From: tony.ellis@futurenet.co.uk (Tony Ellis)
Subject: (urth) Re: Liev's Postpostulate
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998 12:05:37 +0100

Adam Louis Stephanides wrote:
> > This explains why abos and humans, such as VRT's mother and RT, can
> > interbreed. It also gives us Liev's Postpostulate: it's not that the
> > Free People are colonists gone native, but that they interbred with (or
> > possibly replaced) the original French settlers.
> 
> But this is a less extreme version of Veil's Hypothesis, not a reversal of
> it, which "Liev" implies.  And it doesn't explain the bit about our
> thoughts influencing reality.

Veil's Hypothesis is already a reversal - of the accepted view that the
native Annese were wiped out during the first days of colonization. If
Liev's Postpostulate was a simple reversal of Veil's Hypothesis we would
be back where we started, with the all too mundane story of a native
people destroyed by invading colonials, as in Tasmania and the Americas.

Wolfe is very fond of ideas that reverse accepted ways of thinking ("we
believe that we invent our symbols. The truth is that they invent us."),
and I think for that reason too that Liev's Postpostulate would be a
variance on Veil's, rather than gainsaying it.

As for our thoughts influencing reality, surely what VRT is saying here
is what Wolfe says again and again in his books, that we are the victims
of our limited perceptions of the world. Mrs Blount and her fellow
postwar colonists "think" the Annese are French war victims, so 80-odd
years on that has become "reality". As Marsch says, there is a parallel
with Earth's "Good People", or fairies: everybody "knows" that
paleolithic man died out hundreds of thousands of years ago, and so that
becomes "reality". The compelling evidence - lots of it - that they
survived until very recently is reclassified as "folklore" so that no
one has to worry about it anymore. If you've decided that the abos are
all dead, you're never going to see any.

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/