{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1589", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 1589, "subject": "Even more iron men", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1999-04-28T11:36:54+00:00", "last": "1999-04-28T23:42:22+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "1999-04-28T11:36:54+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Even more iron men", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At the risk of infinite recursion... Roy C Lackey wrote:\nTony Ellis wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "Uh-uh. He isn't saying Sidero is the same -kind- of android as Jonas,\nmerely that -like- Jonas, Sidero is an android too.<<" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "Just so. Two -slender- automatons. Not two automatons the size of\nmassive men in full armour. Severian isn't saying that Jonas was the\nsame sort of android as Sidero, he's saying that he was the same sort of\nandroid as the slender pair that he can now see beside Sidero, which are\nclearly of a different design.<<" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " Uh, if I \"can't have it both ways, you know\", then neither can you!\nIf the first citation merely establishes that Jonas was an android, not that\nhe was the same size as Sidero, then the same logic applies to the second\ncitation;" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm tempted to respond \"but you -still- can't have it both ways\" .\nSay for the sake of argument the second quote did only mean \"Jonas was\nan android too\". We're still left with the fact that Sidero is the size\nnot merely of a massive man, but of a suit of armour big enough for that\nmassive man to wear. If Jonas had that build, he couldn't possibly pass\nhimself off as a human being. It's not a question of height, it's a\nquestion of general proportion: Jonas's human head would look\ngrotesquely small stuck on top of a body that bulky, as would his human\narm sticking out of it. A body that bulky would look ridiculous\ndisguised in human clothes. But Jonas fools everyone effortlessly.\n\nIn any case, the same logic does not apply to both quotes. If Sev was\nmerely \"reinforcing\" the fact that Jonas was an android (and why\nbother?) why does he invite misinterpretation by going out of his way to\ndistinguish the two robots which Jonas is like as \"slender\"? Why not say\n\"Sidero had been joined by two other automatons\", or \"two more\nautomatons\"? If you describe a thing as having a particular attribute,\nand then say that a second thing is like the first, the normal\ninterpretation is that the second thing has that attribute too. If I\ntold you that Whiskers was a fluffy kitten, and then said \"Whiskers had\nbeen joined by two short-haired kittens, such creatures as I believe\nTibbles must once have been\", you wouldn't think I just meant that\nTibbles had once been a kitten.\n\nMoreover, since the two are slender and we have already been told that\nSidero is anything but, we now know unequivocally that there is more\nthan one kind of android. Given that Sidero is the size of a massive\nman's full suit of armour, and Jonas has never had any trouble passing\nhimself off as human, which kind of android is Jonas more likely to be?" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "William H. Ansley", "address": "wansley at warwick.net" }, "date": "1999-04-28T23:42:22+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Even more iron men", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I have to side emphatically with Tony Ellis here. I think his aguments so\nfar have been more than sufficient to show that the (pre-crash) Jonas was\nnot a hollow \"powered armor/space suit\" android like Sidero, but I doubt\nRoy C Lackey will agree.\n\nHere another piece of evidence. In _The Claw of the Conciliator_ on the\nlast page of chapter XVI, entitled \"Jonas\", (p. 306) of the Orb edition of\n_Shadow & Claw_, we have this:\n\n---------------\nWith the steel hand I had always thought scarcely more than a hook, he\npicked up the hand of muscle and bone as a man might lift a bit of filth to\ncast it away.\n---------------\n\nNow it strains credulity that even such a poor observer as Severian proves\nhimself again and again to be could call a metal hand that looks like a\ngauntlet that might fit a large man scarcely more than a hook. Just about\nanyone, even--I would think--Severian, seeing a man with a normal hand and\nface whose other hand looks like a large jointed metal glove would assume\nthat there was another normal human hand in the glove. You wouldn't assume\nthat the man was crippled, with the metal hand being a crude prosthetic\nreplacement.\n\nWilliam Ansley" } ] } ] }