(urth) interview questions

[Gerry Quinn]

From: "Tony Ellis" <tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com>
> Gerry Quinn wrote:

[ I got caught up in my little story and failed to respond to the rest of 
your post about timelines.]

> "We came here either recently or long, long ago," the Old Wise One
> says. But if it's recently there are all sorts of problems, not least
> the fact that no one knew this star system existed until the French
> 'discovered' it. There's no helpful reference in VRT to an earlier
> expedition, or a lost spaceship. In any case, later the OWO says that
> his race have remained undisturbed here "for the longest time." And
> even if the Shadow Children are human, they still need time to
> degenerate into runty, round-eared pygmies.

Given the planetary colonisation wars between Earth nations and the absence 
of direct communication with Earth, a lost spaceship is no stretch.

A hundred years is a long time by some measures; it's certainly long enough 
to start taking a poison drug that stunts your growth (and perhaps has 
epigenetic effects).


> Then there is Dollo's Law. VRT cites it as an explanation for why he
> cannot hold a pen properly. But Dollo's Law requires an organ to
> "degenerate through evolution" - not something that happens over
> night. Whether you believe him or not, he is saying 'my ancestors
> haven't used tools for millennia'.

He doesn't cite it as a cause.  He mentions it.  I believe he is making an 
analogy rather than an explanation.


> There are other allusions to this. Marsch understands the Annese to be
> a race so similar to mankind "that they might almost have been the
> descendants of an earlier wave of colonisation," and goes on to muse
> about the odd similarity of the flora and fauna to terrestrial types.
>
> His speculation echoes precisely what Number 5 implausibly says in the
> first novella, that "it is distinctly possible that the aborigines of
> St Anne were descendants of some earlier wave of human expansion." A
> million-to-one coincidence? I don't think so.

I think this is better thought of in terms of a literary game than a 
million-to-one coincidence of thought between Marsch and Number Five. 
Either way, it's implausible, in my opinion.  (And he does give a tentative 
explanation for the wildlife in terms of parallel evolution.)


> ...As for the rest of your points, my rebuttals would mostly be
> variations on what I've already said. The thing we can't seem to get
> past is whether or not the Old Wise One is fantasising when he speaks
> of being human. We read it differently and there I think the matter
> has to rest. Lee asked my reasons for preferring one theory and I've
> given them, probably in more detail than anybody wanted :-)
>
> The next time I read 5HoC (overdue) I will make a sincere attempt to
> see the Shadow Children as humans, and see if that solves any of the
> other mysteries for me.

Maybe my 'timeline' will make the idea more plausible to you.