(urth) Short Story 13: The Changeling

[Marc Aramini]

Lil abner's father was named lucifer, by the way.
I suppose that post should be "his being in the 7th grade..." ...
Possessive pronouns with gerunds and gerund phrases ...


On Monday, July 21, 2014, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com> wrote:

> Him being in the seventh grade explains why he isn't in the picture- his
> perceptions were altered by wrestling with his changeling. It seems
> mysterious but can be rationalized if we accept Peter Palmieri alters the
> perceptions of everyone in contact with him, but his father and Pete are a
> little different. It also explains why there was a room for Peter when he
> appeared at Maria's childhood and how someone overseas knew to ask about
> peter, and makes sense of the name of the church, the immaculate
> conception, which is concerning Mary's birth without sin (not Jesus') (ie
> the changeling shows up when Maria is young).
>
> The old man being dead could either mean the island of never land is the
> isle of death (closer than when Pete was young but farther from the shores
> of the real world than it is when he is on it compared to the other
> children) or that the father who takes Pete Palmer has passed on, his
> powerful evil might to bend nails broken.
>
> It is, however, set in the world of Peace, so I am sure fairy stories are
> important to both works.
>
> On Monday, July 21, 2014, Robert Pirkola <rpirkola at hotmail.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','rpirkola at hotmail.com');>> wrote:
>
>> I had read the posts about the 3 missing years, though I had little to
>> add to that at this time other than if he is an "oaf", persons I generally
>> associate with being dullards, isn't it possible that Pete Palmer was held
>> back a number of years in school so that he was in 4th grade in 1944 AND
>> born in 1931?  That non-magical explanation aside, I have a hard time
>> disagreeing with your timeline.  The purpose of my post was that I had just
>> noticed while reading the various interpretations that have been used over
>> the years for "The Changeling" that they were rarely, if ever, discussed
>> all together so I tried my hand at doing so, adding in some details I had
>> found and thought informative.
>>
>> Also, while reading some of the old musings on this story by Ron Crown, Michael
>> Andre-Driussi, James Jordan, et al., from 1997, I noticed that there was
>> reference to Wolfe whispering the secret of the "The Changeling" to Damon
>> Knight:
>>
>> "[W]hen Damon Knight reprinted 'Changeling' in a best-of Orbit collection from
>> the first ten volumes; he prefaced it with a letter to Wolfe written
>> when he bought the story in which he confesses that he 'can't sort it
>> out into any one consistent, linear, daylight-logic pattern.' According
>> to Knight, Wolfe revealed the secret years later when he whispered to
>> him 'The old man is dead, you know.'" (Urth, Ron Crown, July 15, 1997).
>>
>> The WolfeWiki entry for "The Changeling" has a mention of this same event
>> but puts it thusly: "That may be why when Larry Niven asked for an
>> explanation of this story Wolfe simply said 'The old man is dead.'"
>> http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Stories.TheChangeling
>>
>> Beyond the obvious conflict about who received the explanation, there is
>> significant doubt that it was in reference to "The Changeling" at all.
>>  Micahel Andre-Driussi:  "I just can't shake the feeling that Wolfe was
>> telling Knight about PEACE rather than 'The Changeling.'"
>>
>> Does anyone have the Best-Of Orbit collection with the Damon Knight
>> preface that they can consult to clear
>>
>
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