(urth) Rajan and Food

[Matthew Groves]

Yeah, for me, the take-away from the argument about corn polyploidy
(or whatever it's called) is not that the Neighbors have double the
normal chromosomes and therefore double the number of arms and legs.
That's silly.  The point (IMO), or the suggestion, is that the corn
hybridization business is, among other things, a *cue* that the
Neighbors are (in some sense I don't quite understand) a hybridized or
somehow immanently corrupted species.  Or maybe they're just fading
away like successive generations of corn crops, and like the enigmatic
ghosts of Mars in Bradbury's Martian Chronicles (not John Carpenter).
And the colonists represent a necessary pure strain for the rebirth of
civilization.  At any rate, I think the case is very strong that Wolfe
is constructing an analogy between the Neighbors and the diminishing
corn crop, and the colonists and the new seeds.  In TBotNS, the
primary decay/rebirth image was seasonal; in TBotSS it's this corn
generation thing.  I believe it's Marc who deserves credit for this
insight.

> I hope you read my response, pointing out that polyploid
> animals don't have double the usual number of limbs.
>
> http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0203/382.txt.shtml
>
> Jerry Friedman