traveling north

Jeff Wilson · 06 Jun 2010, 04:51 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Sat, 05 Jun 2010 23:51:46 -0500
Subject: (urth) traveling north
In-Reply-To: <4C0AF273.7070303 at sky.com>
References: <4C06DFE0.3040805 at sky.com>
	<4C06E4C7.7020706 at sky.com>	<476916.92692.qm at web50707.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
	<4C0AF273.7070303 at sky.com>
Message-ID: <4C0B2962.1050509 at io.com>

On 6/5/2010 7:57 PM, Jane Delawney wrote:

> And so on. Of course at this point Jonas diverges into a tale which
> sounds like a fairy-story or legend, and it's entirely possible that the
> whole statement is such a tale, that the reference to the 'citadel in
> the north' is storytelling, and not related to the (subcreated)
> 'reality' of Urth. But Jonas is a survivor of ancient times and at base
> a machine, not a human; this is in addition 'the only tale (he) knows -
> or nearly so'. Do robots tell fairy stories?
>
> In Wolfe, they probably do :) However this entire passage gives me pause.

In Wolfe, a "robot" is often the most or the only reliable source of 
information. The can go wrong or be fed bad data, but they generally 
seem free of motivation to lie, though for this purpose you'd have to 
rule out the recorded personalities on the Whorl.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >

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