Possible error in Gwen's esper abilities

[korg20000bc]

I remember reading the Gramarye stories and something not ringing correct. I think it was Gwen who was talking to Rod about what she could and could not do with her powers. I recall, maybe in The Warlock Wandering, that she said that she was unable to change her physical dimensions but could give the illusion of having done so. But she had done this in WISOH- first as the osprey and also as a mouse in the House of Clovis. As a mouse she was actually on Rod's hand and he kissed her -a frightening prospect from a mouse's perspective! Something about this didn't seem right.

What do you reckon?

[Ortho the Frank]

I recon that could very well be added to the wiki entry, "Warlock Continuity Errors"... unless Chris can explain, of course.

[kf6eml]

Perhaps she was just using the animals as familiars; she was an accomplished telepath, after all.

[korg20000bc]

Perhaps she was just using the animals as familiars; she was an accomplished telepath, after all.

Hmmm... I don't reckon because the mouse had the same green eyes as Gwen's.

[kf6eml]

er.... um.... maybe the sympathetic magic makes its eyes turn color... Yeah! That's it!

[cstasheff]

Alas, you caught me -- the critters are just supposed to be illusions, but that wouldn't change Gwen's mass. I admit Rod could pick her up, at least long enough to carry her across a threshold, but not with one hand. The rest of what the moust does, however, could be explained as illusion. Hey, if urban fantasies can get away with wizrds using shields that hide them from villains' eyes, surely a projective telepath could make people see him in a new light -- or form.

[korg20000bc]

Alas, you caught me -- the critters are just supposed to be illusions, but that wouldn't change Gwen's mass. I admit Rod could pick her up, at least long enough to carry her across a threshold, but not with one hand. The rest of what the moust does, however, could be explained as illusion. Hey, if urban fantasies can get away with wizrds using shields that hide them from villains' eyes, surely a projective telepath could make people see him in a new light -- or form.

Thanks for the reply!
I wasn't nit-picking- it just jumped out at me during a re-read one time.
It wasn't an "AH HA! Got you!" moment.

[Ortho the Frank]

I have to add here that calling out sci-fi authors on errors they made is a good thing. It sometime leads them to fix the errors in later novels.

In Chris's case, that happened on at least one occasion when a fan pointed out that the ghost of the first Loguire ancestor in Warlock in Spite of Himself, being a colonist from Terra, should at least have been able to recognize the time machine as, if nothing else, a machine. Chris responded with Escape Velocity which, among other things, explained away that plot hole.

Of course, a more dramatic version of that is the Ring World series, where a bunch of MIT students showed up at a sci-fi con with picket signs chanting, "The Ringworld is unstable!" Apparently, Niven had gotten his math wrong. But I'll let Chris tell that story...

[cstasheff]

Alas, I wasn't at that conention -- but as I heard the story, the MIT students had actually done the math and proved that, without anything to keep it in place, the Ringworld would have to drift and would eventually brush its sun, with devastating results. Niven then wrote the Ringworld Engineers, not only correcting his mistake, but also the errors of the ringworld's builders. So keep those flaws coming -- the delight me and give me ideas. Besides, Otho's always there to keep me honest.