(urth) On dream travelers

[Gerry Quinn]

  From: James Wynn 
  On the other hand, let me posit something that I believe is close to accurate. Dream-travel involves the formation of an astral body for the soul of the traveler. This body is created along the same principles as the creations of the weapons and astral-Hide. 
  During astral travel, the link between the traveler's soul and his corporeal body is the astral body. If the astral body dies, the soul cannot return to the corporeal body. 

I agree with thiis part.


  The link between the Rajan's astral body  (or other Neighbor's since I suppose it is his Neighbor part that gives the Rajan his special abilities)  and his corporeal body is an inhumi. 
  The link between normal human dream-travelers and the inhumi is the Rajan. 

This doesn't really make sense to me.  The inhumi dream travel as well, in company with SilkHorn.  Dream travel for them seems similar to humans.  I don't see any reason why they should function as links between the human travellers and their astral bodies.

The presence of an inhuma does seem to be necessary for SilkHorn to effect dream travel.  I interpret it as an emergent ability coming from the contact of humans and a telepathic alien species - we have seen this before in the case of the humans who became the Shadow Children, and the native Annese.  

I don't believe SilkHorn has any Neighbour part.  He has been the subject of spirit transference by way of both Neighbour and Human technology, but the spirits transferred (Silk, Horn, Pas) were always ultimately human in origin. 

So why has SilkHorn alone developed this ability?  Perhaps those spirit transfers and internal reconstructions have loosened the connection between body and spirit, and enabled him to separate them and catalyse the separation of others.

I would not normally expect to be invoking Peter F. Hamilton in trying to explain the works of Gene Wolfe [I have nothing against Hamilton, he isa a good writer but he tends to work with one or two big ideas and then fill 3000 pages or so with 'event', plus lots of sex and gore].  But I am reminded of the anti-hero Quinn Dexter in Hamilton's 'Night's Dawn' trilogy.  In this series, an alien species comes in contact with humans, and inadvertently catalyses the takeover of some of them by the soulds of trhe dead.  In their new bodies the souls suppress the original souls and gain various psychic powers.  Dexter manages to drive out the soul inhabiting him, regaining control of his old body and even greater abilities.  The abilities seem to stem, essentially, from the loosening of the bonds between body and spirit.  SilkHorn may be experiencing something of the kind.

Do the Neighbours use inhumi for dream travel?  I don't think so - they seem happy to leave them behind.  In truth, I suspect that while the Neighbours do something that resembles dream travel, it is really not quite the same thing at all.


  But what if the bodies of the Neighbors are not so limited. If Green Man were in dream-travel, and you put him on an IV for fluids, would there be any limit to how long he could remain there? What if Lemur were in soul travel?
Maybe Lemur *is* in soul travel!

  In fact, I suspect that is the case for the Neighbors. I believe that the corporeal bodies of the Neighbors are tree-like. Not that every tree on Blue needs to be a Neighbor (although they might be in some sense). So they can sleep and remain in dream-travel as long as their astral bodies lived (assuming their astral life-span is shorter than their corporeal life span). If a Neighbor's astral body dies, his corporeal body can continue to live...even reproduce. But he has lost his Sentience, because the link to his soul has been lost.

Trees don't have brains.  Sentient trees don't really make sense.  And why would their spirits be something other than trees anyway? 

Neighbours lived in houses and built structures.  Trees wouldn't have bothered.


- Gerry Quinn

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