One last thing I suppose: The ghoul-bear is not "in disguise". Nor is the caribou. The ghoul-bears are Annese. Are they animals? Yes. All the Annese are animals -- as we are continuously told even by V. The owl-mice are *actually* owl-mice and owl-mice are Annese. The cat is a cat but it is an Annese cat and V sees them all as Free People races or types. Although a 6-foot, red-haired Scandinavian and a Rainforest man of Central Africa might look a bit different -- although Wolfhounds and Dachshunds look even more different -- they are actually the same "people".
"A Story" reminds me more than anything else of "Tracking Song" in which every creature the protagonist meets seems to be some form of primate (at least) and might well a human-descended species.
5. I believe ya'll pointed out the most obvious signal that V and Number 5 are sharing minds... when the Group Norm gets confused and begins suggesting that they came from Atlantis or Gondwanaland --essentially repeating what Number Five recorded of his childhood lessons. You asked "how could John V Marsch have gotten Number Five's diary?" Well, he couldn't. He's been in prison almost from the time Maitre was murdered. And the diary wasn't completed until he was released.
As for the sharing of dreams:
In the first novella, Number Five dreams:
"...dreams had come to flicker in the emptiness, dreams of fences and walls and the concealing ditches called ha-has, that contain a barrier you do not see until you are about to tumble on it. Once I had dreamed of standing in a paved court fenced with CORINTHIAN PILLARS so close set that I could not force my body between them, although in the dream I was only a child of three or four. After trying various places for a long time, I had noticed that each column was carved with a word-the only one that I could remember was carapace-and that the paving stones of the courtyard were mortuary tablets like those set into the floors in some of the old French churches, with my own name and a different date on each."
Now it matters a lot that a "Corinthian pillar" is a column with ornate leaves at the top.So near the beginning of "A Story", Sandwalker has a dream that mirrors Number Five's dream. So I suppose it was suggested by V's dreams:
"Around him in a circle stood immense trees, each rising from a ring of its own serpentine roots. Their bark was white like the bark of sycamores, and their trunks rose to great heights before vanishing in dark masses of their own leaves. But in his dream he was not looking at these. The circle in which he floated was of such extent that the trees formed only a horizon to it, cutting off the immeasurable concavity of the sky just where it would otherwise have touched earth."
In prison, V dreams of that circle again. This time in a a darker context:
"What did I dream of? The howling of beasts, the ringing of bells, women (when I can remember what I have dreamed I have nearly always dreamed of women, which I suppose makes me unusually blessed), the sounds of shuffling feet, and my own execution, which I dreamed of as having taken place in a vast deserted courtyard surrounded by colonnades."
Of course all these dreams are hinting at the "Observatory" on St Anne (to which Number Five has never been) with its circle of trees.
4. I think the fact that Number Five calls his father "Maitre" is intended to signal that he is "French." In a society ruled by an English-speaking government, what is the social cache of putting on French affectations? Especially when the French are viewed with such suspicion? Especially, when he has designs on political power himself?
I think the fact that he is French is intended to signal that he is something of a relic.
I think Wolfe put himself in this story for the same reason he puts himself (wolves) in all his stories. The idea that Gene Wolfe is supposed to be a descendent of our Gene Wolfe is an amusing idea but the idea never struck me as a *meaningful* theory. Wolfe likes inhabiting his stories. Still, this is far in the future and it hardly seems impossible for a descendent of Wolfe to take his family to France or Quebec or Sierra Leone and leave from there to space.
@G.L. McDorman The connection I'm making is that there is some significant tension between the English government and their French speaking subjects.
But let's try it the other way around. Is there a reason -- which I've failed to appreciate, beyond the character's name -- that makes you think his primary culture is English? "Wolfe" is of Norman-French origin after all.
@James Wynn I think that tension only exists on Sainte Anne, at least if we believe Constant.
I think the strongest reason to believe that Maitre's (and Number 5's) first language is English is simply that Number 5 wrote his journal in English and frequently emphasizes the Frenchness of people and structures. There certainly could be reasons that Number 5 writes in English even though his primary language is French, of course (though I think in that case he would also have translated "maitre" to "master"). But I've also always assumed that this was a family of American settlers simply because Gene Wolfe is American and it had never occurred to me to question it.
