(urth) interview questions

[DAVID STOCKHOFF]

One more comment. The very plausibility of an ancient origin rests on A Story's apparent disconnection from the "present." We can't tell how long ago it was, because there are no apparent solid references and there is a timeless feel to it.
Discovering from tree ring dating that it was really only 300 hundred years ago (hey, that's pretty distant---1711, anyone?) does not erase that effect or the eery feeling of turning around and meeting yourself, so to speak, as an alien on another planet. The dislocation of realizing humans may be aliens on their own planet---in the sense that they are brothers to the hypothetical (but remembered) disappeared Shee---very easily transfers to the dislocation that surely would affect many human colonists on another planet where they KNOW they are the aliens. One informs our appreciation of the other. This dislocation seems to be a theme, as Dan'l notes (I think).
These ideas keep coming up in Wolfe, but they don't need always to be treated as though they shared the same degree of literalness. The Neighbors may be a form of Star-Shee by analogy only, and the Annese may be another. And still the Shee themselves surely never existed. As humans, we make things up.

--- On Thu, 1/6/11, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote:

From: Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie>
Subject: Re: (urth) interview questions
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Thursday, January 6, 2011, 4:54 PM


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Gene Wolfe: "Since the period in which the Sandwalker scene was-in terms of the "present" found in the rest of the book-taking place in the distant past of the planet, it made more sense to say, "Here's a legend that has survived from that period"
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But we KNOW when the Sandwalker scene occurs - it is at the period of the French landings, c. 150 years before the events of the first and third novellas.  It is a little odd, certainly, to call this the distant past - but we must not leap on single words, either from Wolfe's interviews or his stories, but take all in context.

- Gerry Quinn

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