(urth) vanished people=Hieros

[Gerry Quinn]

From: James Wynn 
On 11/10/2011 4:07 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote: 
  And while Mamelta was a bit out of it during her time with Silk, she was fresh from Urth, at least in her own mind.  If the Whorl had gravity much less than Urth-standard, she’d surely have noticed.
  It’s possible to argue around these things, but surely they make an initially unlikely hypothesis recede further in the direction of impossibility?

> Actually, I would think the fact that she could stand at all after 300 years of immobility 
> would (if anything) suggest that the gravity on the Whorl was much lighter than Urth's. 
> If one has decided to argue against an explanation, a "failure-to-mention-something" 
> will always be close at hand. It is not the lowest level of literary criticism,  but it is 
> below the median. It's surely the least most boring.

Like I said, it’s possible to argue around it.  You can ignore the fact that lots of people travelled from Blue to Green and nobody mentioned that their weight tripled, you can ignore the fact that Mamelta and Marble (and Quetzal?) don’t mention it, you can ignore the fact that soldiers talking about artillery don’t mention it, and that the lander monitor doesn’t mention it when asking them to choose a destination.  You have to desperately ignore that Gene Wolfe clearly doesn’t intend to mention it despite dozens of opportunities.

And then again, I think it’s a little bit unfair to criticise me for using negative evidence to evaluate a theory that doesn’t really have any positive evidence and is pretty much impossible to boot.

- Gerry Quinn  



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