(urth) Shadow Children and Inhumi

[Gerry Quinn]

From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>
>>Gerry Quinn-  I think that's quite a stretch - the text pretty much spells 
>>out what the
>>Shadow Children are.
>
> I think this was discussed in the past year so I'll try to keep it brief. 
> Yes, The Old Wise
> one clearly tells Sandwalker that the Shadow Children are the remnants of 
> human beings who
> arrived on spaceships and have been stunted, deformed and indeterminate in 
> number by their
> chewing of an addictive narcotic plant. I have no objection to those who 
> find this answer
> satifying and sufficient. But I find a few plausible reasons to doubt the 
> story.
>
> The first is that The Old Wise One names six possible names for their home 
> nation on earth
> but five of them are fictional or otherwise unbelievable names. Moreover, 
> the Shadow Children
> are nasty little liars and deceivers.

They may have purposely or otherwise forgotten the names of the human 
culture(s) from which they derived.  They are nevertheless clear on where 
they came from: "when the Fighting Lizard is high in the summer sky and we 
see our old home as a little yellow gem in his tail".

They are tricksters and to some degree - though not entirely - 
self-deceivers. I do not think they are thereby less reliable than the 
average Wolfian informant.


> Later they are discussing names and the Old Wise One states that the 
> Shadow Children "had no
> names before men came out of the sky. We were mostly long and lived in 
> holes between the roots
> of trees". The Old Wise One goes on to say he is confused and doesn't 
> quite know which race is
> native to St. Anne and which were the starcrossers. So perhaps he is just 
> an old confused guy,
> his first version is the correct one and his later revision means nothing. 
> I tend to think
> the revision is more likely correct. Names are important for Wolfe and I 
> think these are really
> the descendents of indistinct shadowy creatures imperfectly imitating 
> humans.

This one is easy.  Note that it occurs when there is only one Shadow Child 
left alive in the group.  The Old Wise One has grown taller because he is 
constructed from Sandwalker as well as the last Shadow Child.  "Now I am 
half a man", he says.  Atr this point, yes, he does admit to being confused 
as to which species is which.

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.

Your theory is that they are two independent types of the native species, 
and the humans (who must have landed at some point) are completely gone. 
This seems a needless multiplication of entities.  And where does the drug 
they use fit in?  We're to believe that type A of the native creatures copy 
humans, humans die out, Type A discover a drug that makes them able to 
detect human spacecraft, type B meanwhile copy humans or type A, but look 
different and don't have the psychic powers...  Where does it stop?  Why not 
type C, or D, or E?  What happened to the original human explorers?

Wolfe's books may be capable of multiple interpretations, but they are not 
IMO a nebulous fog from which one can pick out random pieces based on a word 
or the colour of somebody's hair and construct a completely different story. 
Maybe no interpretation is perfectly consistent, but some are more 
consistent than others.  We shouldn't overturn consistent interpretations on 
a word or two.  (To be fair, your theory here, although I don't subscribe to 
it, is more credible to me than the ones where every monkey is really Fr. 
Inire, etc.)

> I find a possible parallel in the story of the Inhumi. We are given pretty 
> explicit detail on
> their reptilian nature and their reproduction- how they play at human 
> courtship, have sexual
> intercourse like humans but then go off in some water to externally 
> fertilize their eggs like
> frogs or salamanders.
>
> But Inhumi, like Shadow Children, are big fat liars. Also like Shadow 
> Children there is a good
> chance they have lost memories of their origins after long imitation of 
> another species. Thus I
> think the one small suggestion (I think in IGJ, James probably knows where 
> it is) that Inhumi
> are orginally derived from the parasitic vines on trees on Green is the 
> deepest truth.
> They've been imitating humans for a while. But I suspect they have 
> imitated the egg-laying
> creatures for much longer. They pretend the reptile-stuff is their deepest 
> secret. But I think
> there is a deeper one. (that in essence, they are nothing, just 
> instinctive imitators of other
> species, from whence comes all their attributes and abilities)

That may be true of the inhumi.  But is it true of the Abos or Shadow 
Children?  They do not seem to have any such secret.  Incidentally I find a 
parallel also between the Shadow Children / Abo  and human / inhumi 
relationships, but this parallel depends on one of each being human and one 
alien!  (In both cases, they gain psychic powers when cooperating.)


> James wonders if there is any relationship of this secret vine origin to 
> Dionysus, god of the vine.
> I wonder if there is any possible relationship of any of this to Master 
> Ash's missing mate Vine?
> I dunno. But her name has to mean something, doesn't it? If there is a 
> Dionysian deity popping up
> in various guises throughout Severian's story, Master Ash would likely be 
> among them, perhaps.

Ash seems less Dionysiam than Silk, if that is possible!  Maybe Vine came 
from Viron.  Her name would imply that, right?  But what to make of Ash - he 
falls just a little outside the Vironese animal / vegetable / mineral 
classification... a cyborg of some kind?  A reconstructed entity?  But he 
could refer to the ashes of Urth, if a frozen snowball can be in some 
metaphorical sense ashes.

Then again Wolfe was at pains to point out that Ram was not from Viron.  Is 
there some mystery behind Ram - or might it be that sometimes a name does 
not mean something, or at least it does not mean anything of global 
significance!

The name /association game can be played indefinitely but there must be some 
point at which the remainder of the text becomes a more reliable reference 
point.

- Gerry Quinn