(urth) Fairies and Wolfe

[Gerry Quinn]

From: Lee Berman 


> > The Shadow Children in the second part of 5HOC are an interesting inversion 
> > of the trope, since they are the devolved descendants of humans, and the 
> > viewpoint characters are the aliens.
 
> I think I remember this disagreement. I tend to agree with James that the
> Shadow Children are shapeshifting shadowy natives to the planet who 
> approximate humans partially as Shadow Children and more fully as abos. Both
> explanations are given in the text and even The Old Wise One is confused about
> his/their real origin. I guess each reader may choose the explanation they prefer.
The only time it might be considered to be suggested in the text that the Shadow Children are natives is when the Old Wise One is confused.  And he is confused for a very clearly stated reason: there is only one Shadow Child left in the vicinity and the Old Wise One is now 50% derived from Sandwalker.  So when he says “Once we were long and lived in holes under trees” he is describing Sandwalker’s ancestors.  Previous to this, when there were more Shadow Children, he is perfectly clear.
> The Neighbors were formerly highly civilized and industrial etc. They were also war-like
> and genocidal (perhaps due to Inhumi influence). Anyway, I get the impression they have
> moved beyond all that by the time Horn meets them. They don't seem like futuristic,
> technologically advanced aliens at all. They are campfire types, show no use of technology
> and have a certain nobility to them.
I’m not sure how you deduce that they were warlike and genocidal (though I should imagine they would have liked to wipe out the inhumi).  I thought we knew very little of their history.
As for the campfires, remember that all the Neighbours we see are on holiday, on a planet or plane where they cannot easily manipulate matter.  They certainly have some technology: they are capable of millinery at least, and they use some sort of neural probe on Horn’s forehead when he is trapped in the pit.  If they abandoned their space technology it cannot have been more than a few decades ago, and they speak knowledgeably of asteroids etc.  

- Gerry Quinn
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20120329/5b4810d6/attachment-0004.htm>