(urth) Recent human crash-landing on St Anne

[Tony Ellis]

(See? I can do new subject headings, if that's what people want. :-) )

Some problems with this line of reasoning.

Firstly, there *is* no recently-lost spaceship in the text. You have
to invent one out of whole cloth. Yes, you can say all records of such
a ship were conveniently lost, but you can say that about any fact
invented to support any theory. For example: I think the Annese grew
tree-circle observatories for thousands of years. We don't have any
record of them because, hey, they rotted, which Marsch actually says
is happening to the current observatory. If we can have missing recent
spaceships we can have missing ancient tree-circles.

Also, Marsch never entertains the idea of a recent crash. He's the one
actually living in this future, he knows better than us what's
feasible and what isn't. He muses that the Annese could *almost* be
the descendants of "an earlier wave of colonisation", but he never
considers that they could be the descendants of a missing ship from
the *current* wave of human colonisation. If it was possible for St
Anne to have been colonised by a ship that crashed a couple of hundred
years ago - even some ship he has never heard of - this would be the
moment for Wolfe to make him consider it. He doesn't.

And again, Dollo's Law. Taken at face value, it explains why VRT is
physically unable to hold a pen the usual way. We have the answer to a
puzzle. If we say VRT is actually an alien (who for no good reason can
only learn to hold a pen the wrong way), suddenly the evoking of
Dollo's Law needs an explanation too.


Another problem, which I think we all need to consider in constructing
5HoC theories, is that VRT is supposed to be a half-abo. He certainly
thinks he is. He has less of his mother's ability to change how he
looks, but more ability to dress himself, cook and write. If abos
breeding with humans doesn't suit your theory, sure, you can invent
reasons why he only thinks he is half-abo, but I'd put more faith in a
theory where you don't have to.