I would definitely listen the heck out of that.

On my first reading of Peace. My wife: You sure are reading that book pretty heavily. Is it good? Me: Oh yes! Wife: What's it about? Me: That's why you read a Gene Wolfe story.

It's not accurate to the text but, like this, including the blue color, except with 6 year old proportions.

I can't find single reference to this as a logical term. The only uses (beyond reference in the tFHoC) is in references to timelines: 1) I say something about myself and my intention: The prime postulate. 2) The Pre-postulate is the state of myself implied by the prime postulate: The pre-postulate. 3) The next state of myself where my prime-postulate intentions are satisfied: The post-postulate. I have always believed that "post-postulate" means "the new postulate that follows directly from a prime postulate". This is in contrast to the "corollary": A parallel postulate implied by the prime postulate. For this reason, I do not agree with Glen and Brandon's supposition regarding Leiv's Post Postulate. They seem to be settling on an "anti-postulate." I propose that the post postulate is: "Since the abo mimics have replaced the colonists, the colonists have replaced the abos." This fits with the overall theme that "Colonists are colonized in turn by the land and people." Therefore "I am Leiv and I have left".

Brandon, thanks for your response. I respect a Wolfe theory that is, even if (heh, or "even though") wrong, is assiduously supported. So I truly enjoyed ya'll's coverage. I think Wolfes "puzzles" tend to be about the setting -- the sociological side of the story. The narrator's personal side is mostly right there in front of us, even if a lack of understanding about the setting makes us misinterpret what they mean. So I do appreciate your focus on the personal angle. The truth is, that listening to your discussion and some of the points you drew out led me indirectly to a vastly extended understanding of what I had before in quite the opposite direction: That "John V Marsch's" writings made him the political focus of a revolution on St Croix and led to his release and a to personal confrontation with Number 5, after which he wrote "A Story" (a secret autobiography). That Jeannine Veil was -- before the start of the first novella -- supplanted by Cedar Branches Waving, V's and Eastwind's (Mr Million's) mother -- that's why he came to visit her. That she was imprisoned not too long after Number 5's arrest. That Victor Trenchard is a St Croix clone -- therefore, in a sense, V's brother and Cedar Branches Waving's child, which V seems to have never understood until he came to St Croix. So there is a lesson in there about the power of discussion.

@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.

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

@G.L. McDorman Seven: Gene Wolfe, The Foundling-Simulation, Number Three, Maitre, Number Five, Dr. Marsch, and V.

@G.L. McDorman True. Well... revolutions don't always turn out as promised. :-O Actually, the Shadow Child acknowledges that what he is doing is selfish... that he's doing this just to save his own life and to hell with the Veil. Are the Annese worse off? It's an acknowledged brutal life on St Anne before the outsiders come. Whether it is worse for the Annese to become "human" and lose their Anneseness or to stay separated in the Back of the Beyond among enemies everywhere is something a social scientist at the University could write a thesis on... in the unlikely event she could get enough data on it and wasn't replaced in the process. Thinking on this, I could imagine V starting an imaginary political movement from his cell by just fitting in Zelig-style with his fellow prisoners. Ack... I just got the joke: THE FIFTH of September.

@G.L. McDorman "All the great political movements of history were born in prisons.” My reading of this line hasn't changed, but (inexplicably) I didn't realize until now this could be read as evidence that the military ship that the Shadow Children summoned in "A Story" was English. The Group Norm says this line while they are in actually in prison. He then, from his "cell", starts a revolution on St Anne which frees them. It's not necessarily so, but having the rescuers be English, overturning French rule in the system, sort of fits better.

@Sumant Natkar Thanks for this! 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 You make a lot of really interesting points. I do think V found "abos" in the Back of the Beyond and so did Marsch (although HE tended to kill them whenever he encountered them). But after Marsch's death, V lived among the Shadow Children and the information on Annese history in "A Story" comes from that experience. I'm not convinced his mother is "imprisoned". I'm provoked by the fact that a black cat makes an appearance in VRT. The problem is that my understanding of the meaning of "A Story" is that it parallels V's life, so it would be in some ways more logical if the cat were Seven Girls Dancing. Sandwalker's mother doesn't seem to make an appearance after his birth. But V's mother's eyes he mistakenly thinks he sees in the darkness (makes ME think of cat eyes) references to his mother being there -- it all makes me want to think the cat is his mother. It's frustrating for me there. I don't think ALL of the people of St Croix are abos. I think all of Number 5's fellow clones are and there are apparently a lot of them (ala the reference to a planetary 'face".) I suspect the "girls" in the brothel are. I think Aunt Jeanine was human when she formulated Veil's Hypothesis and I think the fact that she rejects it and speaks of Veil in the third person means that Veil has been replaced. I think any woman you encounter with a nymph name (like Phaedria) are Annese. I think Phaedria's aunt might be. I think the French settlers the English encountered on St Anne a century previous are. But the French of St Croix at that time were not. Out in the back of beyond, I think V was living among Shadow Children, so he had a certain degree of humanish influence from them. He might have stopped talking out there. It might not have even been necessary given the Annese psychic abilities. But he might have maintained that because it seems that the Shadow Children maintain the capacity for human speech by interacting with each other. But -- and this is important -- he had Marsch's diary -- and by constantly perusing it, he maintained and strengthened his mimicry of him. I think that is value of V constantly writing in prison -- it helped him maintain his identity.

