(urth) bluegreenandcerberus
Adrian Robert
arobert at cogsci.ucsd.edu
Mon Aug 29 05:49:21 PDT 2005
> Walter Read said:
>
>> Have you read The Book oh the Short Sun?!?!?! have you read 5th
>> head of cerberus?!?!?! well do you know the connection?? I just
>> fininshed cerberus and im shocked..
...
On Aug 29, 2005, at 5:53 AM, Chris wrote:
> http://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0006/0473.shtml
[more archive URLs removed..]
I realize this topic has been discussed (to death?) by the list
before and also that Wolfe's own answers have tended to quash the
idea of a "reality" behind the parallel, but the coincidences are
interesting enough in their own right to be worth listing out
anyhow. So here are the parallels I've noticed between Blue / Green
and St. Croix / St. Anne. (Earth/Lune and/or Ushas have also come
into these discussions, but those parallels, to the extent they
exist, are of a different order than these..)
+ Both systems are binary planets approximately the same distance
from one another. St. Croix and Blue are predominately water
planets; St. Anne and Green predominately vegetated land.
- However, Green is portrayed as consisting largely of jungle,
whereas St. Anne is lauded for its "meadowmeres", and 'A Story'
describes a variety of different terrains, none of them jungle.
+ Green and St. Anne are both the home of a shape-shifting race with
non-human characteristics.
- However the nonhuman aspects differ -- reptilian and blood-sucking
in Green's case, while the St. Anne abos have their brains in
their thoraxes and moreover they were said to be capable of
assuming forms far more varied than the inhumi.
+ In addition, St. Green/Blue were home to a second race, more
intelligent, or at least more socially adaptable or having a
better affinity with humans than the first. St. Anne (we don't
know about St. Croix) was also home to a second race, also with a
stronger connection to humans. At one point in 'A Story' it is
even said that they *were* human.
- The 'neighbors' are said to have 4-legged / 4-armed bodies,
obviously different from the shrunken humanoid bodies of the
shadow children. They have mostly left Green/Blue where they were
native, whereas the shadow children were said to be immigrants who
came to St. Anne.
+ Both the neighbors and the shadow children used the distinctive term
"starcrosser" to refer to spaceships.
Those are the ones I come up with. Can anyone think of any I
missed? Granted, there are differences, but the parallels are so
striking as to seem hardly incidental. However, Green / Blue is in
the incomprehensibly far future, while _Fifth Head_ seems to be mere
centuries beyond the present day. Can the histories be reconciled?
Given such a span of time, almost anything could be proposed of
course, but what about something minimal and plausible?
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