(urth) Losing Imitation

[James Wynn]

> G Quinn-
> Correct me if I'm wrong - but didn't Wolfe say he was joking when he 
> said Urth is Green, and that he regretted it?

Well, he said he should just keep his mouth shut. It's a pretty random 
joke if that's all it was. The nasty sarcasm in such a joke totally 
alien to my interactions with Wolfe. But none of that explains the 
actual textual references in the novel.

> And do you not accept that the four points I made are somewhat cogent 
> when it comes to the question of whether these planets are the same?

What we have is a paradox. These planets cannot be the same. But the 
story has some very significant that references that equate the Green 
and possibly the City of the Inhumi with Urth and the Neighbors and 
their culture with Urth and Nessus and humanity. I think we should 
embrace the paradox in order to find out what is going on. Pretending 
nothing weird is going on is not going to get us anywhere. I puzzled for 
years over why Hyancinth was like the shape-changing Ladley Worm before 
coming to a conclusion.

> If you are saying there could be other possibilities than the obvious, 
> of course you are right.

That's usually true with Wolfe. But there is nothing obvious about the 
"Shadow Children". They tell multiple stories about their origins. I 
believe as many of them as I possibly can.

>> There's no evidence the marshmen are capable of psychic connections 
>> is there?
>
> Eastwind located his twin and had him captured - the twins' connection 
> works both ways.  Of course Eastwind was born a hillman.

Yeah, like Sandwalker. So we agree that there is no evidence that the 
marshmen have such powers. But, obviously, I wouldn't be surprised if 
they did. Hillmen, marshmen, little people--they are all abos. When 
Sandwalker psychically connected to the Shadow Children, he became 
one...because biologically they are not really different.

> Do you mean the psychic connection between Sandwalker and the Shadow 
> Children?  It's true that no marshman[*] is shown to be capable of 
> that, but there is also no evidence that they are not. 

Ummm...Can I use that sort of argument for one _my_ theories in the future?

> The Shadow Children say "it is a long time since we took a 
> Shadow-friend from among the native populace" - they do not indicate 
> that there are different types of natives.

Not in this specific quote.

> [*] I almost wrote "marschman" for some reason, and then for a moment 
> I wondered if there was any connection between "marsh" and "Marsch".  
> But I don;t think there's anything there - the human mind can make 
> infinitely many links... and not all can be meaningful.

The link was obviously intended by Wolfe. I have always presumed the 
name implied that VRT is of the Marshman branch. One can debate over 
what is intended. However, it is doubtful that a pun like that would 
have been missed by the author. The name Marsch was not picked at 
random. It's not a common name.

> The Shadow Children do give an explanation for their powers.  They 
> also indicate that their psychic powers in part come from the native 
> population (the astral travelling in Short Sun that requires both 
> humans and inhumi echoes this).

There's no evidence that any human in the universe except the Rajan can 
astral travel with the aid of inhumi. Well, you know why this makes 
sense to me.

I don't remember this quote about where their powers come from. I'm sure 
it can't be emphatic. As for where they come from, the "Shadow Children" 
have some interesting things to say about that. They say they "either 
came here recently or long, long ago". They say this twice. Well, of 
course both are true. They are abos (long, long ago) who replaced humans 
(recently) and took on their history. They say "We had no names before 
men came out of the sky. We were mostly long and lived in holes in the 
roots of trees". We could debate what that means, but it doesn't imply 
they were always human.  I don't make much of the shadow children saying 
they came from Gondwanaland, but I believe these statements.

> The idea that all the 'abos' are human is interesting, but it discards 
> all the evidence for shapeshifting etc.

I certainly never implied such an idea. But you made much of the 
apparent lack of biological difference between the hillmen and marshmen 
as opposed to the "shadow children". I was pointing out that the 
differences should be irrelevant to you since you believe that the 
inhuman shadow children are human and the hillmen and marshmen are not.

> The main reason I don't take it literally is that Sandwalker and Seven 
> Girls Waiting mate in the ordinary way.

How so? I seem to recall a tree involved. As expected, based on lore.

> I don't totally discount the possibility that the abos have some weird 
> biology in which trees are male and smaller mobile abos are female, 
> except when they are imitating males of another species.  I just don't 
> see much evidence for it.

It seems to me to be staring us in the face.

> That the symbolism is evident to the abos themselves is not in doubt: 
> "His tree had grown large, and she wrapped it with her hands."

hello!

> And of course all this is filtered through the mind of VRT, who may 
> have created his own concept of abo mythology.  No doubt he has been 
> taught something of it by his mother, but his ideas are likely distorted. 

It seems unlikely to me in the extreme that abos and humans could breed. 
Much more so in a story in which evolutionary theory takes so large a 
role.  VRT is playing the role of the son of his mother's father.

> Also, there is some meta-fictional play within the story; David in the 
> first novella could not reasonably know much of abo culture, yet some 
> of what he says appears in the second novella.

The second novella was written by a psychic being who was in David's 
house for quite a while. He has Sandwalker dream one of Number Five's 
dreams as well.

u+16b9