The green man is a fake

António Pedro Marques · 17 Jan 2011, 01:30 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: entonio at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ant=F3nio_Pedro_Marques?=)
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 01:30:53 +0000
Subject: (urth) The green man is a fake
In-Reply-To: <427784.4810.qm at web114705.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
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	<427784.4810.qm at web114705.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <4D339BCD.2070205 at gmail.com>

Jerry Friedman wrote:
>> From: Ant?nio Pedro Marques<entonio at gmail.com>
>
>> 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
>
> Do we know he's homeothermic?  I suppose when he took one of Severian's
> arms to help him escape from the Ascians, Severian might have noticed if
> his hand had been cold, though he was drugged.
>
>>>> and movement. And we know that the  Green Man is a walker
>>>> through the corridors
>>>> of time,  which requires energy approaching full stellar output.
>>>> 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.
>>
>> - Who says the green man lives only on photosynthesis
>
> The green man comes pretty close.
>
> "The green color... is only what you call pond scum.  We have altered it until
> it can
> live in our blood... the tiny plants live and die, and our bodies feed from them
> and
> their dead and require no other nourishment."
>
> (No other nourishment?  No minerals?)

 From there one can see that's not the whole story, as indeed was to be 
expected - is he going to embark on a lecture on his biology to Severian? 
Not likely. Should he have a dozen adaptations in his organism, will he 
describe them to Severian in terms the latter wouldn't even understand? Or 
would he pick on the most visible thing, which happens to be easy to 
explain, and offer it for the whole package?

Also 'require' may mean they can survive without it, but not necessarily do 
everything. Think of a hybrid vehicle in electric mode.

Of course, some minerals are required in very minute quantities, but that's 
only some minerals.

> It's hard to think of another energy source algae inside the body could have.
>
>> - Who  says the green man only uses chlorophyll-based photosynthesis (other,
>> parallel  pigments can make use of other wavelengths)
>
> He's "the color of pale jade".  This means he absorbs less visible light than
> current
> plants (Ribes?).  If Wolfe had said "blackish jade", it would have been a step
> in the
> direction of plausibility.
>
>> - Who says more intense radiation  can't lead to different photosynthetic
>> strategies (heck, even our plants have 3  types)
>
> It would have to be many times more intense.  Mirrors in space?  Another white
> hole or two?
>
>> - Who says photosynthesis is the only path to autotrophy
>
> What else is there?  He doesn't seem adapted to use wind power.  Getting one's
> internal
> algae to parasitize plants through what looks (and probably feels) like human
> skin would
> be a really, really good trick.

There's chemoautotrophy, though of course it alone can't account for everything.

>> - Who says  the green man isn't engineered to be more efficient in his storage
>> of  energy
>> - Who says the green man isn't engineered to be more efficient in his  usage of
>> energy
>
> There's not enough at 100% efficiency, as Jeff said.

Hey, I didn't say production, I said storage and usage. He can store a lot 
when idle and use it more efficiently than we do later on.
For one thing, if he doesn't have digestion, he can do away with a lot of 
costly organs.
Then again I recall his being minute; that may not mean anything in terms of 
surface / mass, but it may mean a simplified internal structure, including 
lighter raw materials.

> However, I'm imagining a world with many fusion plants powering LEDs that shine
> on
> green people as they sleep.  Including shining on them from below through
> transparent
> water or air mattresses.
>
> However however, I suspect Wolfe just committed the Sin Against Niven and didn't
> think it through.

I don't think so, because if he hadn't something in mind he just wouldn't 
have put him there. It's not the king of thing he does. He doesn't put 
Little Green Men in a story just to showcase the cool idea of living on 
chlorophyll. Or maybe he though 'well, this is the classic discredited idea, 
but it's cool, and who's to say it really can't be made to work, so I'll 
just annoy those pesky types'. (Well, I don't know that GW would willingly 
annoy anyone.)

>> (Interestingly, one corollary of your idea is that a  moving, talking plant is
>> an evolutionary  impossibility.)
>
> If by "plant" you mean "something that gets most of its energy from
> photosynthesis on Earth
> as it is now", it would have to move a lot less than us.

One thing is certain, whatever the biology of the green man, if he really 
doesn't ever get any more nourishment than sunlight, then it's very 
different from ours. (Of course one can posit some unknown source of energy, 
but then, as Pedro points out, the whole 'green' thing would be pointless 
and cheap.)

My point was just that one can't counter it scientifically. One can say it's 
unlikely, but not that it's sheer fantasy. We don't have a close enough 
scrutiny of the green man in order to say so.

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