{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3454", "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": 3454, "subject": "Smith & Wolfe: Robots", "messages": 6, "voices": 4, "first": "2002-09-09T16:30:02+00:00", "last": "2002-09-10T03:59:14+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at cox.net" }, "date": "2002-09-09T18:53:54+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Smith & Wolfe: Robots", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Oh, yeah. It's very clear in Smith. Something like: Language is a sign of \nthe \"image of God\" wherever it is found. Speaking is linked with free will \nis linked with worship.\n I asked Wolfe years ago about Smithian influence on him, and he \nsaid he was not aware of any. He had not read all of Smith, but after our \nconversation said he thought he'd better. (I was very surprised at his \nanswer, BTW, since I thought all \"literary SF types\" were into Smith; you \nknow, LeGuin, Ellison, etc.)\n Still, if he'd read very many, he'd've encountered underpeople and \nrobots. And \"Dead Lady\" is a much anthologized classic.\n Yet, the motif is so broad that \"great minds think alike\" could \neasily account for it. From \"The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories\" we \nknow that Wolfe had absorbed Wells's early exploration of the theme.\n FWIW.\n And BTW, thanks for the reminder of one of the most beautiful \npieces in all SF.\n\nNutria" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 09:30 AM 9/9/2002, you wrote:\nThe robots in \"The Dead Lady Of Clown Town\".\n\nLady Panc Ashash, stuck in a robot body as a travel guide:\n\nand the fighter robots sent to kill D'Joan\n\n\n\n\nThis is what we all remember: the first authentic picture tape of the entire\nincident:\n\nThe gold and black sergeant, his milky eyes staring at the Lady Panc Ashash\n\nThe Lady herself, in the pleasant old robot body, lifting a commanding\nhand.\n\nElaine, distraught, half-turning as though she would grab the robot by his\nright arm. Her head is moving so rapidly that her black hair swings as she\nturns.\n\nCharley-is-my-darling shouting, \"I love, love, love!\" at a small hand-\nsome man with mouse-colored hair. The man is gulping and saying nothing.\n\nAll this we know.\n\nThen comes the unbelievable, which we now believe, the event for which\nthe stars and worlds were unprepared.\n\nMutiny.\n\nRobot mutiny.\n\nDisobedience in open daylight.\n\nThe words are hard to hear on the tape, but we can still make them out.\n\nThe recording device on the police ornithopter had gotten a square fix on\nthe face of the Lady Pane Ashash. Lip-readers can see the words plainly;\nnon-lip-readers can hear the words the third or fourth time the tape is run\nthrough the eyebox.\n\nSaid the Lady, \"Overridden.\"\n\nSaid the sergeant, \"No, you're a robot.\"\n\n\"See for yourself. Read my brain. I am a robot. I am also a woman. You\ncannot disobey people. I am people. I love you. Furthermore, you are\npeople. You think. We love each other. Try. Try to attack.\"\n\n\"I cannot,\" said the robot sergeant, his milky eyes seeming to spin\nwith excitement. \"You love me? You mean I'm alive? I exist?\"\n\n\"With love, you do,\" said the Lady Pane Ashash. \"Look at her,\" said the\nLady, pointing to Joan, \"because she has brought you love.\"\n\nThe robot looked and disobeyed the law. His squad looked with him.\n\nHe turned back to the Lady and bowed to her: \"Then you know what we\nmust do, if we cannot obey you and cannot disobey the others.\"\n\"Do it,\"she said sadly, \"but know what you are doing. You are not really\nescaping two human commands. You are making achoice. You. That makes\nyou men.\"\n\nThe sergeant turned to his squad ot man-sized robots: \"You hear that?\n\nShe says we are men. I believe her. Do you believe her?\"\n\n\"We do,\" they cried almost unanimously.\n\nThis is where the picture-tape ends. but we can imagine how the scene\nwas concluded. Elaine had stopped short, just behind the sergeant-robot.\nThe other robots had come up behind her. Charley-is-my-darling had\nstopped talking. Joan was in the act oflifting her hands in blessing, her\nwarm\nbrown dog eyes gone wide with pity and understanding.\nPeople wrote down the things that we cannot see . . . .\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAnd many more\n\n\n hartshorn\n\n\n\n----- Original Message -----\nFrom: \"Dan'l Danehy-Oakes\" \nTo: \nSent: Monday, September 09, 2002 5:58 PM\nSubject: RE: (urth) Heavy Hyacinth" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Hartshorn wrote ..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "The robots in Smith's stories may be precursors of the chems\nand of the many \"moral\" mechanisms in Wolfe's stories (which\nreach as far back as the guard robots in 5HC)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "...okay, I'm blanking. The only robots I remember from\nSmith are the Manshonyaggers, which I somehow can't really\nthink of as \"moral.\" What am I forgetting ...\n\n--Blattid\n\n\n--" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andy Robertson", "address": "andywrobertson at clara.co.uk" }, "date": "2002-09-09T16:30:02+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Smith & Wolfe: Robots", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes. At 46, I really should not be moved to tears when I read again a\npassage from an SF story I have read thirty or forty times before.\n\nThank you for the information on Wolfe and Smith - I am surprised: I had\nthought it was certain that Wolfe read him & knew him.\n\n\n hartshorn\n\n\n\n\n----- Original Message -----" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"James Jordan\" \n thanks for the reminder of one of the most beautiful\npieces in all SF." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2002-09-09T20:20:52+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Smith & Wolfe: Robots", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Oh, yeah. It's very clear in Smith. Something like: Language \nis a sign of the \"image of God\" wherever it is found.