From: "Robert Borski" <rborski@charter.net>
Subject: (whorl) Re: sex secret
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 12:09:44 

alga having written:

<In the next paragraph he says "You feared that jungle, I know; so did I at
times." I think the "you" is Sinew. But what on earth is "our" as in blood?
Yours and mine, Sinew because I'm your dad? Yours and mine, Krait, because
you just took a nibble from me and I'm sort of your dad
too? Yours and mine, Outsider? The blood that you, Sinew, and Krait share
(re his mother), part of which I contributed genetically (this is
ridiculous). It can't possibly be sexual, can it?  Twenty years ago? How the
hell do they reproduce? Those women and "brutal giants" do seem like part of
a primitive fertility rite.>

Your question about reproduction is one I've pondered myself, but mainly in
the Green-Blue-Green transmission route. Do I have this right? An inhuma
flies to Blue from Green during a conjunction and then spends the next seven
years attempting to slake her blood thirst. During the next conjunction (or
the following one?), she returns to Green, where she mates with an inhumu
(or might this happen while still on Blue?), reproduces, and the resultant
egg incubates in the uv-rich climate of Green until it hatches. (Are there
no equatorial hot zones on Blue? Is Green that much closer orbitally to the
sun?) This seems to me like an extremely awkward reproductive strategy--even
if the inhumi lay multiple eggs. It also means in Krait's case that he must
undertake the hazardous hejira to Blue probably during the first conjunction
he witnesses, but if he wants to reproduce go back again later. ("Hmmm. Food
or sex? Well, you can never be too thin.") Also: how exactly does the
blood-to-egg core personality transfer work? If I'm an inhuma, does the
first, middle or last person I dine on imprint my offspring? And do the male
inhumu's sero-victims contribute nothing?

All these questions notwithstanding, I'm still leaning toward the theory
that the inhumi secret will involve some physiological aspect of their
biology, either digestive or reproductive, and note the extensive use of
sewer imagery in the series so far, from the fouled sewers in New Viron, to
Inclito's municipal wonders, to the Styx-like necropolis on Green. The Latin
word for sewer, of course, is cloaca. Make of that what you will.

<I hope I'm not awarded the dreaded Borski prize for this.>

Nah. Not nearly wild, speculative or loopy enough, alga. Try harder next
time.

Robert Borski






*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.
*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.moonmilk.com/whorl/
*To leave the list, send "unsubscribe" to whorl-request@lists.best.com
*If it's Wolfe but not Long Sun, please use the URTH list: urth@lists.best.com