(urth) 5HC

[Marc Aramini]

The editor who changed "then I walked into the room" to "then Horn walked
into the room" did it without Wolfe's knowledge and he is mad about it.

I really think an editor changed that - scrofulous, unfortunate, lame,
terrible, anger burning in my veins.


On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 6:27 AM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com> wrote:

> son of a gun what version of the text do you have?!!!! In the ACE
> paperback it says
> "When he came close to them they extended hands, open, and smiled; but
> THEY did not understand open hands meant (or had meant, once) that they
> held no weapons."
>
> I am so super pissed at copy editors right now. Mine is the version with
> Many Pink Butterflies instead of Mary Pink Butterflies as well.
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 4:11 AM, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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