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Index · 2 messages · 2 voices · 14 Apr 2000

Picturing the inhumiWhorl

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Nicholas Gevers14 Apr 2000, 11:54originalas archived
Picturing the inhumi
Has anyone on this list tried to picture exactly how Wolfe intends an inhumu (or inhuma) to look in its undisguised state? Various zoological parallels are suggested by Horn, IIRC including an owl, a serpent, reptiles generally; but I have trouble visualising the creatures exactly...
mark millman14 Apr 2000, 15:36originalas archived
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At 11:54 am -0700 on 14 April 2000, Nicholas Gevers <vermoulian at yahoo.com> wrote: Has anyone on this list tried to picture exactly how Wolfe intends an inhumu (or inhuma) to look in its undisguised state? Various zoological parallels are suggested by Horn, IIRC including an owl, a serpent, reptiles generally; but I have trouble visualising the creatures exactly...
I don't know whether this will help anyone, but I tend to visualize a sort of a tailless cross between a naked flying squirrel (substitute lemur or possum for squirrel, as geo- graphically appropriate) and a pterodactyl--the sort with- out a beak, of course. I suspect, however, that Wolfe's key idea about the inhumi is their mutability, and that attempts to visualize them undis- guised probably miss the point a little bit. I have also won- dered how much the guises adopted by inhumi depend on physical alterations, and how much on psychological (or possibly psychical) effects. Nacre *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

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