(urth) (Urth) The Waif

Matthew Groves matthewalangroves at gmail.com
Thu Mar 5 17:52:00 PST 2009


On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Mike Legedza <mike.legedza at gmail.com> wrote:
> For one thing, there's a minor line in one of Nyman
> Pryderi's lesson where he mentions that the students are going to school in
> an old truck, and when you read the description of the classroom (long and
> narrow, with wooden walls and a metal roof), you see that they are actually
> inside a truck FOR school.  I don't know if they have trucks in the sun
> books...or if they did, I think they'd probably call it by a different
> name.  Maybe there's a bunch of trucks running around in the Short Sun books
> that I just haven't gotten to yet.

Heh, no, no trucks in Short Sun.  Also, I reread the story and near
the beginning the other boy is eating bread and soup, and there's no
way he's faking.  The inhumi don't eat food.

  Also, about your wondering where Niman
> comes from...Pryderi explains that Niman is a corruption of the term
> "Near-man".

Yes, but I was wondering if there were a meaning outside of the story
to which Wolfe was alluding.

On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 4:06 PM, Stephen Hoy <stephenhoy at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Niman is also a Hopi word meaning "Home-Going". Hopi traditionalists
> celebrate a summer-solstice festival by this name, a sort of annual dance of
> farewell to the gods. The underlying idea is that the gods will return as
> rain.

Excellent.  Bin's stomping on the flames is a rain dance, and that's
what causes the downpour (perhaps along with the human sacrifice).



More information about the Urth mailing list