The green man is a fake

Jeff Wilson · 16 Jan 2011, 19:37 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2011 13:37:59 -0600
Subject: (urth) The green man is a fake
In-Reply-To: <F62DE84A31734BAA9E76586471608470@jill>
References: <SNT123-W358B848CDF3BEC307BB043CFF50 at phx.gbl>
	<F62DE84A31734BAA9E76586471608470@jill>
Message-ID: <4D334917.1060306 at io.com>

On 1/16/2011 12:01 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
> From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>
>> The amount of sunlight hitting the area of human skin is not enough
>> energty to allow
>> homeothermy and movement.

Preaching to the choir, though I hadn't posted about this since you were 
yclept bsharp.

>> And we know that the Green Man is a walker
>> through the corridors
>> of time, which requires energy approaching full stellar output.

If it does, that coming from the the White Fountain seems sufficient.

>> Something is not right with
>> this guy.
>
> Correct about homeothermy and movement. As has been noted before, Wolfe
> is not writing hard SF, for most authors of which this would be a slight
> stumbling block. As for Severian's even more thermodynamically
> challenging capabilities such as resurrection of the dead and walking
> the corridors of time, it is not really clear how much energy it
> requires. The merchanism used by the Green Man appears to be different
> anyway, as he can apparently range through a wider period of time.

Maybe. They are both firmly identified as Corridor walkers and the light 
of the White Fountain extends forward into the time of Ushas, so both 
could be fountain-powered. This would be a good reason to have greenness 
that can't feed you, if only to connect to that light without benefit of 
Severian's terminated bloodline.

>> It could be argued that Wolfe was aware of these problems but created
>> a fictional green man anyway
>> just because he is a cool character. I'd be happy with this
>> explanation except the green man
>> is not a cool guy. He is a self-admitted liar and he has the creepy
>> laugh that is even worse
>> than the alzabo's. What purpose does this laugh serve? He also fails
>> to live up to his promise
>> to rescue Severian in repayment for being rescued by him.
>
> The laughter is easily explained as expressing the Green Man's
> disappointment and despair after he had briefly hoped in Severian, and
> then found him to be an ignorant primitive babbling about a New Sun of
> which the green Man had no knowledge (because in his time it is
> forgotten). And he never promises to rescue Severrian. He does help
> Severian with information, which proves to be correct. And that's
> basically all we know about him. Seems cool enough to me.


Yes, at least as cool as Severian, who is also a self-admitted liar, 
self-admitted cannibal, and comitter of genocide (no one left to admit 
that to). Nasty laugh? Imagine what kind of cackle you get out of a guy 
who shares his cranium with the lover whose death he was a party to 
(twice) and his hated pimp-king who rubber-stamped her death warrant. 
"Worse than the alzabo" - at least the victimhood is temporary for the 
beast, not so the analeptic.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >

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