Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 08:38:05 -0600
From: "Charles Reed" 
Subject: Re: (urth) Quetzal On Urth?

Don Doggett wrote:

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Charles Reed" 
> > I feel like I'm ranting, and I apologize.  I just can't see any textual
>
>>support (which again is not the same as the lack of refutation) for the
>>idea that any inhumi ever visited Urth.  Is there any?
>>
>>Charles
>>
>>
>
>No need at all to apologize.  These texts can be maddening if you're looking
>for conclusive evidence for anything.  
>

I have to disagree.  I think they're only maddening when you're looking 
for conclusive evidence to support incorrect theories.  :-)


>I think there is incidental support
>for the inhumi on Urth, but I also think that Wolfe shoehorned it in after
>the fact.  Near the end of Claw, Jolenta is bitten by something (a blood
>bat?) and the bleeding won't stop.  
>

But inhumu "bites" don't cause bleeding in their victims.  People that 
are "bitten" feel the way that they do simply because they've lost blood 
-- by having it sucked out of them, not by bleeding externally.  In 
fact, a lot of the victims don't even know that they've been attacked 
(see Inclito's mother as just one of many examples).  This certainly 
wouldn't be the case if the attack resulted in bleeding of any kind, 
much less uncontrollable bleeding.


>Immediately after, they meet the Cumaen
>and Merryn in the ruined town of Apu Punchau.  This doesn't have any
>relevance by itself, but in Return to the Whorl, Silkhorn and Jahlee (and
>whoever else) encounter Merryn on Urth and Jahlee seems to intimate that
>Merryn is an inhuma (at least that's one way to interpret it).
>

Can you quote the passage in RttW that "Jahlee seems to intimate that Merryn
is an inhuma" ?

Again, I hate to use "extra-textual" sources to support my idea (or to attack your idea), but I'm afraid I'm going to.  In the same Nick Gevers interview in which Wolfe explained his ideas about the g

Q:  Are the Cumaen and/or Merryn inhumi?  Possibly, or definitely?
A:  No.  The Cumaean is an alien but not an inhuma.  Merryn is a human 
being.

Take that for what it's worth.  I've not known Gene Wolfe to lie about 
anything in an interview.  He doesn't always answer the question that is 
asked, but when he does, I  believe what he says.

Charles


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