The green man is fake

Pedro Pereira · 17 Jan 2011, 01:07 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: domus_artemis at hotmail.com (Pedro Pereira)
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 03:07:05 +0200
Subject: (urth) The green man is fake
In-Reply-To: <4D3394C1.4060304 at gmail.com>
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I agree with your stance overall. All I'm saying is to be carefull (no one in particular) with the wolfean "fundamentalism". Wolfe isn't beyond error neither does he know everything about everything. I'm not accusing anyone, but I've seen that "fundamentalism" in this list before.
 
Pedro
 
> Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 01:00:49 +0000
> From: entonio at gmail.com
> To: urth at lists.urth.net
> Subject: Re: (urth) The green man is fake
> 
> Pedro Pereira wrote:
> > Hey, I'm all for it. I just think that it is a bit too much when people
> > analyse every little bit of info from the books expecting it to be fully
> > explainable and scientifically demonstrable as if Wolfe was writing a
> > scientific paper. It's not the exercise in itself, notice; it's the
> > unchakable "belief" (for lack of a better word) from some posters (no one
> > in particular) that if Wolfe writes it then it has to be 100%
> > scientifically sound and interpreted literaly. Kind of reminds me of a
> > discussion a few years ago when some people were trying to discover
> > "when" on Urth was the story set (in relation to our present time) by
> > looking at descriptions of geology, geography, stratigraphy (!!!), etc in
> > the books. Wolfe certainly thought about some of this stuff so that the
> > book feels coherent, but expecting descriptions to be used as fully
> > workable data to derive such interpretations is really taking the" Word
> > of The Man" a bit to far.
> 
> But I don't mean that GW can't err or that he somehow is privy to advanced 
> science of whose toys he gives us some glimpses. What I mean is that he 
> isn't the sort to include conspicuous stuff in his stories just for the sake 
> of including it. All evidence I've seen so far suggests that when he does 
> include something, it's for a reason, and it's well thought out. He can of 
> course get some details wrong, but if there is some apparent egregious error 
> the odds are that there is a reason for it.
> 
> In the case of the green man it can even point to the fact, as the OP seems 
> to have said, that he isn't completely reliable.
> 
> > As for the Green Man, I don't remember what was in the books fully, thats
> > why I said "If I remember correctly". Anyway, assuming that he lives from
> > photosynthesis alone, he could even be "the Black Man" and fully use all
> > the pigments available to him to properly extract solar energy; it still
> > wouldn't change a thing. As for the idea that he could use other "means",
> > "efficient storage", that we don't know "everything about everything" in
> > science and so on, the problem is that if we go in that direction then we
> > can as well write whatever we want and then just say that maybe someday
> > we will find things we can't even imagine now, like atomic energy some
> > decades back. In that case, even fantasy becomes science and the exercise
> > we are indulging in turns useless.
> 
> Enter whatsisname's laws.
> This last point is the important one, and a very important one at that. What 
> I can say is that it's a trade-off. GW doesn't seem to just write what he 
> pleases with no rhyme or reason; there seems to be logic behind the edifice 
> and its pursuit tends to be rewarding. Of course, at some points it all may 
> look like smoke and mirrors, but the key word, I think, is trust.
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