@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.

@G.L. McDorman My work ethnic is not that impressive. I grabbed the text from here: http://the-eye.eu/public/Books/SciFi_Fantasy/Science%20Fiction/Wolfe%2C%20Gene/Wolfe%2C%20Gene%20-%20The%20Fifth%20Head%20Of%20Cerberus.txt :-D

@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.

@G.L. McDorman, Well, first of all, it does not seem to be impossibly outside the capabilities of the Shadow Children, who "sing" and manipulate across Space-Time to make people forget. ("Hold your hands before you thus, not touching. Now think of your hands gone. That is what we shake.”) But I don't think that's necessary. But for me, establishing a timeline based on references to nonspecific explorers or settlers has been a dry hole (although I'm willing to have my mind changed). I'll explain... I do not believe the references to "explorers" and "pioneers/settlers" should be read to as being a stratified in time (as in "first came the explorers and then the settlers"). It is established that settlers come in multiple waves -- first the "French" living there when the English-speakers take over, and then later the English. "Explorer" and "Settler" can apply to activity occurring in parallel and even in the opposite order. Marsch's June 6 diary entry itself says "We have behaved like explorers today, marched all day." I *think* a "pioneer" is a farmer. An "explorer" is a military or academic who is tasked with a job of entering the remote regions. Assuming my timeline, there were undoubtedly settlements and houses when the English arrived. Marsch actually visits a house like that. Additionally, I do say the French were ON St Anne going back 180 years or so. It would be weird if there were no written accounts of those early arrivals. But the Annese have had access to those written records as well, and for quite a long time. Marsch's diary is an example of what happens when written accounts fall into the hands of an "abo". I don't have the Orb edition, but I think there are at least three references to explorers and none of them provide enough context to establish a timeline. Are these the ones you're thinking of? I'll recheck my editions tonight. tFHoC "I told her about my experiments (I was stimulating unfertilized frogs’ eggs to a sexual development and then doubling the chromosomes by a chemical treatment so that a further asexual generation could be produced) and the dissections Mr Million was by then encouraging me to do, and while I talked, happened to drop some remark about how interesting it would be to perform a biopsy on one of the aborigines of Sainte Anne if any were still in existence, since the first explorers’ descriptions differed so widely and some pioneers there had claimed the abos could change their shapes. " VRT "Actually some of the earliest explorers farther south are supposed to have reported signal drumming on the standing trunks of hollow trees by the Annese; they are said to have used no drum-sticks, striking the trunk with the open hand as if it were a tom-tom, and like all primitives they would presumably have been communicating by imitating, with the sound of their blows, their own speech-“talking drums.”) " VRT "As for there being “many people,” it reminds me of the man who said what he saw was sometimes like a man and sometimes like old wood. The truth is, in fact, that the reports are very contradictory. Even in the interviews I have, it’s often difficult to believe that two subjects are talking about the same thing, and the reports of the early explorers-such of them as have survived-show even less agreement. Certainly some of the more fantastic must be pure myth, but there remain a great many reports of a native race so similar to human beings that they might almost have been the descendants of an earlier wave of colonization."

@G.L. McDorman What you say about French participation in government is true, as far as that goes. Participation of the indigenous population in local government is a necessity of empire. But we must return to why V is imprisoned. Not for killing Maitre. That case was solved. It was for potentially entering St Croix under a false identity. They know he's lying. They want to find out what he is lying about and why. The political situation seems to present a genuine Cold War paranoia toward the inhabitants of St Anne. It is difficult for me credit that that paranoia is due to the English settlers on the planet. Arguably, it is possible that the paranoia is due to the St Croix government knowing that St Anne is infested with shapechangers, but if that were true, I'd expect them to deal quite differently with their prisoner.

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.