From: adam louis stephanides <astephan@students.uiuc.edu>
Subject: (urth) Caraboo-hoo
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 12:01:45 



On Tue, 16 Jun 1998 Tony Ellis wrote:

> William H. Ansley wrote:
> >I really don't agree with the "morphing carabao" theory...
> 
> Nor me. It's funny how any evidence for shape-shifting sort of melts
> away when you look at it closely, isn't it? (The one exception being the
> Old Wise One's mention of this ability - that's currently the only
> reason I think shape-shifting has anything to do with St Anne.)

And this occurs in a work of fiction by V.R.T.; we don't know if
it reflects something he saw or thought he saw, is derived from Annese
lore, or is his own extrapolation from Veil's Hypothesis.
 
> My impression is that this is all meant to suggest that the animals of
> St Anne might be "people" too. Not in the sense that they are all some
> sort of morphing alien race with a big SFx budget, but simply that on St
> Anne the distinction between human and animal is blurred. There are
> numerous references to the Annese being just "animals shaped like
> people", and also hints of the reverse.

There was a similar phenomenon in "Tracking Song."  There, too, you had
characters who were intelligent, and who looked like people, but whom
other characters regarded as "just animals," and quite cheerfully killed
and even ate.

--Adam


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