From: Alice Turner <al@ny.playboy.com>
Subject: (urth) Re: Digest urth.v003.n009
Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 12:53:41 


[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

This is my third attempt to send this post:

mantis,

I was so sure you were going to call me on Cim that I checked this a.m.
and, yes, both Buck in CALL OF THE WILD and White Fang catch fish. Plus
frozen salmon is a staple for the sled dogs. I've got other aguments too,
but I guess I don't need 'em. Oh, and I found a scene in which a wolf pack
pulls down a moose that may well be a model for the Nashwonk scene.

Instead, you want to make the Pamigaka boars. Hmmm. Round faces, jowly,
small eyes, flat upturned noses, check. Snuffling, bristly, check.
Short-handled tools with heavy, curved blades, bingo. Tusks. You win.

Okay, I'm not quite ready to tackle the Min. Let's talk some more about Cim
instead. The murder of Fishcatcher that she talks about so artlessly is
strange. It's the one killing that seems to have no motive at all. I'm
going to assume that the endieva wands (which seem like super-cattle
prods----actually there may not be more than one of them) are a human
artifact and belong to the dogs because of the dogs' proximity to humans
long ago. "Someone" hits Fishcatcher across the face with an endieva wand,
Cim takes him to the Great Sleigh and grovels and they heal him not for his
sake (noninterference) but for hers, because their presence has given her
hope she wouldn't otherwise have. He gets well almost imediately, and when
he gets stronger still, "I struck him again"---do we infer that it was she
who struck him the first time?---and he dies. Now she wants only to serve
the Great Sleigh.

That's a very odd story, and may need a mantic interpretation.

I don't understand why she turns back, either. You'd think a dog would
remain faithful, and would continue to want to be with people and serve
them, as she did before. She does make rather a big deal of the lakes and
rivers though, doesn't she? Maybe she's an otterhound? (joke) A Sealyham?

Moving on: the cubes are space food, more nourishing than bouillon but the
same idea. "Kluy" is a rather Lindsaysounding name, isn't it? The big
warehouse-cave filled with junk actualy reminds me of those
sub-sub-sub-sub-cellars in C. Smith (see, I couldn't even get through this
post without mentioning him?)

And no, how could I do a NYRSF piece on all this when it's you who, like
Adam, named the animals? Why don't you? Of course it's 17 years after
publication, but they're a little slow!!

Saving the Min, the robots, the dwarf, the staffs for another post.

-alga-