Mystery of Ascia/Agia

Andrew Mason · 21 Jan 2011, 12:29 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com (Andrew Mason)
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2011 12:29:59 +0000
Subject: (urth) Mystery of Ascia/Agia
Message-ID: <AANLkTinzxfbw1=wsVoKD4jPr_9Ag9jYiw77ogLYaQWn2 at mail.gmail.com>

Son of Witz wrote:

>> But each country has (allegedly) a natural type to which the people
>> living in it conform after twenty generations or so. So even if North
>> Americans are descended from people who now live in Asia, they
>> shouldn't look Asian.
>>
>
> Fair point.
> I don't know anything about that biological theory. Sounds very theoretical. ?I also wonder when that idea came into vogue. ?I don't expect/require Hard SF rules for this sort of thing, personally.

It's not a real-world theory; it's a Wolfean theory, put forward by
Severian in _Urth_. I'm not sure if Wolfe actually believes it, or if
it's a fig-leaf for the existence of what seem to be current races
millions of years in the future.

>
> So, if my theory is right, that the culture of Kim Lee Soong was asian, and this culture is the humanity that spread into the universe with war, and that this culture still survives in Ascia, it makes perfect sense to think that "asian" is a much more likely source "soulless.".

I certainly hope it's not a comment on a particular culture. _Long
Sun_ and _Short Sun_ seem to show that all cultures are prone to war -
we get Arabs fighting (probably) South Americans, Indians fighting
Chinese, Italians fighting one another, and Dutch people having a
revolution. And the Ascian set up wasameant to overcome this tendency
to war, though the Autarch doesn't think it's a good way of doing so.
>

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