From: mark millman <millman@us.ncipher.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Ziggurat confusion
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 14:14:21 

I can't believe that the women from the future are clones 
of the captured twin; for one thing, the women are the 
same height as a pair of eleven-year-old girls.  For another, 
the twins are described as having dark hair, but no mention 
of their skin tone is ever made, as far as I can recall (I don't 
have a copy of the story with me either).  This suggests that 
they're not particularly swarthy, at least as compared to 
Emory, Jan, and Brook.  The women are noticeably dark, 
but not so much so that in Africa they wouldn't seem no-
ticeably light-skinned.  I think that if Wolfe had wanted to 
suggest that the women are direct descendants of the twin, 
he'd have given another (maybe only one more, but at least 
that one) clue.  The facts that that the twins and the women 
are the same size; that the twins' father is Mediterranean and 
Emory gives Tamar a Hebrew name; that the name Tamar 
is associated with an incestuous episode; and that Emory's
relationship with Tamar must, to some degree, be a paternal
one at least in the sense of providing education, protection,
and the necessities of life (as Tamar is unfamiliar with the 
culture, doesn't speak the language, and is wounded to boot)
all create an atmosphere in which the implication that the rela-
tionship between Emory and Tamar is somehow incestuous 
naturally arises; but this doesn't have to mean that there is any 
literal sort of incest occurring, and in fact, I don't think that
there is.

Mark Millman


At 12:47 PM 28-01-00 -0500, Alex David Groce 
<Alex_Groce@gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu> wrote:

> <snipping Nutria's nice analysis>
>
> One thing--I think the twins are not necessarily 
> "American white girls"--isn't their father, the 
> tennis player, Mediterranean?  My copy is at 
> home so I can't confirm this, but it's definitely 
> the impression I got.  This is the best point in 
> favor of the "twin clone in the future" idea--
> which I'm still not sure is intended.
>
>
> "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall 
> make you free." John 8:32
> --
> Alex David Groce (agroce+@cs.cmu.edu)
> Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University
> Computer Science Department
> 8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066
> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce

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