Subject: (urth) A walk on the wild side

From: Jim Russell <j.a.russell at exeter.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 15:14:54 +0000

This is completely irrelevant to the current field of 
discussion, but I'm writing up my piece for the symposium 
at the moment, and have just realised that there is a 
question that I would be interested to hear anyone's 
opinion on. Its fairly straightforward, so...

In Sword Cyriaca tells the story of the lost archive, and 
states that at some point in the distant past the 
starfaring dudes left their wild half behind, which was 
then sold to the thinking machines who incorporated it into 
their designs for cities etc, etc. Im sure you are all 
fairly familiar with the passage. What interests me is: 
What do you interpret this to mean? - or more precisely - 
what do you think actually happened for these forms of 
behaviour to be seperated?

Like I said, pretty straightforward, but I'd be really 
interested to hear what anyone has to say.
----------------------
Jim Russell
University of Exeter

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at sirius.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 14:53:12 +0000

>behaviour to be seperated?

Well =I= always took it to mean that the people had become rather like
"Star Trek" <tm> Vulcans <tm>; favoring "logic" in their culture and
erasing "non-logic" (including emotions, grim fairy tales, folk dancing,
fiction) from their culture.  So they were like the Ascians in that sense
(although not necessarily molded by "Correct Thought") of being
machine-like.  My sense of that story is that the wild stuff was the stuff
that had actually brought humanity out of the jungle in the first place.
Which makes it a form of technology, in a way; and antiquated technologies
are discarded every day (buggy whips, telegraph relay stations).

So the starfaring people thought that they would improve themselves by
getting rid of this old stuff that tied them to the nasty, brutish past.
But according to the story this was a case of throwing the baby out with
the bathwater (it all turns out okay, though, when the baby crawls back in
through the doggie door).

As to what happened to cause this separation between logic and non-logic,
it seems to me to be the same sort of scientific triumphs that we have seen
in the 20th century: real miracles, real terrors, real predictions
validated through experimentation (and any "failure" just points the way to
later success--nothing invalidates Science itself), and so forth.

I think the story is about the need for a balance of things: a golden rule
of nothing to excess (where the singleminded pursuit of logic is an
excess).

=mantis=

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From: Greene, Carlton <cgreene2 at hunton.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 18:24:35 +0000

Mantis wrote:

Given this separation, by what means did man "sell" his wild side to the
machines?

works
ranjit at best.com
whorl at lists.best.com

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From: Tony Ellis <tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 12:18:24 +0000

I’ve always been intrigued by the way Cyriaca's story seems to
anticipate what Severian is later told in the “Key to the Universe”
chapter of Citadel of the Autarch. In both stories, humanity creates a
race of beings that is more perfect than itself. The Hieros can
transcend time, the machines have the wildness that humanity has lost.
In both stories, the created ultimately remakes, and thereby redeems,
the creator. The machines return to us our wildness, the Heiros make us
into beings as puissant as themselves.

Interestingly, in both stories the act is described as being as much
revenge as it is altruism. Being reborn is painful. (The act, one might
almost say, of a Torturer).

In both stories, the created race is a sort of physical manifestation of
humanity's knowledge, learning made flesh. It seems to me that behind
both, a specific Wolfean principle can be found:

“We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we
are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.”

--
Tony Ellis
On-line Editor, PC Format magazine
01225 442244 x2349
http://www.pcformat.co.uk

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From: Daniel Fusch <dfusch at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 21:51:49 +0000

>From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at sirius.com>
>
>fiction) from their culture.

I agree with this to a certain extent; I always had the impression that 
Cyriaca was speaking of a modernist separation of "thought" and "feeling." 
Still, I wonder if perhaps the ancient race put away their "wild things" 
less from favoring logic than from simple forgetfulness; that is, perhaps 
they became too utilitarian, too reliant on technology, and then lost touch 
with art, imagination, and passion. They "reached the stars, and...bargained 
away all the wild half of themselves to do so, so that they no longer cared 
for the taste of the pale wind, nor for love or lust, nor to make new songs 
nor to sing old ones, nor any of the other animal things..." (BotNS, III, 
vi). They became too mechanistic and forgot the spiritual and artistic 
dimension of their lives.

>of nothing to excess (where the singleminded pursuit of logic is an

I think this is right on the mark; the ancient race is set in contrast, 
perhaps, to the zoanthropes, who bargain away their intellect to embrace the 
otium and forgetfulness of "animal things." At any rate, considering the 
role that storytelling and the finding of old stories (the Book of the 
Wonders of Urth and Sky, for instance) plays in Severian's narrative, I 
doubt the condition of the ancients who bargained away their passions is 
positive.

Daniel
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com

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From: Daniel Fusch <dfusch at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 22:01:57 +0000

>From: "Greene, Carlton" <CGreene2 at hunton.com>

Ambiguous...but I took this simply to mean that in creating machines that 
are artificial intelligences and that therefore live and have personalities 
(and "hearts"), humanity created beings capable of developing culture, 
feeling, emotion, of making stories and of telling them, etc. In the race to 
create artificial beings that would be "human," mankind did its job too 
well--or rather, they could not help but make machines that could feel as 
well as think, though they "never reckoned with that." They made imitations 
of themselves, children who still had the art and imagination the parents 
had forgotten. Frankenstein creates a monster that has its own humanity and 
is capable of emotion and great passion, though Frankenstein had meant to 
design only a tool for his own drive for perfection and glory; the Creature 
comes to hate its creator both for creating it and for the creator's own 
lack of emotion and sympathy.

Daniel