallel (intentional, I think) between Christ and the Rajan (by way of Silk's body).

entonio wrote: . What is it about red hair that impresses modern men,

It is still widely despised in Britain - 'Ginger' is often an insult. (Happy St Katharine's day to you all, while I'm here.)

Quick question, James. If you don't think the big woman blitzed on something in the alley is Chenille, then how did the ring from Horn's body get to Dorp for Oreb to drop it in the Rajan's hands? Horn died on Green trying to get to the Lander, the ring on his finger. I think Chenille was freed, Auk probably repaired the lander, and Oreb got the ring either from her left in the alley or picked it up on one of the others who escped from Green with them. I'm fairly confident that with Horn's ring reappearing from Green on blue in Dorp, that big woman almost HAS to be Chenille. It also explains how Silk is leaving at the end of Rttw.

And there is that prominent nosed man with the scar on his eye socket in that same scene at the end of Chapter 7 of rttw or thereabouts that seems to have more importance than can be gleaned from the text. I really need to look at descriptions more carefully.

Yeah that seems to explain the problem of the ring. I always thought there were two different rings and tried to figure out where the second one came from. I find the theory of yours pretty sound and even if your not right at least you managed to point me to the real puzzle. What do you mean about Oreb leaving at the end of RttW though?

Could the scarred man be Auk?

This is an interesting post. You see, yet you do not SEE. It is correct that inhumi were not intelligent before Neigbors arrived on Green. That's because inhumi never had an intelligent host because they had never been off Green, nor did they have the means to leave. Neighbors provided them their first space travel. There is no "accidental" flight to Blue. I hope you are not suggesting two planets could be so close as to share an atmosphere and not crash into each other via gravitational pull. It would spell disaster if our moon got that close. Another earth-sized planet that close would result in a collision and rapid obliteration for both. As has been established in this conversation, inhumi spaceflight could only come about through very highly specialized, directed evolution. First they would have to evolve muscles which achieve near-rocket-power thrust to propel them to escape velocity. This velocity would have to be achieved long before they reached the end of the atmosphere because their wings rely on air to propel them. Then they would have to evolve the ability to jetison every drop of water from every cell in their body and let their mummified, dry bodies rely on inertia to accurately get them to Blue. Then, if they didn't burn up entering Blue's atmosphere they'd have to evolve the ability to regenerate their bone-dry husk of a body from Blue's salt water (which does not exist on Green). That ain't no accident. If inhumi could do all that and fly to Blue then they are evolved to do so and would, en masse. So, how can you casually postultate they accidentally flew to Blue but didn't cause any trouble? The entire argument is fishy (heh) from begining to end. I see no reason to ignore that stench other than pure stubborness and a determination to remain deluded. But, ah well, as we know, we humans are programmed to accept the big beautiful lie while patting ourselves on the back for being so clever as to notice a few small, nasty ones.

Oops, forgot to mention- the escape velocity inhumi would have to generate would be roughly 40,000 km/hr (25,000 mph). Now peregrine falcons have been clocked at 300 km/hr, in a dive. Those clever inhumi manage to go 100x faster in a climb. And they don't even look like they can fly as well as birds. More like bats. FWIW.

From: Lee Berman

Again, your physics is correct: while the issues of the vacuum / dryness etc. can be argued around, the problem of escape velocity can’t easily be. Nevertheless, I think Wolfe intends flight to be the means of transport. He can ignore physics when he wants to. Brian Aldiss wrote a book once (Hothouse) in which a far future Earth is ruled mostly by plants (Marc might like it!) and the Earth and the Moon are connected by giant spiderwebs. Compared to that, inhumi spaceflight is hard SF. Your idea that inhumi come to Blue by other means is reasonable — but leaves lots of loose ends and doesn’t really seem to lead anywhere. If that’s the Secret of the Inhumi, I would have imagined Wolfe would have left a few confirmatory clues for the satisfaction of those who figured it out. But it’s still not a very interesting secret! - Gerry Quinn

I mean Silk (with Oreb too, I guess) leaving Blue somehow to go to the whorl at the end of Rttw: if the lander from Green was repaired and came to Blue, then there is a functioning lander on Blue in which Silk can leave. That's all.

Lee Berman wrote (not to me):

Lee Berman had also written (again not to me):

And the same Lee Berman has had the nerve to say (not especially to me):

And Lee Berman said and did a lot of other things, which everyone can consult should there ever be an interest in it. And I say that I'm tired of Lee's boorish behaviour. Lee is the person responsible for turning any discussion of ideas into a discussion about people. Lee does that systematically, whenever arguments he thinks are cogent fail to impress others. Lee feels personally insulted every time someone disagrees with him, and immediately turns to (trying to) belittle the other party by means first of (what he thinks is) condescendence, then turning to victimisation should the other have the nerve to respond. This toxic attitude has been on display for months, and has the unfortunate particular of being contagious, as frequency pushes normality and even others who do not primarily indulge in it are seduced by its effectiveness in chasing away whoever has enough upbringing not to be drawn into it. Someone had to complain, so here I am. (As to what I'll do? Some time ago I had opted just to mark Lee's stuff as read by default. But when there are real discussions going on, after one has read all the others, the temptation to see if Lee has something of interest to add overrules better judgement. Yes, occasionally there's something of interest in it (I've commented on it, and have known how not to get myself entangled). However, the offensiveness to others that one eventually meets is of such degree that it makes it all not worthwhile. As such, I'll just update my filter to delete all of Lee's messages as they come in. This is not something I've ever done. I've on occasion temporarily ignored people's stuff. Recently, on another forum, I've decided to permanently ignore a certain person, but I've made it clear it was more due to incompatibility of style, with a bit of what I considered questionable tactics, than to offense at or lack of worthiness of the other bloke's contributions. Here, however, it's quite different. There's things that my inbox just won't condone.) And I thought that my complaint was relevant to the List, so here it is. It's just one message, anyway, hardly an avalanche.

