(urth) Losing Imitation

[Gerry Quinn]

From: "James Wynn" <crushtv at gmail.com>
>> 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.

What textual references?  There may be some metaphorical references, but I 
don't recall anywhere at all where the text seems to be seriously implying 
that these planets are literally the same place.

>> 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 think you are only seeing a paradox because you take certain metaphors too 
literally.  I have yet to be convinced that there is any paradox to embrace 
(or otherwise solve).


>> 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.

They don't really, if you read with care.


>>> 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.

I can't remember any indication that Sandwalker ever became a Shadow child - 
where do you get this from?


>> 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?

Sure, when it's appropriate!


>> 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.

Do they anywhere?


>> [*] 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.

What name in 5HoC is?  Whatever name he picked, one could come up with a 
bunch of associations.  There's no point making much of it unless they are 
backed up by other evidence.


>> 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

"Once there was a people using their hands - when they had hands - only to 
take food; there came among them another who crossed from star to star. 
Then it was found that the first heard the sogs of the second and sent them 
out again - greater, greater, greater than before.  Then the second felt 
their songs more strongly in all their bones - but touched, perhaps, by the 
first."

As the Shadow Children are killed, the Old Wise One derives an increasing 
proportion of his mentality from Sandwalker and becomes confused as to the 
respective identities of the two (count 'em, two - not one, not three) 
peoples.  But this is really not hard to explain..


>. 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.

And just how do you think they "took on their history"?

There's no need for any of these complex theories when you realise that the 
Old Wise One (the source for all this information) is increasingly composed 
from more of Sandwalker and less of the Shadow Children, which causes him to 
suffer some confusion of identity.  [Wolfe spells it out by showing him 
getting taller (a bit like SilkHorn again), and he even says "Now I am half 
a man".]


> 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.

And you are right - the Old Wise One, who says this, is referring to the abo 
part of him.

The speaker is the Old Wise One, who at this time is only half a Shadow 
Child.  (Even Sandwalker corrects him on this point.)


>> 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.

Not sure what you are saying here to be honest.


>> 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!

Do you mean you think this is referring not to Sandwalker's penis, but to 
some kinkiness involving an actual tree?  Sandwalker's own special tree, at 
that, which isn't mentioned in the text but happened to be just where he 
found the bees, out in the wilderness?

    He moved her shoulders gently.  "No," she said, "not on top of me.  I'd 
split.  I'd
    be sick.  Like this."

She's stuffed with honey and bee larvae, and isn't keen on the missionary 
position.  There's no actual tree around anyway, but even if there was I 
imagine she'd have been even less inclined to climb up it to do whatever you 
imagine abo girls do with trees!

Nope, the imitation extends to mating.  Now you might point out that the 
inhumi have a sort of spiritual mating as humans before they do their 
reptile thing, and arguably the chems could also be said to parody human 
mating.  But as regards the abos, we know the women at least gestate and 
bear and feed young just as humans do.


>> 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.

I don't think biological evolutionary theory plays much part in 5HoC. 
Cultural evolution is much more key.  Besides, by the same token the plants 
and animals of the twin planets should be inedible to humans, but they 
aren't.

But anyway, there's no reason to suppose that abos and humans can interbreed 
if you don't want to.  VRT could have had an abo father, who would - from 
what we know of abo culture - have had as little to do with his upbringing 
as he would have if in truth he were a tree.  Abo women can live with human 
males - whether or not they look elsewhere for impregnation is not stated. 
[One could hypothesise a cuckoo lifestyle, in which the abo child takes on 
certain physical characteristics of the supposed human father in order to 
gull him into acceptance of the child - indeed, it would be a more plausible 
mechanism for whatever truth there is in Veil's Hypothesis than vampiric 
abos pouncing on random humans in the night and replacing them; the 
situation with Marsch was very unusual.  But this is really an unknown - I 
don't believe there is enough textual evidence to say anything definitive 
about it.]


>> 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.

I personally prefer the metafictional idea here, but perhaps you are right. 
But if so there are considerable problems believing anything in the second 
novella.  For example, it is David who asserts that the abos mated with 
trees.

- Gerry Quinn