I've wondered if the strange creature (not the leatherskin) that jumps on the ship with Horn when he first sets out, which is described much like a neighbor but faaaar scarier isn't maybe a nieghbor/inhumi remnant. That is what occurred to me.<br>
<br>I can't get behind the neighbors as trees/inhumi as vines theory at all. It seems like such a stretch. There is no denying a connection of some sort between trees and neighbors. I'm not certain it is a literal connection. In New Sun, there are instances of Wolfe anthropomorphising trees and such. With human qualities. Why wouldn't the same be true on another planet, but echoing the essense of the 'original' inhabitants, the neighbors.<br>
<br>And I think, in terms of the Neighbors infecting the inhumi on the Whorl, it was primarily to get a sense of what the souls of the humans were like. When they saw the result, they made their deciscion that they could give the world to Humans, as they had confidence that the humans would have a chance, that the neighbors did not, to end the cycle of inhumi/host extinction, due to the possible quailities of the human soul. I think, in Horn/Silk in particular (keeping in mind that when the neighbors gave Blue to humans through Horn, he was still Horn and not Silk at all), they saw something in humanity (in my opinion, not his being a neighbor doppleganger) that convinced them that they might be able, at some point, to make a peace with the inhumi. They wouldn't have known that if they had not first infected the Whorl with inhumi.<br>
<br>What is much more controversial to me is that the neighbors say they also spent time on the whorl, and befriended some there. What are the implications of this? Who did they befriend? We have an inhumi character in Long Sun. Is there a as yet unidentified Neighbor?<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 5:04 AM, James Wynn <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:crushtv@gmail.com">crushtv@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
He's a tree, he's a tree! Neighbors are trees,<br>
Inhumi are parasitic vines. .or something.<br>
Not sure what the Neighbor-version of Inhumi<br>
are-maybe the vine with a face that is cut for Incanto's staff.<br>
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Brian, let's posit that the Neighbors are dryads--that their steady physical form is one of the "sleepy trees" in the forests of Blue. How do the inhumi make the jump to become vines? Or how do they transform back to winged/clawed vampiric reptiles? That is the fundamental problem with any "tree/vine theory" regarding the Neighbors and inhumi.<br>
<br>
J. <br>
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