Fair enough, Gerry. I appreciate this response. I'll only add that from my perspective, which emphasizes both social sciences and biology, the science of lying and deception, be it plant, animal or human, is every bit as interesting to me as physics or astronomy might be to others.

In the middle of ch.9 of RttW the narrator writes: "I see I have confused the rings. The one I am wearing is not the one Sewrack gave me, although it resembles it closely. This is Oreb's ring. It seems the stone changes color when it is worn; it was originally much darker, surely." Of course you may dismiss it as many other things, saying that "Silkhorn" just doesnt't want to recognize that it is the same ring. But to me it is opening another line of thinking that seems to me more interesting: what are these rings? What properties do they have? I remember also (but I could not find yet) the place where some of "big women" in Dorp complains "I am so weak, mysire" (probably it was she who was attacked in the alley by Jahlee). Sergei

There is no prominent nosed man with the scar on his eye socket (except Silkhorn) in the end of Chapter 7 of RttW - what is said, is (when Silkhorn enters the dram shop): "Sit down, Patera. Auk sat across from me, more dour and more more threatening than I ever imagined him when we wrote about his meeting with Silk. I blinked and he was gone, but soon returned. Eventually I called the owner of the shop over, saying quite truthfully that my head ashed, that I was very tired and much in need of company..." I think these "ghosts" haunting Silkhorn at this moment explain also why he first called Jahlee Chenille (two pages later). Sergei Soloviev

The claim that Green and Blue come very close is made by Horn, not only by inhumi - and humans can see for themselves, whether it is close (so it is from Wolfe). Sergei

You argue with author (Wolfe), not with us or with inhumi - Sergei

Short Sun is so ambiguous, it is disconcerting at times, but I do think he waffles back and forth on the ring a time or two, but at one point he does claim it is Seawrack's ring. That waffling makes definitive interpretation very very difficult. I still think it's a good argument that Chenille was freed, but of course, like everything in Wolfe, it's complicated by the narrator's incompetence in identification.

"I see I have confused the rings.

Every single attempt to make an assertive claim in Short Sun is defeated by the narrator: big woman drinking when fed upon causes Jahlee to resemble chenille, Horn's ring shows up, (two things from Green make it plausible) later, narrator says he was wrong, might not be Horn's ring (take away one thing from Green, implausible again). Very frustrating. Have to choose between ignoring first description of ring and probably reason for Jahlee being called Chenille or accepting second reason (different ring) and different reason for Jahlee being called Chenille (mother fed on Chenille and drunken woman reinforced it) I think the implied salvation of Chenille is cool and that the second id of the ring is wrong, but I certainly see why NO ONE can make any definitive claims about Short Sun, there are a whole lot of contrdictary symbols and signals.

Also, as a truly religious man, Wolfe wants us to distinguish ourselves "true miracles" from "false miracles". Sergei

Marc Aramini wrote (26-11-2011 21:51):

But again, where is it said that Chenille's children were murdered? I recall a mention by Jahlee that someone told her and other inhumi to do it, but I don't even understand when/where that might have taken place. Unless it was on Blue. If Oreb's ring is not Seawrack's ring, we must wonder where it came from - Oreb just seeing it shine in the middle of a clearing is unsatifsying.

Read the end of the in teh Green Jungles - the visit to the village of Abanja and the talk with Jahlee later - Sergei

Maybe the key is that the Typhonians are sacrificed, as in a sense Christ was. Osiris, OTOH, was merely murdered.

I wonder if it could reflect a black hole/white fountain sort of dichotomy. Dark defines an entrance for energy or spirit and light reflects an exit.

Just a quick thought. Has anyone ever considered that the ring may be what allowed Horns resurrection in the pit? This may be what was held to Horns forehead. IIRC there is a moment where a character looks inside the ring and sees a Neighbor. Maybe its this Neighbor that leaves the ring and possesses Horn? The color change could reflect an activation of sorts. Or a deactivation depending on how you look at it.

To me the idea seems strange - Horn got the first ring from Seawrack when he was freed of the pit. It was "applied" to Horn and then given to Seawrack while he still was in the pit? Sergei

Sorry I cant really recall the exact order of events. If he recieved the ring after he was freed then that dont make much sense. Just a thought I had after reading Lees post.

Well, the ring he gets from Oreb is a different color. There are many ways for the Neighbors (or even Mother) to get the same back to the Rajan if that is what they want. The problem is that we don't know what the ring signifies or does. The question is WHO wants to get thing ring "back" to the Rajan is key. It stretches credibility that Oreb just happened upon it.

There is just soooo much additional story there, built on so little. And, it is not just that Jahlee was recognized as Chenille that makes me think her mother fed on her.

But Silk says how he is leaving. That's not a mystery. He is going to Pajarocu and capturing a lander. He knows the inhumi have an active landing base there.

To the extent that the Neighbors are Faeries, Seawrack's ring is a faerie ring. So it's going to go where the faeries want it to go. Similarly, I read the ring as I would any faerie ring. It identifies the wearer as someone who has been given a faerie ring (i.e., by a faerie). It doesn't need any other features or qualities.

Sergei, I read the conversation amid the Neighbor fires quite different from you, I suppose. What is the meaning of HePenSheep when he is asked if the Neighbors will him and he responds: "Kill inhumi"? If he is saying that he himself, HePenSheep, kills inhumi, well that is true of all humanity.