<div>Good thing Wolfe didn't leave too many possible options, eh? Time travel, shapeshifters, "glamours" that alter appearances, gods who look like people, physical alteration by Cthulhu, and of course the old standby, clones.</div>
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<div>I feel confident that there's something more than goofy pastiche fun going on with An Evil Guest, but I don't know what it is. It works as goofy pastiche fun anyway.<br><br></div>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 7:29 PM, Allan Anderson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rubel@goosemoon.org">rubel@goosemoon.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Hmm -- isn't there some stuff about time progressing at a different rate on Woldercan? Letters arriving before they're sent, etc. Maybe Wolfe meant she's trying to find a past Reis. Just a random idea.
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<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 4:18 PM, Roy C. Lackey <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rclackey@stic.net" target="_blank">rclackey@stic.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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<div>James Wynn wrote:<br><br>> Look, maybe this has already been said, but don't recall it. I thought I'd<br>> surely get a reaction on this quote so I'm going up the ante. For reasons,<br>> that would be compelling only to me, the death of Bill Reise at the end of<br>
> AEG really sat wrong with me. It struck me as totally random. But if the<br>> person killed on the island were Gideon Chase in disguise, it makes<br>> perfectly good sense. Also, Bill Reise avowing his love for Cassie at his<br>
> death seemed so out-of-character.<br>><br>> So when Wolfe said this in the panel on Fictional Characters, a series of<br>> tumblers fell into place in my head. It was Bill Reise disguised as Gideon<br>> Chase who left for Woldercon at the end of AEG. Cassie didn't go to<br>
> Woldercon merely to get her mojo back (although she would probably need to<br>> in order to win Reise).<br><br></div>Reis was a big man; Gideon was not. A conventional disguise or one that<br>involves a "glamour", to say nothing of shape shifting, would have to<br>
account for Gid's missing leg. Shape shifting involves a certain<br>conservation of mass, such that the subject will weigh the same after the<br>transformation as before.<br><br>Cassie told Klauser that Reis was dead, and at the end of the book, when<br>
there was no one to hear her and she was on the way to Woldercan, she<br>bemoaned his death. Who was she fooling?<br><br>She had been in perfect position to see the body that had been clubbed to<br>death, and she had been forced to watch. Shape-changers and glamour-casters<br>
lose control at death. Who did Cassie--and more importantly the<br>islanders--see dead at her feet, if not Bill Reis? I don't think it is<br>possible for it to have been one-legged Gideon Chase.<br><font color="#888888"><br>
-Roy<br></font>
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