Even more iron men

William H. Ansley · 28 Apr 1999, 23:42 · from urth-v0026.mbox · original

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From: "William H. Ansley" <wansley at warwick.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Even more iron men
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 23:42:22
Message-ID: <urth-v0026-0052 at digest.urth.net>
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I have to side emphatically with Tony Ellis here. I think his aguments so
far have been more than sufficient to show that the (pre-crash) Jonas was
not a hollow "powered armor/space suit" android like Sidero, but I doubt
Roy C Lackey will agree.

Here another piece of evidence. In _The Claw of the Conciliator_ on the
last page of chapter XVI, entitled "Jonas", (p. 306) of the Orb edition of
_Shadow & Claw_, we have this:

---------------
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.
---------------

Now it strains credulity that even such a poor observer as Severian proves
himself again and again to be could call a metal hand that looks like a
gauntlet that might fit a large man scarcely more than a hook. Just about
anyone, even--I would think--Severian, seeing a man with a normal hand and
face whose other hand looks like a large jointed metal glove would assume
that there was another normal human hand in the glove. You wouldn't assume
that the man was crippled, with the metal hand being a crude prosthetic
replacement.

William Ansley

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