I also wonder how many people in the cities of Sainte Croix speak French as their native language now that several generations have passed. I don't think we see a single instance of anyone speaking French on Sainte Croix, where the French and Anglo cultural groups have intermarried. On Sainte Anne, though, where the French-speaking population has been kept apart, we do indeed see people speaking French and discussing the French language and code-switching.
@G.L. McDorman Well, okay. I suppose the argument could be made either way. I find it more compelling that the Master was French, but -- ultimately -- nothing in my reading of the plot hinges on it. I suppose there is thematic fuel in his English or French orgins whichever way one sees it.
3. No. It's some vague supposing that I picked that up from the VRT story where he writes:
"At least half of me is ANIMAL. The Free People are wonderful, wonderful as the deer are or the birds or the tire-tiger as I have seen her, head up, loping as a lilac shadow on the path of her prey; but they are animals [NOTE THAT THIS COULD BE READ AS SAYING THAT SOMETIMES THE FREE PEOPLE **ARE** A DEER OR BIRD OR TIRE-TIGER]. I have been looking in the bowl at my face, pulling my beard back as much as I could with my hands, wetting it from the sanitary pail so that I could see the structure of myself, and it is an animal’s mask I see, with a muzzle and blazing animal eyes. I can’t speak; I have always known that I do not really speak like others, but only make certain sounds in my mouth-sounds enough like human speech to pass the Running Blood ears that hear me; sometimes I do not even know what I have said, only that I have dug my hole and passed to run singing into the hills.
"Now I cannot speak at all, but only growl and retch. "
I understood that bit to be V's recognition that in his long solitary confinement he was regressing from his humanity-- losing the ability to maintain the speech part of his simulation. And if he could stop mimicking humans, perhaps he could reclaim the his Faerie dryad nature again. I think there is a parallel instance of this in another Wolfe work. In The Book of the Short Sun (a story that has more than a few parallels to The Fifth Head of Cerberus) there is a mult-legged dog-like creature called a "hus"-- named Babbie. The longer Babbie is with the Narrator, the more humanish he becomes. At one point, he even steers the ship. But when he is separated from the man, and runs feral in the woods, he loses those human-like behaviors over time and becomes an animal again.
But it doesn't matter for V because he can't stop imitating humans as long as he is on St Croix.
2. The dates of the colonization are not meaningful. When the English colonists arrive on St. Anne, they positively assume that the French-speaking settlers they meet are merely parallel colonists of those on St Croix. English rulers are newbies. They see two planets. Two colonies. There's no way to notice a lack of written records of St Anne not being there. There is no way the records could not state that colonies were the same age -- the French settlers, although in poverty, are standing right there in front of them. The "French girls" referenced by Mrs Blount are positively not human. They are Annese..."When I was growing up those little French girls that had been too small to fight was growing up too, and weren’t they the cutest things? They got most of the handsome boys, you know, and all the rich ones. You could go to a dance in your prettiest dress, and one of those Frenchies would come in, just in rags you know, but with a ribbon and a flower in her hair, and every boy’s head would turn."
So when the English arrive on St Anne, the French colony is non-human.
To be fair, I'll note that I haven't forgotten Robert Culot "one of the last survivors of the first French settlers [...] now dead about forty years". That is a problematic declaration for me, but he is problematic as well for anyone who says the original colony on St Anne was 180 years previous. I assume what is meant is that he was simply one of the last French settlers from before the English" but that doesn't mean he was living on St Anne before the war.
The Group Norm says: “We either came recently or a long, long time ago. I’m not sure which.”
The way I read Wolfe, it is imperative that whatever explanation one gives to this statement, both things must be true. I admit my timeline requires a couple (or many, many more) cognitive leaps. But once you've made them, the story seems to fall into place.
And, cognitive leaps are absolutely necessary when reading a Wolfe story. Not all the answers are detectable -- to the exclusion of all other possibilities -- from the words on the page alone. The first novella was not expected to be expanded to three but the Annese were still central to the story yet still completely remote and mysterious. The aquastor of himself Severian meets in the stone town is not explained until Urth of the New Sun... which Wolfe did not intend to write when he wrote that bit.
