Is Agia a Robot?

David Stockhoff · 20 Jun 2010, 21:44 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 17:44:06 -0400
Subject: (urth) Is Agia a Robot?
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Agia becomes simpler if you drop any notion of being synthetic or otherworldly. But not less important.

She still has (1) light-based descriptions (2) the effect she has on Severian (spiritual burning) (3) her name (4) her relationship with Agilus and so on. These need to be accounted for.



The fact is that Agia's whole purpose from beginning to end seems to be to work as an antagonist to Severian.
> To me this suggests that the character is much more important and mysterious that it seems at first sight, and
> that the oddities about her beg for some grand explanation. Iow, I don't think the odd hints point to her being a
> robot, but rather to something much more extraordinary (whether part of it is being a robot or not, and bearing
> in mind that pretty much everything in Wolfe's books is extraordinary, both in etymological and pedestrian
> sense).


As I said, I don't agree.



Jerry Friedman

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