plus building fusion reactors The Whorl list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 30 Oct 1998 https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/560 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. ============================================================================== Mark Millman — 30 Oct 1998, 15:41 > On 30 October 1998 at 4:46 am GMT, Greg Neyman wrote: > Matthew, you bring an interesting point, about the fact that > chems should be able to build their children, ergo there > should be fusion reactor parts available, especially con- > sidering that chems multiplied a lot less than Pas expected > (according to Hammerstone) ... so why was it that people > couldn't build these reactors ... maybe they didn't know how, > but they could ask chems ... they have the plans hardwired > in them ... But we're also told that chems have to go through a lot of trial and error to build their children, and that each chem has only -half- the knowledge necessary to build children; i.e., no "clon- ing" for chems--they have to be married (or at least in a rela- tionship) to reproduce. So it might not be so easy just to ask chems how to build convenient little fusion plants. Also, the Ayuntamiento's chemical duplicates, which I think we can all agree aren't quite kosher, must use chems' fusion powerpacks. This suggests to me that not only should the chems' inherent reproductive rate be lower than that of bios (something mentioned in the books), it's possible it was slowed even further because they couldn't find the necessary parts to build their children, because all the parts have been used up by black mechanics' circles and the like. The fact that we haven't seen a lot of obvious fusion packs out in the Whorl is far from a suggestion that they're not actually out there. The Lake Limna sub is a good candidate for fusion power, as are the Flyers' powerpacks (though those are clearly legitimate). Nacre *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Michael Straight — 30 Oct 1998, 16:07 follows, by subject match Mark Millman > On Fri, 30 Oct 1998, Mark Millman wrote: > On 30 October 1998 at 4:46 am GMT, Greg Neyman wrote: > > Matthew, you bring an interesting point, about the fact that > > chems should be able to build their children, ergo there > > should be fusion reactor parts available, especially con- > > sidering that chems multiplied a lot less than Pas expected > > (according to Hammerstone) ... so why was it that people > > couldn't build these reactors ... maybe they didn't know how, > > but they could ask chems ... they have the plans hardwired > > in them ... > But we're also told that chems have to go through a lot of trial > and error to build their children, and that each chem has only > -half- the knowledge necessary to build children; i.e., no "clon- > ing" for chems--they have to be married (or at least in a rela- > tionship) to reproduce. So it might not be so easy just to ask > chems how to build convenient little fusion plants. Perhaps the program for reproduction is not consciously accessible to the chems. Try asking a computer that runs an automobile factory how to make a combustion engine. A chem may not know how to make a fusion reactor any more than I know how to make a human stomach (other than by making a baby with my wife, that is). -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------