S&S vs. SF in BotNS

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 21 Dec 2011, 21:25 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:25:38 -0800
Subject: (urth) S&S vs. SF in BotNS
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Gerry Quinn wrote:

>> Because Wolfe is not such a fool as to offer a scientific (or
>> psientific -- which can also mean "pseudo-scientific") explanation for
>> the soul.
>
> What powers of Mucor are you saying are magic?

All of them.

> The Whorl gods? possession
> of people is explicitly glossed as technology rather than magic,

Correct.

> and that surely also involves the soul.

Not so fast. We get nothing from the point of view of a possessed
person, except at a double remove (what is told to Silk, as re-related
from him to the authors of the Book of Silk). We really don't know
whether the possessed person is conscious in any way of being/having
been possessed -- indeed, when a possessor leaves the possessee, Wolfe
seems to deliberately skim around the question of what it was like for
the possessee.

> Do chems have souls?

They seem to!


> One imagines so, and Mucor doesn?t mistake Quetzal for one.? Yet
> their soul presumably starts off as a computer program.

No. A chem's _mind_ starts as a program. The mind is not the soul.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

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