In this case, we are expected comprehend that St. Anne follows the rules of Faerieland:
That it is hidden but constantly present. That it's inhabitants are constantly seeking to supplant us, either by agreement (ala the Mabinogion) or by changelings.
@James Wynn Oh, haha, yeah, we kind of overlooked the obvious use of "five" here. I wonder if there's a numerical significance to September then, either as nine or seven.
Well, that's it. This discussion has been incredibly useful to me. I finally think I understand the ending of "A Story". I had assumed that it was written in prison, aspirationally, in hope of release. But it is written well after V's release after he has led a revolution on St Croix -- a revolution founded on his prison writings -- and is known as John V Marsch, the leader of The Fifth of September. The ending to "A Story" is this:The V is released. He goes to Number Five in triumph. Together they dismantle the Simulation (Lastvoice). Number Five proposes that he undergo the operation to become a new Simulation... "And you rule the marsh now?” “My head must be burned as his was. Then-yes.” But V rejects the offer and argues that the Wolfe's deserve execution. What happens next is highly speculative. It seems that before the event V and Number Five come to agree on their true nature. [I had just postulated on the fly that Aunt Jeanine was their mother. But unless the Simulation lied about "her last days" and had her imprisoned instead, that is not possible. Still... its possible.]Number Five seems to have been unconscious when V executed him. Perhaps he injected him with the drugs the Wolfes gave to their "experiments." That would be the Shadow Child's bite. So as Number Five shared V's consciousness, he died. And so V's mind became a whole mind rather than a half.And so, Number Five's prediction "Someday they’ll want us." is fulfilled. They rule St Croix.However, in true Wolfean, cyclic fashion, this ending undercuts the proof that Number Five and V share dreams and minds at all. Because John V Marsch DID have access to Number Five's diary when he wrote "A Story".I've appended the end of my summary:https://thevheadofcerberus.blogspot.com/2019/05/a-story-by-james-v-wynn.html
1. That the Annese were the only lifeform is an extrapolation but it strikes me as an inevitable one. Maybe there is grass and other plantlife brought by Earth settlers. However... The Group Norm does say that "When we came some of you looked like EVERY beast, and some were of fantastic forms inspired by the clouds-or by lava flows, or water." That's not anything like strong evidence, but consider how quickly the Annese supplant humanity when given an opportunity. As with Faeries and changlings, it is in their nature to supplant. How long could any other developed lifeform keep from being overtaken without continuous resupply from outside? Supposing any other lifeform when humanity arrived is unlikely and so supposing any other lifeform ever native to the planet even a long time before is just extraneous.
Now the caribou, I'm sure we are given enough evidence to know it has more in common with Sandwalker and the Shadow Children than any "natural" animal. The ghoul-bear and the tire-tiger? It's ironic that there would be any doubt that they are Annese since it's it not 100% certain to me that they ever existed at all. They "are" two specific Annese that VRT-Marsch is intentionally covering for. He is the ghoul-bear and the cat is the tire-tiger. Note that Marsch's supposed hunt for those animals occurs in the diary at precisely a time when he is on a paranoid hunt to catch Sandwalker with his hidden "woman" (but the only female hanging around is the cat).
"A Story" is a pied retelling of VRT's own life story mashed together with information about Annese culture and history that V picked up in the outback from Shadow Children during his wilderness years after Marsch's death. Relating his life from his birth until he found himself imprisoned by his twin's "tribe". The Annese in the city become increasingly locked in their human forms but those in the Back of Beyond are truly "Free People" -- they are not yet trapped in their mimcrys.
@James Wynn I think VRT did not write the whole A Story on his own, and would have collaborated with Aunt Jeanine, because in his prison diary he definitely mentions that he met her a couple of times, and he also thinks Aunt Jeanine will make some sort of effort to get him out of the jail.
Also the book ends for my reading by Wolfe showing us the imagery of angels trumpets in the ending, which are the flowers which cause hallucinations and poisoning in humans if consumed, and I read that on a pessimistic way, also I don't think VRT will ever manage to get of the jail, because the officer does not write any good recommendation for him, but he mentions that continue doing the torture and break him completely.
