From: StoneOx17@aol.com
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 22:15:32 EDT
Subject: Re: (urth) Victor's parents, abos, Liev's postpostulate, and more 

I proposed that Victor has invented the pre-French wave of Earth colonization,
and included it in "A Story," in part to explain the fact that he is an 
abo-human
crossbreed, despite the fact (as I believe is hinted in the text) that Roy 
Trenchard isn't in fact his biological father.

Tony Ellis objects:
> While there's nothing in 5HC that lets us say for certain Roy Trenchard is
> Victor's biological father, that I'm aware of, I can think of several subtle
> indicators. One is that Victor's Annese traits seem to be diluted: he can't
> alter his appearance as well as his mother, he tells us, and he's
> sufficiently dextrous to have mastered basic penmanship.

If he thinks he's only half-abo, that itself could explain his lesser ability 
to 
alter his appearance, and the abo officer appears to have mastered basic 
penmanship as well.

> However, my real problem with the idea of Victor inventing a human origin
> myth for the Annese to explain how Roy could be his father is this: why on
> Earth should he? He hates his father. He venerates his Annese mother,
> venerates the Free People. He would love to think that his 'real' father was
> Annese. Surely, if Victor was going to invent anything about the Free
> People, he would invent absolute genetic incompatibility with humans, to
> reinforce a cosy fantasy that the man he calls a "dirty, drunken beggar"
> couldn't possibly be his true parent.

This is a good point.  However, I don't believe he's doing it consiously, and 
the 
subconsious works in mysterious ways.

> The fact that Victor instead puts all the prehistoric-colonists-from-Earth
> stuff into 'A Story', no matter how it might grate, seems to me further
> confirmation that he's not making the whole thing up.

Maybe this would be a valid objection if 5HC were by a different author, but 
in
Wolfe novels, a story is hardly ever just a story.  For all of the tales in 
the 
story contest in Citadel, the tellers had ulterior motives, and I would expect
Victor to as well.  

-Stone Ox

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