(urth) An Evil Guest - Big Questions, Major SPOILERS

[Bruce Hayles]

Perhaps owing to lousy reading, I am left with a lot of fundamental
questions that no one else has brought up.

Gideon gets the ambassadorship. Does this mean that he was able to get the
FBI and the president what they wanted? Bill Reis dies at the end, but the
goal was to understand his operations, not kill him. Has Gideon already
given the president the information he wants and arranged his death? We know
that Gideon has been working for him, and presumably is collecting the
information he needs. Or is Reis's death completely independent of Gideon,
but he's already found the information he needs? If he is behind it, how
could he have foreseen the storm and Kanoa's takeover?

Was Cassie used just to make Bill Reis vulnerable? Did Gideon expect Bill
Reis to love her, or did he just hope Reis interacting with her would get
him closer to Reis?

The bats that save Cassie and land her on the island--is Gideon's hand in
this at all?

Basically, I'm wondering if Gideon is behind the final circumstances in the
book, or if they would have happened anyway. The simplest explanation is
that Gideon got the information he needed and all the other events just
happened. Reis caused the storm by dropping the gold over the Storm King and
getting the attention of the navy, after all. If Gideon wasn't behind the
final events, I suppose they are in the book to show the transformative
power of love (Reis sacrificing himself). And then Cassie is going to
Wondercan because she stills feels love for Gideon. On the other hand, if
Gideon was behind the ending events, then he used Cassie--he gave her beauty
and took it away--and perhaps she is going to Wondercan for revenge.
On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 6:51 PM, Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Check out "The Tree is My Hat" from *Innocents Aboard*.
>
> On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 5:34 PM, Russell Wodell <wrustle at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  Hasn't Wolfe used the Shark God and the Squid God before in a fairly
>> recent short story?
>>
>
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