As soon as the tatoo on the toe was mentioned I felt that scout was, in some way, a reresentation of Clio.

On thought i had in reading that maybe the whole book was from Clio's persepective. An escapist fantasy from a terminal brain tumor.

She dreams of the time, after her death, when her distraught boyfriend seeks out the memory of her. The core of the fantasy is that she somehow comes back from death to reunite with Eric and defeat the cancer. The cancer is transformed into the Myrocroft Ward infection.

Well I like that way off looking at the story - but it is somewhat undermined by the newspaper article and postcard at the end. Both of these sort of diminish the ways in which the story can be interprited.

I do wonder if these artifacts were after-thoughts asked for my the editors so that people would have something to hang onto at the end when they found themselves adrift in a sea of ideas and possibilities.

Personally I think the book would be better without them.

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What evidence do we have for Clio's death? Only heresay. Ian can't remember it. Her Mum may think she died when she decided to disappear into unspace.

And you are going to believe what the book is telling you?

Crikey steven, you seem determined to frazzle my brain. I'm supposed to be working this afternoo but there's little chance of that now you've dropped that bomb :D

So if the final chapter are a part of Lightbuld frag 3 then that means....... that means........ AAAAGGHHH!

'half of the memory is dedicated to remembering the future'

thanks for the 'clue' steven.

Pete.

Okay so here is my theory about Scout being Clio. I think that Scout is Scout and that's it. I can't explain the smiley face on the foot or other Clio-like things that Scout did, however, the reason he felt so close to her and like he had known her forever may have been because he met her the first time he went after the shark. Maybe they fell in love the first time that he doesn't remember and so it just felt so natural the second time. I also think that at the end when the boxes turned into a boat that Scout turned into Clio (if only in his mind- but that's all that counts, right?). Everything turned into what it needed to turn into (boxes into a boat, paper into water, etc.) so maybe Scout also turned into Clio? I don't know. Don't get me wrong, I really wanted Scout to be Clio but it just didn't add up. Clio was dead, the book even explains how she died, I'm pretty sure she didn't just come back.

Nice theory, Ben. I hadn't connected the two Dr's like that before.

just a another thought:

clio vs. scout vs. jones?

I question whether the story is linear. It could be that The story runs in loops. Clio dies, Eric Finds Scout, They kill the fish, Scout become Clio etc.

Even more probably, I think that the entire story may be a parenthetical. Perhaps they spend time on the island first. Eric, with his fear of scuba-diving finally goes with Clio, and drowns. In the moment of death his life "flashes before his eyes." This is the recount of the raw shark texts as he struggles to reclaim reality and is merely stuck in the ethereal gap between life and death. He finally finds Clio as a real reason to live and reclaims reality... Bingo back on the Island.

The only thing that really throws me off of this particular theory is the chapter written from the first Eric's point of view. When he laments the Underwater camera.

Perhaps he really is inside the dream fish...

Good post, Sophie. I believe it asks a very good question. If I remember right, Clio never actually got the tattoo. Scout has the tattoo that would be impossible to have, so the question is, is Scout real or maybe just a figment of Eric's imagination?

Ladies and Gents and maybes and maybe-nots, this shall be my first, and last (but not actually), post. I believe I have a suitable explaination for the scout-clio kafuffle, and I must admit that reading your posts helped me make this conclusion. If you don't want to read the whole thing, then just read my first point, and if you still don't understand then you'll want to read on.

1. Scout is Clio, no doubt about that. When Eric met Clio for the very first time, she introduced herself to him as Scout.

2.At first, it occured to me that scout seemed too young to be Clio, so I too thought it might have something to do with reincarnation, but that explaination was more of a dismissal of the issue. But I am sure now that Scout is a younger Clio, though not that much younger.

3. Half of what we remember happens in the future. An example of this is given as the first Eric Sanderson, the one who went searching for a way to 'bring back' Clio and subsequently attracted the shark, kept a journal of his memories, and those memories were of events that hadn't occured yet, on an island he hadn't been to yet.

4. At the end of the novel, Eric and Scout are drifting towards the greek island. This is the first time that either of them visit this island, but it is the same island referred to in the Lightbulb Fragments. The time that Eric and Scout spend on the island together after the novel ends becomes a memory, which was written down by Eric Sanderson the first and encoded in the Lightbulb Fragments. He wrote the journal trying to recapture a memory that hadn't happened yet.

5. Clio never had cancer. In the journal entries, she is referring to Mycroft Ward, who Scout refers to as being like a cancer. Clio's memories of being in a hospital, were also Scout's memories of being sent to doctors and specialists after being targeted by Mycroft Ward, and harboring his partial-entity. The First Eric Sanderson wrote in the journal that she was talking about her cancer, but even he admits in his last entry that his memory of what happened wasn't exactly what happened, it was just his version, his interpretation. He probably interpreted it as Cancer, because he wrote the diary before he even knew anything about Mycroft Ward.

6. The tatoo on Scout's toe was not a permanent tatoo. In the Lightbulb Fragments, it is mentioned that Clio wants to have a tatoo of a smiley face on her toe, but as was discussed previously in this forum, it is impossible for her to have that wish fulfilled.

Now I'm sure I've missed a few things, as I can't remember everything at the moment, but point out the flaws in my argument, and let's try and figure this out together.