Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 09:21:34 -0500
Subject: Re: (urth) 5HC: Shadow Children in the Lupiverse?
From: Adam Stephanides 

on 4/23/02 12:21 PM, Tony Ellis at LittleSense@necronomicon.co.uk wrote:

> Trenchard tells Marsch that when the boats of the first starcrosser came
> ashore, they found a man floating on his face, "beaten until dead with
> scourges of little shells tied together" - just the way 'A Story' tells it.
> We have no reason to think he's lying. Victor, who functions throughout the
> novella as a touchstone to the validity of his father's stories, doesn't
> demur. It could be argued that Victor has woven this detail into an
> otherwise entirely fictitious narrative, but that feels a little
> bloody-minded to me.

But that's what writers of fiction do.  The Soldier series must contain
dozens of "externally verifiable" details, but we don't conclude that Latro
existed.

Even if we accept that "A Story" is based on Annese oral traditions, there's
no reason to think that the events in it actually took place, let alone that
the OWO's stories are true.  The story is a myth: a myth of the coming of
the French as a Fall, which also incorporates an origin myth (or several
different origin myths).  Or else it's Victor's imaginative reconstruction
of how such a myth might have run.  But in either case, there's no need to
believe in prehistoric starcrossers, or in Shadow Children telepathically
shooing away spaceships.

> Especially as this is not the only time that Wolfe goes
> out of his way to show that parts of 'A Story' are externally verifiable.

Later, Tony wrote:

> But there's nothing internal to 'A Story' to suggest that it is unreliable

Well, there's the title itself: a person writing what they believed to be a
factual account of the arrival of the French colonists would be unlikely to
title it just "A Story."  And there are the implausibilities I mentioned
above.

--Adam


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