From: James Jordan <jbjordan4@home.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) In Glory Like Their Star, initial reading
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 10:00:58 

This looks promising. Only two notes:

At 11:04 AM 9/19/2001 +0100, Joshua wrote:
>'skun' This seems to be the only made-up word in the story. Why?

         A variant of 'sun'? Somehow?


>'(The natives) speak for a long time when they have begun' and the narrator
>is also 'unable to control (his own) loquacity.' This implies similarity on
>another level. See below for my idea with respect to this other level.

         I took the loquacity of the natives to indicate ritual. They 
approach this "god" with a continual stream of repeated phrases. Also, from 
what I recall, their repeated phrases were requests for gifts, which 
resembles pagan religion: bring your gifts/bribes and feed your gods and 
ask them over and over for benefits. The Biblical or Judeo-Christian notion 
of sacrifice is rather different: self-killing by proxy as a confession of 
guilt and a plea for mercy. Requests for benefits come afterwards, and 
Jesus said not to be overly repetitious, and the psalms are quite 
unrepetitious in form. Thus, I took it that a kind of pagan religion was 
being pictured by Wolfe.

Nutria


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