(urth) 5HC

[Gerry Quinn]

On 26/08/2014 14:52, Marc Aramini wrote:
> No lee, I think he was a shadow child, which is very different than an 
> abo.  I think Abos and shadow children have completely different life 
> cycles.  Thus he is persecuted. Everyone else is an abo, however, and 
> the switch happened as soon as they landed on ste Anne at the same 
> time Sandwalker and eastwind were switched (Trenchard later says his 
> ancestor is the east wind who met the Landers) when all of a 
> "they" can't recognize what open hands mean.  (Or is that a universal 
> signal everywhere but in France? nope).  Abos go from larva to adult 
> imitative form to immobile carapace (the trees at the brothel 
> disappear during certain seasons - we assume they have been uprooted) 
> and the shadow children are many who become one - a group 
> consciousness formed by a colony of cells (as all living things are, 
> save that this one promulgates through infection). They took over ste 
> croix about 140 years ago and Marsch asks why all the buildings are so 
> ridiculously old - Abos don't build new things, they just imitate 
> things already in place. 

Marc, I think I only realised this morning where you get the 'open 
hands' idea from.  The text says:

"When he [Sandwalker] came close to them [the just-landed French] they 
extended their hands, open, and smiled; but he did not understand that 
open hands meant (or had meant, once) that they held no weapons.  His 
people had never known weapons."

You seem to often read things hyper-literally and leap to hypotheses 
that seem, frankly, pretty wild to me.  For example, in the above, you 
are proposing some sort of instant wiping of the memory of the French 
landers, unprecedented and unheralded anywhere else in the story - and 
not even consistent with either imitation and parasite infection, which 
already constitute one mechanism of substitution too many.

Here is the non-hyper-literal interpretation.  The French hold out open 
hands and smile to indicate they are friendly.  Open hands are a 
traditional gesture meaning "I hold no weapons".  Sandwalker doesn't 
understand it because his people don't use weapons.

What of the parenthesised "(or had meant, once)"?  Simply this: in the 
twenty-ninth century, or whatever, we may assume that weapons exist that 
don't need to be held in the hands.  Automated gun turrets that can be 
activated with a thought, perhaps - very likely such devices are being 
tested right now in 2014.  So the open hands gesture can't be taken 
literally any more.  It's just a minor digression by Wolfe.  Not a 
secret clue that disintegrates the remainder of the text by showing that 
the minds of the French are wiped instantly for some reason.

This is far from the only such example.  Do the trees at Saltimbanque 
Street walk away at certain seasons?  I'm not even going to look.  But 
if they do, I'm going to assume it's simply the work of Maitre's 
gardener, unless substantially more is said about the matter!

As for the old buildings, both you and Lee have noted this.  But 
Port-Mimizon is an urban area that has suffered a reduction in 
population.  Marsch notes that Frenchman's Landing is newly-built, 
though its architecture does not impress him.  Sainte Anne has recently 
installed weather control satellites, and is replacing its shipping 
technology with "modern sail-propelled vessels" similar to those on 
Earth.  They've got tech.  [If Sainte Croix is all abo, Sainte Anne must 
obviously be too.]

I've said it before, Wolfe is not trying to trick or trap readers. He's 
not writing a load of nonsense and hiding the clues to the real story in 
isolated words or phrases or names.  If he wants to tell us something, 
he will tell it.  Look at Long Sun, he didn't do the cheap trick that 
would appeal to some authors of making the inhabitants of the Whorl 
literally unaware they are in a spaceship. Their unawareness is 
naturalistic - they just don't *think* about it.  He doesn't write 
planets of completely delusional lunatics.  He writes madmen, but they 
will usually stop mumbling when spoken to, and their delusions are 
similar to those of actual madmen.  They do not think the sky is orange, 
for example, or if they do at least they will have tried to come up with 
some explanation for why it looks blue!

- Gerry Quinn