(urth) interview questions

[aaron]

I think the picture is of the original's great great grandmother, or at
least that's what I always thought.

On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 3:17 PM, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Ellis" <
> tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com>
>
>> Gerry Quinn wrote
>>
>
>  > A few days ago I had to point out to James that Sandwalker's 'tree' was
>> > not
>> > an actual tree. Cannot it be accepted that characters in Wolfe can use
>> > metaphor?
>>
>> I feel your pain, believe me :-) But even if the Old Wise One was
>> speaking metaphorically, I don't see how it helps you. The Shadow
>> Children aren't tall and strong metaphorically any more than they are
>> physically. "We do no conceive of ourselves as you describe us, and so
>> we are not actually so" are not the words of someone with a reliable
>> grip on reality.
>>
>
> I must disagree - he is expressing a somewhat self-serving philosophy, but
> it doesn't mean he doesn't know the difference between how they see
> themselves and how they actually are.
>
>
>  And they *are* crackheads. We get a long lecture about the herb they
>> eat, and how it makes them feel like God. Here's what one of them says
>> to Sandwalker when he's chewing the leaf:
>>
>> "With my smallest finger, little native animal, I will break your
>> bones until the ends burst through your skin."
>>
>> Sound familiar?
>>
>
> He's rappin'.  But this happens when Sandwalker meets them, and it's
> shortly after that that the first passage above involving the OWO comes,
> explaining the discrepancy.
>
> Also, if the Shadow Children really and truly believed they were physically
> giants, they wouldn't have been clambering on the shoulders of the Marshmen
> later, and trying to poke out their eyes.  When it comes to an actual fight,
> they have no intention of trying to crush people like Sandwalker with their
> little fingers.  They know the score even if they can't bring themselves to
> say it.
>
> It's like Aunt Jeannine criticising her abo theory in the third person - we
> shouldn't assume she is out of her head or lying about everything; we should
> take into account her motivations and we will understand what she is saying
> and the truth of it.
>
>
>
>  >> Shadow Child: "Since first we came here-"
>> >> "Since first *they* came here," the Old Wise One corrected him gently.
>> >> "Now I am half a man, and know that we were always here listening to
>> >> thought that did not come; listening without thought of our own to be
>> >> men."
>> >
>> > He can be refering to the half of himself that is Sandwalker. This isn't
>> > too terribly odd a construction.
>>
>> I find it an *excruciatingly* awkward construction. And why would he
>> need to 'correct' the Shadow Child at all, if the Shadow Children did
>> come here from somewhere else?
>>
>
> He is correcting the "we" of the Shadow Child, because it no longer applies
> to him, the OWO - so the "we" is false.  Of course "they" is imperfect also
> - but I wouldn't care to put too much import on it.  I think his words are
> understandable as simply disagreeing with the "we".  Why would the OWO
> suddenly reverse his story now anyway - even if you think this minor
> grammatical slip constitutes such a reversal?
>
>
>
>  > Okay, you have a LOT of problems if Sandwalker and his people are >
>> human...
>> > First, how did they forget *everything* about their origin? Earth,
>> > starcrossers, clothes... you name it, they forgot it. How and why?
>>
>> The same way they do in all those Star Trek episodes. It's a classic
>> SF plot device.
>>
>
> I don't think it would be typical of Wolfe, and even if he did use it,
> would he really put it in without any clue?  It would be so easy to have
> some Earthly artefacts that nobody recognised as anything other than some
> sort of sacred tribal heirlooms, and Wolfe could easily show us the nature
> of those heirlooms at a time of his choosing.  But there's nothing of the
> kind as far as i can see.
>
> Meanwhile there's another people who say they are from Earth - they don't
> have artefacts either, it must be admitted, but they say they threw them
> away, and they do at least have memories; they know where Earth is and where
> Earth people are, that space is a vacuum and that sound is air vibrations,
> etc.  If these are the aliens, this isn't imitation - it's a complete
> culture transplant!  All human culture has been wiped from the humans and
> deposited in the aliens.  Who then took to drugs and have nearly died out.
>
>
>
>  > Second, why can't they use tools?
>>
>> Dollo's Law. They haven't used tools for thousands of years, so the
>> ability has atrophied. Remember, Dollo's Law is cited in terms of the
>> loss of a *previously existing* ability.
>>
>
> But it *hasn't* been thousands of years - there's excellent evidence that
> it's only about a hundred.  The trees in the Eye tell us that.  Also we know
> that the twin planets were discovered when planets more distant from Earth
> had been colonised for decades (not centuries, or millenia).  Furthermore,
> Wolfe may be over-egging the cake here, but the photograph of Number Five's
> great great grandmother appears to be in sepia!
>
> Dollo's law cannot plausibly apply here.  Humans could not permanently lose
> the ability to use tools over such a short period.
>
>
>
>  >Why have they got a strange eye color?
>>
>> I wish I knew. I have a feeling that we're all missing something here.
>>
>
> If they are the aliens, there's no mystery about it.
>
>
>
>  > How did VRT replace Marsch?
>> By imitating his voice and looking older, according to VRT. He
>> specifically says that's all he did.
>>
>> But if your question is really 'why do the abos have a minor ability
>> to alter their appearance?', I think this comes back to the idea of
>> the Shadow Children as telepathic enablers of the abos. There's an
>> intriguingly cryptic line in VRT where he says: "the question is not,
>> as I once thought, how much the thoughts of the Shadow Children
>> influence reality, but how much our own do."
>>
>
> But all the evidence suggests that the Shadow Children - at least those of
> the second novella, I agree it's hard to understand that particukar comment
> - are out of the picture now, a century and a half after colonisation (I
> presume they died out).  And anyway, if the Annese enable the original human
> discoverers (now the abos) to change shape, how come this ability does not
> extend to the later colonising humans?
>
>
>
>  It may be, of course, that the abos and the Shadow Children are
>> actually the same race, and that *all* their differences are down to
>> the leaf. I've often speculated in that direction. But that theory has
>> its own problems.
>>
>
> I think that's actually a somewhat defensible theory, in that it is in many
> respects almost the same as the 'Shadow Children are the humans" theory, and
> thus very hard to disprove.  But it does indeed have considerable issues,
> and it seems far simpler to accept that the Shadow Children are the humans
> (as we are repeatedly told).
>
> - Gerry Quinn
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Aaron Singleton
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