<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt">I'm interested to see people taking "'A Story', by John V. Marsch" as a source of factual-in-the-fiction information. I took the title to be a strong indication that it's maximally unreliable and that to the extent we get information from it, it's information about what Marsch believes or wants to believe or especially wants his fictitious readers (who are they?) to believe. Or just what he thinks would be cool.<br><div><br></div><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Of course, this led me to the wrong conclusion (that there were never any abos or Shadow Children), and when I learned I was wrong, it led me to think puzzling over "'A Story'" would be too hard, so maybe that's why people aren't doing it.<br><br>Jerry Friedman<br><br><div
style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><font face="Tahoma" size="2"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> Tony Ellis <tonyellis69@btopenworld.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> urth@lists.urth.net<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Wed, January 5, 2011 10:22:32 AM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: (urth) interview questions<br></font><br>
> Gerry Quinn wrote [of Sandwaler]:<br>> Maybe the Shadow Children make him telepathic. But you haven't<br>> really eradicated the notion of telepathic humans, even if you have lessened<br>> their power.<br><br>I think you're right, the Shadow Children enable the aboriginal<br>'dreaming' of this world. The native telepathic race are described as<br>receiving the thought of another and sending it out again 'greater,<br>greater, greater' than before. But that doesn't require any innate<br>telepathic ability on the part of those humans whose thoughts are<br>amplified.<br><br><br>> A few days ago I had to point out to James that Sandwalker's 'tree' was not<br>> an actual tree. Cannot it be accepted that characters in Wolfe can use<br>> metaphor?<br><br>I feel your pain, believe me :-) But even if the Old Wise One was<br>speaking metaphorically, I don't see how it helps you. The Shadow<br>Children aren't tall and strong
metaphorically any more than they are<br>physically. "We do no conceive of ourselves as you describe us, and so<br>we are not actually so" are not the words of someone with a reliable<br>grip on reality.<br><br>And they *are* crackheads. We get a long lecture about the herb they<br>eat, and how it makes them feel like God. Here's what one of them says<br>to Sandwalker when he's chewing the leaf:<br><br>"With my smallest finger, little native animal, I will break your<br>bones until the ends burst through your skin."<br><br>Sound familiar?<br><br><br>>> Shadow Child: "Since first we came here-"<br>>> "Since first *they* came here," the Old Wise One corrected him gently.<br>>> "Now I am half a man, and know that we were always here listening to<br>>> thought that did not come; listening without thought of our own to be<br>>> men."<br>><br>> He can be refering to the half of himself that is Sandwalker. This
isn't<br>> too terribly odd a construction.<br><br>I find it an *excruciatingly* awkward construction. And why would he<br>need to 'correct' the Shadow Child at all, if the Shadow Children did<br>come here from somewhere else?<br><br><br>> Okay, you have a LOT of problems if Sandwalker and his people are human...<br>> First, how did they forget *everything* about their origin? Earth,<br>> starcrossers, clothes... you name it, they forgot it. How and why?<br><br>The same way they do in all those Star Trek episodes. It's a classic<br>SF plot device.<br><br>> Second, why can't they use tools?<br><br>Dollo's Law. They haven't used tools for thousands of years, so the<br>ability has atrophied. Remember, Dollo's Law is cited in terms of the<br>loss of a *previously existing* ability.<br><br>>Why have they got a strange eye color?<br><br>I wish I knew. I have a feeling that we're all missing something here.<br><br>> How did VRT
replace Marsch?<br>By imitating his voice and looking older, according to VRT. He<br>specifically says that's all he did.<br>But if your question is really 'why do the abos have a minor ability<br>to alter their appearance?', I think this comes back to the idea of<br>the Shadow Children as telepathic enablers of the abos. There's an<br>intriguingly cryptic line in VRT where he says: "the question is not,<br>as I once thought, how much the thoughts of the Shadow Children<br>influence reality, but how much our own do."<br><br><br>> Third, why did the Shadow Children copy humans so badly?<br><br>Why does their ability have to be perfect?<br><br>Regardless of which, the Shadow Children are described as 'sickly' and<br>the leaf they are addicted to as 'poisonous', so I think maybe the one<br>has degenerated the other over the centuries.<br><br>It may be, of course, that the abos and the Shadow Children are<br>actually the same race, and that *all* their
differences are down to<br>the leaf. I've often speculated in that direction. But that theory has<br>its own problems.<br>_______________________________________________<br>Urth Mailing List<br>To post, write <a ymailto="mailto:urth@urth.net" href="mailto:urth@urth.net">urth@urth.net</a><br><span>Subscription/information: <a target="_blank" href="http://www.urth.net">http://www.urth.net</a></span><br></div></div>
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