(urth) Shadow Children and Inhumi

[Gerry Quinn]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andrew Mason" <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com>
> Gerry Quinn wrote:

> > Elsewhere, though, he makes statements such as "all the great political
> > movements of history were born in prisons". The Shadow Children have
> > memories of Earth. They have knowledge of the starcrossers passing by.
> > They recite poetry about starcrossers. The Abos know nothing of all 
> > this.

> I agree that other things being equal, what the Old Wise One says
> first - while he is still the collective consciousness of Shadow
> Children - is more reliable than what he says later, when he is partly
> Free People and rather confused about his identity. Nevertheless, I
> think there is a deliberate ambiguity here. Just to confuse the matter
> further, the whole story is written by 'John V. Marsch'. Now, 'John V.
> Marsch' is of course not really John V. Marsch, but V.R.T., who is
> presumably drawing on the traditions of his people, but still he has
> knowledge of humans and of Earth culture, so the words he puts in the
> mouth of the Shadow Children do not directly prove anything about
> them.

Another point in favour of ambiguity is that Wolfe never tells us the colour 
of the Shadow Childrens' eyes.  This does almost suggest that Wolfe himself 
wished to leave matters ambiguous.

One thing the eye colour thing does tell us is that we can discount the 
strong version of Veil's Hypothesis, i.e. that the colonists were replaced 
en masse by shape-changing aliens. Clearly green eyes are unusual among the 
colonists.  They have been infiltrated by aliens passing for human (the weak 
version of Veil's, which is true), but not replaced.  Marsch may well have 
died of natural causes, or been accidentally killed in a fight with VRT. 
The Annese do not normally sneak up on humans, kill them and take their 
place - that is the province of inhumi or alzabo.  If Marsch was killed for 
that reason., he is an exceptional case.  If it happened often, the 
colonists would know of it and fear the abos.

> I do think, though, that the Shadow Children are certainly giving
> false names for the land they came from. Poictesme did not exist; and
> though Gondwanaland may have done, its people certainly did not call
> it Gondwanaland. What I would read this as meaning is that they are
> quite recent arrivals from Earth, coming at a time when these names
> where known, just a hundred years or so  before the better recorded
> French expedition.

Yes.

> Two things that might support this are the
> observatory', which if I remember rightly Marsch postulated was about
> a hundred years old, and the names 'John' and 'Mary' used by the Free
> People, perhaps the names of the first humans they met. (Of course,
> this is equally consistent with the Free People being the recent
> arrivals, and they and the Shadow Children having changed places.)

Indeed, the observatory is a good clue.  And a century or so seems generally 
reasonable on many grounds - the story gives the impression of being set not 
in a distant future like Urth's, but at some time in the Third Millenium (of 
which we represent the dawn men).

> The same question arises for the Annese as for the Inhumi, whether
> they can breed with humans. It is perhaps more plausible that they can
> if they are of human descent. V.R.T. is alleged to be half-Abo. (Wolfe
> has said that he is a Shadow Child, though some think this was a
> slip.)

Breeding is not terribly plausible for either race from a hard SF 
perspective, but of course Wolfe is not really interested in hard SF. 
Besides, if we are going that route the native plants and animals should not 
be edible!  Breeding with aliens, so long as they are humanoid, is almost a 
default in SF, like FTL.  (Both the possibility of breeding and FTL also 
support more Earthly metaphors, which are of course very much to the 
forefront in 5HoC.)  I do not think it at all likely that the inhumi can 
interbreed with humans (although I wouldn't put it past them, or humans, to 
have sex of some kind, especially on cold dark nights).

I am one of those who think calling VRT a Shadow Child is a slip.  One point 
is eye colour - although the eye colour of the Shadow Children is not 
stated, neither is it drawn attention to.  Also, if the Shadow Children 
actually look like humans, then the other Annese - who greatly outnumber the 
Shadow Children - should be taller and stronger than humans, and nowhere do 
we hear of any such race.  Whatever the origin of the Shadow Children (I 
personally am pretty certain they were human) they fade from the story after 
the French landings.

- Gerry Quinn