Subject: (urth) Pinocchio vs. the Tin Man

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 17:28:31 +0000

>Matthew Weber taunts:
>Wouldn't Jonas be a case of exactly that?
>
>Crush goes for the bait:
>Yep. He would, among others.

I'm not sure what is going on with Jonas, what he means by his intent to
become repaired (presumably it means he wants to become fully biological so
as to be better suited for Jolenta).  I guess it all resolves this way:
since Severian heard the utterance and saw Jonas go into the mirror, the
Claw heard it too, so that later on at that point in Severian's life when
he really needed a friend, yet all there was at hand was a corpse, then the
Claw drew down the Jonas software from the borderland between Briah and
Yesod, installed it in the reanimated corpse, and thereby solved two wishes
with one snappy miracle.

In any event, the transition from non-biological to biological is the
Pinocchio scenario.  Which is interesting because we tend to talk about
Jonas as being the posterboy for the opposite, the Tin Man of Oz (a
biological made non-biological).  Or Jonas as the Steadfast Tin Soldier
(crippled; in love with a woman not of his type; swallowed by fish,
delivered back to his first place, then cast into fiery dissolution).

=mantis=

Sirius Fiction
booklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley
29 copies of "Snake's-hands" until OP!
http://www.siriusfiction.com/

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From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 18:01:56 +0000

--- Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com> wrote:
> as to be better suited for Jolenta).

Funny, that wasn't my impression at all--I thought he wanted to become
fully robotic--though he is in love or something with Jolenta.  Can we
imagine a prosthetic-bearing bio in love with a chem wanting to become
fully a chem?

> I guess it all resolves this way:

Or in possibly more sinister style, the Jonas software was hanging
around and took its opportunity.

Either way, do we see Miles going through a Silk-like recapture of his
identity?

> Pinocchio scenario.

Not to mention Galatea, the Bicentennial Man, and Severian's brush-
into-squirrel dream.  Maybe above all, the amazing fact that we Homo
sapiens work by the laws of physics and consequently chemistry; we're
literally chems.

> Which is interesting because we tend to talk about

Where's that from?

Thanks for the comment on _Michaelmas_, by the way.  I own that book,
but I never made any of those connections!

Jerry Friedman

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 19:13:29 +0000

Jerry Friedman quoting mantis:

>fully robotic--though he is in love or something with Jolenta.

I agree completely with Jerry and have said so before. Jonas loathed his bio
replacement parts. When he said he would come back for Jolenta when he had
been repaired, when he was sane and whole, he meant when proper repairs had
been made and he was quit of his bio parts. The proof is on the last page of
chapter XVI of CLAW:

-------------
    "We crashed. It had been so long, on Urth, that there was no port when
we returned, no dock. Afterward my hand was gone, and my face. My shipmates
repaired me as well as they could, but there were no parts anymore, only
biological material." With the steel hand I had always thought scarcely more
than a hook, he picked up the hand of muscle and bone as a man might lift a
bit of filth to cast it away."
------------

All the more reason to wonder what he wanted with Jolenta.

-Roy

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 22:03:52 +0000

Jerry Friedman wrote:
Can we imagine a prosthetic-bearing bio in love with a chem wanting to
become fully a chem?

Response:
It is not a two-way street. It is the most natural of inclinations to prefer
things that are more authentic; to want to BE more authentic. Religious
apologist have declared in once sense or another that the *proper* urge to
worship the Divine comes from the knowledge that we are made in his image.

By the same token, Pinocchio, the Tin Man, and Data (of Star Trek) all want
to become "real" not just the semblance of reality. Lemur disparaged the
Mainframe gods as "ghosts" not because he believed in life after death but
because he didn't - he would assert that they (and also himself, to his own
dismay) were only a semblance of the "real" persons - actually Kypris
suggests this understanding of herself as well.

So it IS logical that a chem would want to become human. It is NOT logical
that a god would. The reasons for Jonas' disparagement of human parts and
Potto's talus' revulsion toward human "filth" are another subject but it's
not hard to see why they might feel that way even if they would become human
if given the opportunity - and that one of the parallels is people who scorn
"holy" relics.

Still, there IS Mr. Million (5HoC) who chose (with regret) to become a
robot.

-- Crush

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 01:32:18 +0000

> imagine a prosthetic-bearing bio in love with a chem wanting to become

Forget about the in love part, I think there are plenty of people who
would choose a super-strong, nigh-immortal robot body over a frail
biological one, even if one had to give up various human pleasures and
expereiences.

Greg Egan's _Diaspora_ imagines a future in which some people are
bio-modified, some are downloaded into and live in various "Mainframes,"
and some live with their minds downloaded into robot bodies.

So yes, some of us can imagine it.

	-- M.

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