So even if VRT wrote the story, there is no way possible for him to publish it, unless he smuggled some papers outside with the help of Celestine, but that too is highly unlikely.
I think aunt Jeanine finally publishes their paper in his name, which may help his cause to get released, because Constant mentions in his letter that the intellectuals want him to be released, may be after reading that paper, they are convinced that the government has imprisoned the wrong man.
Also I don't think VRT has that much anthropological experience to write such fine details of A Story, because there many such things in A Story which VRT never mentions in his dialogue like
1. Sleeping places.
2. The religion & beliefs practiced by the Marsh people.
Also Aunt Jeanine was conditioned by nature & nurture to be interested in philosophical anthropology, and her Veil's hypothesis is an widely accepted theory, so I think A Story was definitely a collaboration with Aunt Jeanine having major contribution.
If he is waiting for Jeanine, I think it is in vain, since it seems she has died.
"This house, when Nerissa and I re-entered it, was in a very confused state, my aunt having spent her LAST DAYS, so Mr Million told me, in a search for my father’s supposed hoard."
Obviously, with my reading Million is more than a passive slave in that household. I think it is telling that Jeanine dies within a few years after Maitre (she couldn't have been *that* old).
I do not think V will be released without some sort of political revolution, just as Sandwalker has in "A Story". I think that is V's implied hope for himself at the end of A Story. I imagine "A Story" was one more article among his papers. But... we don't actually know how many years have transpired with V in jail at the start of VRT. V spent years in the Back of the Beyond after Marsch's death. I agree that there's is nowhere close to the necessary extent archaeological data for V to write a "A Story" that is more than total fiction. I think THAT he wrote it is evidence his time was spent among the Shadow Children and others. He new somethings even before though. I suspect the Shadow Children are shielding the more interest parts of the Back of the Beyond from human eyes, just as they did with the whole of St. Anne before. Anyway, that's my reading.
@Sumant Natkar After my discussion with GL McDorman on the #2 thread, I think I've come around to believe that Aunt Jeanine is alive. It might still not be a meeting of the minds for us, but its where I am.
Welcome to the forum, James. This is a great write-up and your reading of the text lines up very much with Marc Aramini's, whom we'll have on the show to explain his reading in just a few weeks, and in the meantime we'll take up the question of what type of narrative and what type of artifact "A Story" by John V. Marsch is within the world.
You make a number of interesting inferences that never occurred to me, and I'm hoping you can give me the passages from the text that indicate (or suggest) them. I'll make a list with commentary below.
1. "These creatures were the only life-form on the planet." The idea that every living organism on Saint Anne is an Abo never occurred to me. I uncritically assumed that some grass really is just grass and some birds really are just birds, and that the ghoul-bear really is a ghoul-bear. Where do you see the idea that this isn't the case indicated in the text?
2. "And so, when new French explorers arrived (the first team were assumed lost), the Shadow Children caused them not to see the planet that would one day be called St Anne. They flew by it and settled on the sister planet, which they named St. Croix. As the settlement grew, no one on St Croix saw that world that dominated their sky. Some 70 years later, an inter-system war broke out between the French and English-speaking powers. St Croix was one of the systems in dispute. As the war raged above them and on St Croix, the sister world remained hidden." This understanding of the timeline doesn't account for the records from early explorers of Sainte Anne that exist on St. Croix, but piecing together the timeline from the textual evidence we have at our disposal is difficult, so I'm curious about what passage(s) you're emphasizing to date the colonization of Sainte Anne at 110-120 years prior to the start of the novel rather than 180.
3. "There is some degree of hope that if a mimic were separated from humans long enough, he could revert to his default state (such as if one were kept in solitary confinement for a long enough period)." Is this from one of Dr. Marsch's interviews or one of Dr. Hagsmith's folktales?
