Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 15 Dec 2011, 19:35 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:35:25 -0800
Subject: (urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?
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	<37C4859FAD55407DBA8779047C8C609B@Rover>
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Gerry Quinn wrote:

> You said: ?a sword, a giant, a sleeping beauty, magic, palaces?.? But none
> of those are really much like their fairy-tale counterparts.? The sword has
> no magic powers.? Baldanders, fair enough, Severian even fights him in his
> castle, though not for gold.? Dorcas isn?t really a sleeping beauty ? we
> don?t know she was dead until she is already leaving the narrative.? Magic
> is tech.? Palaces... the House Absolute is underground.
>
> What we have learned of these things from fairy-tales doesn?t really help us
> here.? They don?t mirror their fairy-tale counterparts.? BotNS really isn?t
> a fairy-tale in any strong sense.? Or so it seems to me.
>
> Conversely, understanding magic as technology does help us see what?s going
> on.

Contraconversely, understanding technology as magic, a la Clarke's
Third Law, _also_ helps us see what's going on. Wolfe goes out of his
way to provide a pseudoscientific explanation for at least some of
Severian's miracles; but does anybody really believe that they are
_not_ miracles? The clue for this is near the beginning of CLAW, where
it is observed that the real miracle is that the laws of the Universe
are such that the Cathedral of the Pelerines will rise
non-miraculously: Wolfe is reminding us that there will always be a
way to "explain away" a miracle ... but that miracles happen,
nonetheless. (This is also my understanding of Dr Crane's
"explanation" of Silk's enlightenment, btw: plausible bullshit.)

tBotNS is indeed a fairy story, a once-upon-a-time whisking away of
the reader to a land where miracles happen, giants (who somehow
resembles Queequeg...) battle heroes, the dead walk, and monarchs live
in invisible palaces. (Even the invisible palace hides an invisible
palace!) If it questions the assumptions of the fairy story, and
especially the happy ending, well so too does it question the
assumptions of classic science fantasy: and we cannot understand that
questioning unless we understand "what we have learned of these things
from fairy-tales."

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

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