From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Fri Dec 06 2002 - 08:06:54 MST
Hal wrote:
>
> Can anyone present a plausible story about what happened here? How
> did Sherky confirm a possible theory about the existence of humans?
> How could he have started communicating with the Focussed - was there
> a two way link set up? The Focussed knew what he was doing, but how
> did he know what they were doing? And why was he able to not only
> communicate with them, but in effect take over control of them? And
> how was this done without any hint to the Emergent overseers who were
> running the Focussed communications people? The Focussed don't seem
> to have the mental scope to keep secrets and engage in conspiracies.
>
### There was an explanation in the epilogue - basically, Tricia developed a
split personality as a result of being immersed in Spider culture and
language, and her Spiderized alter ego was no longer under the control of
the Emergents. She contacted Sherkaner on her own, and was never under his
control, but rather gave uncoerced cooperation to a friend. I think this was
a brilliant idea on Vinge's part - to set up a technology description
(Focussing - control of frontal lobe volitional centers), which has a
plausible but non-obvious flaw - development of secondary volition, a flaw
which plays a crucial and massively surprising role in the untangling of the
plot.
Rafal
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