4. "Some few decades after the conquest of St Croix, a French speaking brothel owner and amatuer biologist named Gene Wolfe, whom we'll call the Master discovered an abo female by a river in the outback of St Anne. He shot her, intending to take the body back for exposition -- proof that the "abos" were still extant in remote locations of the planet. But when he reached her, he discovered that she was washing an infant. So, he took the cub back with him for research." I just assumed that the first Gene Wolfe of this story is an English-speaker who has adopted some of the elite French culture of St. Croix and I missed the passage that suggests otherwise. Do you think the Gene Wolfe of this story is meant to be a descendant of our real Gene Wolfe, and then if so how did his descendant come to be French or Quebecois (and so on) rather than an American?
5. "But what of the Foundling's twin -- who we'll call "V"? V continued to live with his mother on St Anne: half of a single mind on two worlds. Sharing the dreams of the Foundling and his simulations." Both Number 5 and Victor Trenchard recount their dreams for us, but I missed the overlap. Can you walk me through the parallels between their dreams?
One last thing I suppose: The ghoul-bear is not "in disguise". Nor is the caribou. The ghoul-bears are Annese. Are they animals? Yes. All the Annese are animals -- as we are continuously told even by V. The owl-mice are *actually* owl-mice and owl-mice are Annese. The cat is a cat but it is an Annese cat and V sees them all as Free People races or types. Although a 6-foot, red-haired Scandinavian and a Rainforest man of Central Africa might look a bit different -- although Wolfhounds and Dachshunds look even more different -- they are actually the same "people".
1-appended
"A Story" reminds me more than anything else of "Tracking Song" in which every creature the protagonist meets seems to be some form of primate (at least) and might well a human-descended species.
Incidentally, when I saw the movie Annihilation, I immediately thought of The Fifth Head of Cerberus.
5. I believe ya'll pointed out the most obvious signal that V and Number 5 are sharing minds... when the Group Norm gets confused and begins suggesting that they came from Atlantis or Gondwanaland --essentially repeating what Number Five recorded of his childhood lessons. You asked "how could John V Marsch have gotten Number Five's diary?" Well, he couldn't. He's been in prison almost from the time Maitre was murdered. And the diary wasn't completed until he was released.
As for the sharing of dreams:
In the first novella, Number Five dreams:
"...dreams had come to flicker in the emptiness, dreams of fences and walls and the concealing ditches called ha-has, that contain a barrier you do not see until you are about to tumble on it. Once I had dreamed of standing in a paved court fenced with CORINTHIAN PILLARS so close set that I could not force my body between them, although in the dream I was only a child of three or four. After trying various places for a long time, I had noticed that each column was carved with a word-the only one that I could remember was carapace-and that the paving stones of the courtyard were mortuary tablets like those set into the floors in some of the old French churches, with my own name and a different date on each."
Now it matters a lot that a "Corinthian pillar" is a column with ornate leaves at the top. So near the beginning of "A Story", Sandwalker has a dream that mirrors Number Five's dream. So I suppose it was suggested by V's dreams:
"Around him in a circle stood immense trees, each rising from a ring of its own serpentine roots. Their bark was white like the bark of sycamores, and their trunks rose to great heights before vanishing in dark masses of their own leaves. But in his dream he was not looking at these. The circle in which he floated was of such extent that the trees formed only a horizon to it, cutting off the immeasurable concavity of the sky just where it would otherwise have touched earth."
In prison, V dreams of that circle again. This time in a a darker context:
"What did I dream of? The howling of beasts, the ringing of bells, women (when I can remember what I have dreamed I have nearly always dreamed of women, which I suppose makes me unusually blessed), the sounds of shuffling feet, and my own execution, which I dreamed of as having taken place in a vast deserted courtyard surrounded by colonnades."
Of course all these dreams are hinting at the "Observatory" on St Anne (to which Number Five has never been) with its circle of trees.
4. I think the fact that Number Five calls his father "Maitre" is intended to signal that he is "French." In a society ruled by an English-speaking government, what is the social cache of putting on French affectations? Especially when the French are viewed with such suspicion? Especially, when he has designs on political power himself?
I think the fact that he is French is intended to signal that he is something of a relic.
I think Wolfe put himself in this story for the same reason he puts himself (wolves) in all his stories. The idea that Gene Wolfe is supposed to be a descendent of our Gene Wolfe is an amusing idea but the idea never struck me as a *meaningful* theory. Wolfe likes inhabiting his stories. Still, this is far in the future and it hardly seems impossible for a descendent of Wolfe to take his family to France or Quebec or Sierra Leone and leave from there to space.
