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Paul C Duggan wrote:
Wolfe is thinking of communion too, but the Vodalian alzabo
feast is pretty much an anti-communion, innit?
Is it just me, or would Vodalian Alzabo Feast make a great
name for a band?
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And Dan Parmenter wrote:
I was similarly shot down by Dan'l when I offered a
physicalist/AI treatment of the abosrption of Maytera
Rose into Maytera Marble,
Oh, dear... "shot down" is just too harsh. "Disagreed
with," please.
Or if I did shot you down I apologize.
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Dan'l preferring a straightforward "soul residing in
inanimate objects" reading. Feh. Wolfe's not just a
Catholic, but he's also an engineer/tech writer at heart,
never forget it.
H'mmm. Some clarity here: I don't for a moment suppose
that the two readings are mutually exclusive. What I do
believe is that many materialists do think they are.
(This is somewhat analogous to the way many conservative
Christians believe that the account in Genesis and the
Standard Model are mutually exclusive.)
In particular: I would say that the soulist approach is
more fundamental to a clear reading of Wolfe than is the
materialist approach, but that Wolfe -- partially because
he is an engineer/tech writer at heart -- also likes to
provide engineerish mechanisms by which the soulish
events occur.
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This is the guy who wrote a story ("Westwind") about
people talking to God on walkie-talkies for goodness
sake!
Yes, a favorite Wolfe short of mine (after "Detective of
Dreams"). But I should say it's really, really important
to keep in mind that the milieu of that story bears the
same kind of relationship to our world that the milieu
of Kafka's novels does, not the kind of relationship a
standard SF universe does. The Lupiverse, I should say,
is somewhere in between.
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Maybe this is why some hard SF people can't stand Wolfe.
That, and the fact that his stories aren't generally about
problems to be solved by technological means.