From: "Fernando Q. Gouvea" <fqgouvea@colby.edu>
Subject: Re: (whorl) [SPOILERS] In Green's Jungles, first thoughts
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 09:19:20 

**** On Sun, 23 Jul 2000 23:19:09 -0700, Adam Stephanides <adamsteph@earthlink.net> said:

Adam> I realized it was a technicality when I wrote it.  But by your
Adam> reasoning, no inhumi would "really" be inhumi, since presumably they
Adam> would all appear "in spirit" as whatever species they have absorbed
Adam> the nature of.

I haven't made up my mind about this one... Is Wolfe saying that *all*
inhumi have essentially human spirits, or that some get to that point after
extensive (and friendly) contact with humans? Or is contact with *Silk*
necessary? (After all, we have only two points of evidence...)

The inhumi seem to be spiritual (as well as physical) chamaleons. One might
conjecture that they are all semi-human in spirit, but the slave masters in
Green wouldn't be very clearly human while the ones who live in Blue are
closer. 

Another question: if the inhumi eventually become close copies of those
they prey on, shouldn't the inhumi be fighting among themselves now? After
all, this characteristic of humanity is strongly emphasized in the book.

On a completely different tack: I'm intrigued by the interlude in
Nessus. Given timescales, this would presumably be Severian's time. Of
course, the appearance of this bunch of strange people is a trivial event
in Nessus, but I keep wondering whether we have seen this event before, or
heard hints of it, in the New Sun books.

Fernando

-- 

Fernando Q. Gouvea                      
Department of Mathematics               Editor, FOCUS and MAA Online
Colby College                           http://www.maa.org
Waterville, ME 04901
fqgouvea@colby.edu                      http://www.colby.edu/math
==========================================================

Nihilism should commence with oneself.



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