3. No. It's some vague supposing that I picked that up from the VRT story where he writes:
"At least half of me is ANIMAL. The Free People are wonderful, wonderful as the deer are or the birds or the tire-tiger as I have seen her, head up, loping as a lilac shadow on the path of her prey; but they are animals [NOTE THAT THIS COULD BE READ AS SAYING THAT SOMETIMES THE FREE PEOPLE **ARE** A DEER OR BIRD OR TIRE-TIGER]. I have been looking in the bowl at my face, pulling my beard back as much as I could with my hands, wetting it from the sanitary pail so that I could see the structure of myself, and it is an animal’s mask I see, with a muzzle and blazing animal eyes. I can’t speak; I have always known that I do not really speak like others, but only make certain sounds in my mouth-sounds enough like human speech to pass the Running Blood ears that hear me; sometimes I do not even know what I have said, only that I have dug my hole and passed to run singing into the hills.
"Now I cannot speak at all, but only growl and retch. "
I understood that bit to be V's recognition that in his long solitary confinement he was regressing from his humanity-- losing the ability to maintain the speech part of his simulation. And if he could stop mimicking humans, perhaps he could reclaim the his Faerie dryad nature again. I think there is a parallel instance of this in another Wolfe work. In The Book of the Short Sun (a story that has more than a few parallels to The Fifth Head of Cerberus) there is a mult-legged dog-like creature called a "hus"-- named Babbie. The longer Babbie is with the Narrator, the more humanish he becomes. At one point, he even steers the ship. But when he is separated from the man, and runs feral in the woods, he loses those human-like behaviors over time and becomes an animal again.
But it doesn't matter for V because he can't stop imitating humans as long as he is on St Croix.
2. The dates of the colonization are not meaningful. When the English colonists arrive on St. Anne, they positively assume that the French-speaking settlers they meet are merely parallel colonists of those on St Croix. English rulers are newbies. They see two planets. Two colonies. There's no way to notice a lack of written records of St Anne not being there. There is no way the records could not state that colonies were the same age -- the French settlers, although in poverty, are standing right there in front of them. The "French girls" referenced by Mrs Blount are positively not human. They are Annese... "When I was growing up those little French girls that had been too small to fight was growing up too, and weren’t they the cutest things? They got most of the handsome boys, you know, and all the rich ones. You could go to a dance in your prettiest dress, and one of those Frenchies would come in, just in rags you know, but with a ribbon and a flower in her hair, and every boy’s head would turn."
So when the English arrive on St Anne, the French colony is non-human.
To be fair, I'll note that I haven't forgotten Robert Culot "one of the last survivors of the first French settlers [...] now dead about forty years". That is a problematic declaration for me, but he is problematic as well for anyone who says the original colony on St Anne was 180 years previous. I assume what is meant is that he was simply one of the last French settlers from before the English" but that doesn't mean he was living on St Anne before the war.
The Group Norm says: “We either came recently or a long, long time ago. I’m not sure which.”
The way I read Wolfe, it is imperative that whatever explanation one gives to this statement, both things must be true. I admit my timeline requires a couple (or many, many more) cognitive leaps. But once you've made them, the story seems to fall into place.
And, cognitive leaps are absolutely necessary when reading a Wolfe story. Not all the answers are detectable -- to the exclusion of all other possibilities -- from the words on the page alone. The first novella was not expected to be expanded to three but the Annese were still central to the story yet still completely remote and mysterious. The aquastor of himself Severian meets in the stone town is not explained until Urth of the New Sun... which Wolfe did not intend to write when he wrote that bit.
In this case, we are expected comprehend that St. Anne follows the rules of Faerieland:
That it is hidden but constantly present. That it's inhabitants are constantly seeking to supplant us, either by agreement (ala the Mabinogion) or by changelings.
