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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 8/12/2014 12:20 PM, Lee wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:BLU175-W2356E1A65652578D9D0D4CCFEA0@phx.gbl"
type="cite">
Third, your post implies that "simpler is better" a premise I
don't think holds true in
fiction. Looking at the entire body of Wolfe's work, are we really
expected to always find the simplest answer possible? Is his
fiction really meant to be a science laboratory with Occam's Razor
as our primary tool of understanding?<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<div id="yiv3762401212yui_3_16_0_9_1406130891747_4"><span
id="yiv3762401212yui_3_16_0_9_1406130891747_177">A complex
explanation should explain more, better, than the simple one it
replaces. In this case, the apparent possibility of two races is
maddening, and especially because it seems binary. <br>
</span></div>
<div class="yui_3_16_0_1_1407881244906_3952"
id="yiv3762401212yui_3_16_0_9_1406130891747_181"
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clear="none">
<span id="yiv3762401212yui_3_16_0_9_1406130891747_177"></span></div>
<span id="yiv3762401212yui_3_16_0_9_1406130891747_177">But were
there not two waves of </span><span
id="yiv3762401212yui_3_16_0_9_1406130891747_177"><span
id="yiv3762401212yui_3_16_0_9_1406130891747_177">colonization </span>on
the planets? Two planets to evolve on? Seems to me a single
imitative species that evolves twice or even splits into two or
more fits this very well---after all, when has there ever been a
migration where there were not those left behind? And "two worlds"
or "twins" (not quite like one another) has always been a Wolfean
motif. A single alien species (and a single human contingent)
isn't enough. But . . .<br>
<br>
It seems to me that 5HC is most forcefully about two coexisting
worlds. Not two planets, but the one we see and the real one: at a
minimum, a <i>doubling </i>of perspectives. </span><span
id="yiv3762401212yui_3_16_0_9_1406130891747_177"><span
id="yiv3762401212yui_3_16_0_9_1406130891747_177">The two waves
on the two worlds suggests two waves of something else. (If not
four.) <br>
<br>
</span>---We see French colonizers and think of European seizure
of the New World; what do the natives see? Prey? Gods?<br>
<br>
---We see another wave of colonists and gunships; what do the
natives see? Themselves? Their old selves and the new? Parasites?<br>
<br>
---What do the French colonists see when their fellow Euros
arrive? (if they are still French?) <br>
<br>
I agree with Gerry that humans-to-SC and natives-to-abos is
simpler. It's almost TOO simple. It's like a first-order (i.e.,
second-level) twist in a colonial narrative where the white men
become worse-than-natives and the savage natives prove themselves
better-than-(white)men. What's needed here is a narrative theory
with at least two orders of "twist." Maybe even five, as Marc
hints.<br>
<br>
Marc's mites theory is factually compelling and has the requisite
story-twisted-to-the-fourth-power, but I admit I can't stand it.
It has no meaning for me. This leaves me stuck in the same limbo
where the did-inhumi-really-fly-between-worlds problem left me:
I'm sentimentally attached to an interpretation that yields some
scrap of meaning for me. In this case, that means a doubling of
everything. The theory Gerry rejects feels better to me, and it
allows one species to be a parasite on the other as well as other
possibilities. <br>
<br>
<br>
</span>
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