(urth) 5HC

[Gerry Quinn]

On 21/08/2014 17:54, Lee wrote:

> Yes, but the story was written and inserted into the middle of this novel
> by Gene Wolfe for a purpose. Wolfe, in interviews, has invoked the
> story writing law of Chekhov's gun. He cannot insert Shadow Children into
> this novel unless they directly impinge on the stories of Number Five and
> Dr. Marsch.
The history of the planets - and thus the lives of all those living 
there - is dramatically modified by their late discovery by the bulk of 
the human race, when the Shadow Children drop the psychic barrier they 
have erected to keep other humans away.  It seems likely that the war 
between the French and English-speaking colonists is a consequence of 
the planet popping up unexpectedly in a region behind the main wave of 
colonisation.  The French landed first, but perhaps they were in a 
region of space largely controlled by opposing elements.  But in any 
case, the Shadow Children are part of the solution to the mysteries of 
the twin planets and their indigenous race.  There is no need to invoke 
Chechov's Gun.

[Incidentally, the fact that the humans landing at the end of 'A Story' 
- presumably representative of those most frequently passing by nowadays 
- speak a different language from the Abos and Shadow Children, seems 
further evidence that the Shadow Children are not some kind of bizarre 
alien race who have convinced themselves that they are the passers-by 
(in contrast to their brothers, recently derived from the same race, who 
for some reason are completely unaware of the starcrossers).  The 
language spoken on the planet is that of the original group of colonists 
- we don't know what it is except it is not French.]

> And I think they do. I don't think this novel is simply the story of one person
> (a somewhat unlikeable person we really don't know very well or care about) being
> killed and replaced. There has to be more to tie it all together.
Of course it isn't the story of the original Marsch.  VRT is the story 
of Victor, the abo who replaces him - and of course a chapter in solving 
the mysteries of the planets.

> And what ties it together for me are the two scientific principles Dr. Marsch
> discusses in the first section- 1. Veil's Hypothesis, suggesting the entire human
> population of the system has been replaced. And 2. the Relaxation Principle which
> describes a process of gradual approximations and adjustments which would allow
> shapeless, shadowy things to eventually take near-perfect human form. 		

The abo who replaced Marsch, and who would seem well equipped to know, 
does not believe in Veil's Hypothesis.  (Indeed, Veil herself provided a 
reason to disbelieve it any, pointing out her motivations for wanting to 
believe it.)

The relaxation method (not principle) was invoked by Marsch to describe 
what has happened to the clone sequence whose end-product is currently 
No. 5 - each is now nearly identical to the previous one, because each 
grows in the environment created by the previous one; the series has 
converged to a fixed point, which is not a copy of anything external (in 
a real problem it would be a previously unknown solution to a system of 
equations).  Even if one were to take it as merely referring to any 
series of approximations (and I will note that series of approximations 
are rather common, but one rarely hears of the relaxation method), there 
seems no particular reason to invent multiple races of aborigines so it 
might be applied in an unrelated story.


- Gerry Quinn