1. That the Annese were the only lifeform is an extrapolation but it strikes me as an inevitable one. Maybe there is grass and other plantlife brought by Earth settlers. However... The Group Norm does say that "When we came some of you looked like EVERY beast, and some were of fantastic forms inspired by the clouds-or by lava flows, or water." That's not anything like strong evidence, but consider how quickly the Annese supplant humanity when given an opportunity. As with Faeries and changlings, it is in their nature to supplant. How long could any other developed lifeform keep from being overtaken without continuous resupply from outside? Supposing any other lifeform when humanity arrived is unlikely and so supposing any other lifeform ever native to the planet even a long time before is just extraneous.
Now the caribou, I'm sure we are given enough evidence to know it has more in common with Sandwalker and the Shadow Children than any "natural" animal. The ghoul-bear and the tire-tiger? It's ironic that there would be any doubt that they are Annese since it's it not 100% certain to me that they ever existed at all. They "are" two specific Annese that VRT-Marsch is intentionally covering for. He is the ghoul-bear and the cat is the tire-tiger. Note that Marsch's supposed hunt for those animals occurs in the diary at precisely a time when he is on a paranoid hunt to catch Sandwalker with his hidden "woman" (but the only female hanging around is the cat).
"A Story" is a pied retelling of VRT's own life story mashed together with information about Annese culture and history that V picked up in the outback from Shadow Children during his wilderness years after Marsch's death. Relating his life from his birth until he found himself imprisoned by his twin's "tribe". The Annese in the city become increasingly locked in their human forms but those in the Back of Beyond are truly "Free People" -- they are not yet trapped in their mimcrys.
Welcome to the forum, James. This is a great write-up and your reading of the text lines up very much with Marc Aramini's, whom we'll have on the show to explain his reading in just a few weeks, and in the meantime we'll take up the question of what type of narrative and what type of artifact "A Story" by John V. Marsch is within the world.
You make a number of interesting inferences that never occurred to me, and I'm hoping you can give me the passages from the text that indicate (or suggest) them. I'll make a list with commentary below.
1. "These creatures were the only life-form on the planet." The idea that every living organism on Saint Anne is an Abo never occurred to me. I uncritically assumed that some grass really is just grass and some birds really are just birds, and that the ghoul-bear really is a ghoul-bear. Where do you see the idea that this isn't the case indicated in the text?
2. "And so, when new French explorers arrived (the first team were assumed lost), the Shadow Children caused them not to see the planet that would one day be called St Anne. They flew by it and settled on the sister planet, which they named St. Croix. As the settlement grew, no one on St Croix saw that world that dominated their sky. Some 70 years later, an inter-system war broke out between the French and English-speaking powers. St Croix was one of the systems in dispute. As the war raged above them and on St Croix, the sister world remained hidden." This understanding of the timeline doesn't account for the records from early explorers of Sainte Anne that exist on St. Croix, but piecing together the timeline from the textual evidence we have at our disposal is difficult, so I'm curious about what passage(s) you're emphasizing to date the colonization of Sainte Anne at 110-120 years prior to the start of the novel rather than 180.
3. "There is some degree of hope that if a mimic were separated from humans long enough, he could revert to his default state (such as if one were kept in solitary confinement for a long enough period)." Is this from one of Dr. Marsch's interviews or one of Dr. Hagsmith's folktales?
4. "Some few decades after the conquest of St Croix, a French speaking brothel owner and amatuer biologist named Gene Wolfe, whom we'll call the Master discovered an abo female by a river in the outback of St Anne. He shot her, intending to take the body back for exposition -- proof that the "abos" were still extant in remote locations of the planet. But when he reached her, he discovered that she was washing an infant. So, he took the cub back with him for research." I just assumed that the first Gene Wolfe of this story is an English-speaker who has adopted some of the elite French culture of St. Croix and I missed the passage that suggests otherwise. Do you think the Gene Wolfe of this story is meant to be a descendant of our real Gene Wolfe, and then if so how did his descendant come to be French or Quebecois (and so on) rather than an American?
5. "But what of the Foundling's twin -- who we'll call "V"? V continued to live with his mother on St Anne: half of a single mind on two worlds. Sharing the dreams of the Foundling and his simulations." Both Number 5 and Victor Trenchard recount their dreams for us, but I missed the overlap. Can you walk me through the parallels between their dreams?