{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/622",
    "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": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 622,
    "subject": "MANSEED spoilers",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-09-06T21:23:31+00:00",
    "last": "1999-09-06T21:23:31+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0010-0016@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-09-06T21:23:31+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) MANSEED spoilers",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Okay, so the recommended book MANSEED (by Jack Williamson) floated up onto\nmy shore and I read it. It was pretty good, a slowboat colonization of\ninterstellar space deal, with a surprising (for me) twist of Ballard.\n\n\n\n\nSpoilers to follow.\n\n\n\n\n\nRight.   With regard to what I was saying before about the ethical\ndownsides to genetic seedships, MANSEED rates as follows:\n\nThe scheme is a hundred or a thousand tiny fusion ships, each sent to a\ndifferent target star.  Upon arriving, the first thing that the ship (a\ncharacter not unlike a less-abled SHIP WHO SANG) does is the construction\nof a Defender (called a \"human/machine\" creature, which sounds like a\ncyborg, but it is difficult to fathom the \"human\" element, beyond\n\"software,\" since it certainly doesn't seem to be biological in any way).\nThen, if all is good, the ship's kwik-gro-klone-tank (as I'm calling it;\nBusby's \"zoom womb\" is faster) cranks out forty adult human individuals,\none at a time, one per month: this then forms the initial human colony.\n\nPrototyping (or \"what does 90% success mean?\"): all happens off screen, so\nthe ethical issues aren't covered (to be fair, that would make it another\nbook).\n\nParenting of initial human infants: unnecessary, since the clones come out\nas adults, and fully able to talk, etc.  (This is something of a dodge, but\nit fits in with the overall story, etc.  Then again, it continues to blur\nthe boundaries between the quasi-cyborgs and the quasi-clones; robots vs.\nreplicants . . . the humans won't arrive until the replicants procreate.)\n\n(The Defenders have genitals which serve them as pleasure organs, but not\nas organs of elimination, nor procreation.  Which is kinda sorta weird, to\ngive your robots.  And another problem: the whole idea of the clones)\n\nTension between robot terraformers and human colonists: actually there =is=\nsome of this, which is quite nice.  The defenders are envious of the\nhumans, the humans are envious of the defenders.\n\nFurthermore, the planet in question was previously seeded by a Manseed\nship, its dirt-scratching colonies grown to shiney metropoli, and\nsubesequently destroyed by alien robot space invaders.  But then the\nmysterious alien masters arrive and they turn out to be Manseed-grown\nhumans, too.  So Murphy's Rule applies: interstellar waves of confusion,\nsnafu, and fubar.  And continuing tension between human and robot.\n\n(The story itself is told in two main, alternating tracks: one case of a\ndamaged ship arriving at its target star and going through the process; and\nthe whole gathering of the specialists back on Earth, trying to hammer the\nproject together from dream to reality.  The two tracks work surprisingly\nwell--separate tension is maintained in both, and issues spill over from\none into the other.)\n\n(One weakness: each section reads like a stand-alone story, which may be\nwhat they all were originally, but reading it as a novel makes some of the\n\"infonuggets\" at the beginning of each part a tad grating.  If this is a\n\"fixup\" novel as the structure suggests [the publication page fails to\nmention when and where the elements appeared], it could have been smoothed\nout a bit for novelization.  So!)\n\n(Of course I have all sorts of quibbles with the technology, starting with\nthe fusion drive.  But I also believe in not letting technology get in the\nway of a good story and good storytelling, so I won't belabor the\ntechnology here.)\n\n=mantis=\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}