\nSpeaking is linked with free will is linked with worship." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "H'mmm. An interesting, if questionable ... what would it be? \nPneumatological? ... point of view ... where \"questionable\" \nis not intended as a pejorative term, since an SF writer is \nfree to take any hypothesis she chooses as a given from which \nto extrapolate, and, at any rate, Smith lived and died before\ncomputers were able to produce plausible language ... your\nmileage may vary of course regarding whether they can today.\n\nAt any rater, this would seem to imply freewill for the \nmanshonyaggers, which I find highly dubious, but that's for \nanother list or something. \n\nCome to think of it, don't the taluses (tali? Taliim? \nTalae?) have a status in the Whorl not unlike that of the \nmanshonyaggers? And a talus does seem to have a certain \namount of free will ... H'mm. So does Oreb. Not at all \nsure about Tik; we don't know him well enough.\n\nOkay, it becomes more interesting when you dig into it.\nAnd there's the whole question of \"standing orders,\" I\nsuppose, which suggests at least some of the limitations \nunder which any plausible conception of free will must \noperate ... Good Lord, is there _anything_ these books\n_aren't_ about?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I asked Wolfe years ago about Smithian influence on \nhim, and he said he was not aware of any. He had not\nread all of Smith, but after our conversation said he\nthought he'd better. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, and it's possible he had read at least most of it\n-- it's kind of surprising how little Smith there is,\nconsidering the breadth and depth of his impact on the\n\"genre.\" (The only name I can think of to compare in this\nconnection is Stanley Weinbaum.) " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " Still, if he'd read very many, he'd've encountered \nunderpeople and \nrobots. And \"Dead Lady\" is a much anthologized classic." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "yes/no. The core Smith stories, the ones you can't seem to\navoid if you read much \"classic\" SF at all, would be \"Scanners\nLive in Vain,\" \"The Ballad of Lost C'Mell,\" and _maybe_ \"Alpha\nRalpha Boulevard*\" or \"The Game of Rat and Dragon.\" Note that I\nam not claiming these as \"the best\" or anything -- just the\nones anthologized to the point of chestnuticity.\n\n-----\n* My personal favorite, and one of two short stories (the\n other being Tiptree's \"The Women Men Don't See\") that have\n had major effects on the direction of my own life.\n-----" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yet, the motif is so broad that \"great minds think alike\"\ncould easily account for it. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As also could \"It'll steam engine when it comes steam engine \ntime,\" my favorite expression of the idea that certain ideas \nseem to float about in the cultural aether, waiting to be \ngrabbed and instantiated. \"Wells's early exploration of the\ntheme\" is right; and, come to think of it, the aforementioned \nWeinbaum's \"A Martian Odyssey\" is another well known approach \nto it from another angle, as is Heinlein's \"Jerry Is A Man.\"\nAnd, doubtless, many others, down to \"Rachel in Love\"...\n\nYou one-one-two, he one-one-two." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andy Robertson", "address": "andywrobertson at clara.co.uk" }, "date": "2002-09-09T18:14:21+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Smith & Wolfe: Robots", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "----- Original Message ----- " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Dan'l Danehy-Oakes\" \nAlpha Ralpha Boulevard*\" .\n\n-----\n* My personal favorite, and one of two short stories (the\n other being Tiptree's \"The Women Men Don't See\") that have\n had major effects on the direction of my own life." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'd love to know how: but I won't ask. \n\n\n hartshorn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andy Robertson", "address": "andywrobertson at clara.co.uk" }, "date": "2002-09-09T18:18:06+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Smith & Wolfe: Robots", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "----- Original Message ----- " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Dan'l Danehy-Oakes\" " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Yet, the motif is so broad that \"great minds think alike\"\ncould easily account for it. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As also could \"It'll steam engine when it comes steam engine \ntime,\" my favorite expression of the idea that certain ideas \nseem to float about in the cultural aether, waiting to be \ngrabbed and instantiated. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"The Quest Of Saint Aquin\" would seem another possible precursor.\n\n\n hartshorn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "William Ansley", "address": "wansley at warwick.net" }, "date": "2002-09-10T03:59:14+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Smith & Wolfe: Robots", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 1:20 PM -0700 9/9/02, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nYou one-one-two, he one-one-two." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "One-one-two yes, two-two-four no!\n\nWhat a rush to be reminded of Cordwainer Smith and Stanley G. \nWeinbaum all in the space of a few messages. Both of these authors \nhad a much greater mind blowing effect on me than Wolfe, but that's \nonly natural because I came to both of them at a much earlier age. In \nfact \"A Martian Odyssey\" was the first SF I ever read and I still \nremember it vividly.\n\nThanks everyone!" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "William Ansley\n\n-- " } ] } ] }