(urth) 5HoC: The Top Floor of the Library

[Marc Aramini]

Thanks Richard.  It is a bleak book for sure, but one of my favorites.
 Ultan's library finally put up my essay on it, but you are already
familiar with the thesis from here - it is just way way more thorough.  All
the best!

http://ultan.org.uk/variance-reduction-techniques/

On Monday, September 1, 2014, Richard Simon <gallebuck at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Thank you, Gerry, Lee and Mark, for motivating me to re-read The Fifth
> Head of Cerberus. I had hesitated to do so for many years because I found
> it repellent in many of its details and depressing in its entirety. The
> details are still repellent, but I found it a little less depressing on
> this reading, largely because the emotional tone of the second story ('A
> Story') had altered for me.
>
> Save for one, the books Number Five finds at the top of the spiral in the
> public library were easy enough to identify and confirm that Five's surname
> begins with a W. But who is the author of the book about 'the assassination
> of Leon Trotsky'? And what is the book? Is it a book at all, or something
> to do with the film of that title?
>
> By the way, I didn't find any specific evidence in the book for Five's
> first name. There are Wolfe clues aplenty, but though 'Gene' is obviously
> an appropriate name for a clone, I couldn't find anything to confirm that
> it really was his name. The author has confirmed that it is, but he did so
> to someone who had arrived at name by guessing. Anyone have any light to
> shed?
>
> Also by the way, Maitre's cloning experiments almost certainly eliminate
> the possibility that the population of Ste. Croix are anything other than
> Earth-human (well, most of them). Maitre must have gained his knowledge of
> genetic engineering from Terrestrial textbooks, and unless the mimicry of
> the shadow-children extends all the way down to the microbiological level
> (which is surely absurd) it wouldn't have worked if everybody was a
> shapeshifted nonhuman.
>
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