S&S vs. SF in BotNS

Gerry Quinn · 21 Dec 2011, 22:05 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: gerry at bindweed.com (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:05:58 -0000
Subject: (urth) S&S vs. SF in BotNS
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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes 


> Gerry Quinn wrote:

> > What powers of Mucor are you saying are magic?

> All of them.
But she has a modified brain, and the things she does are similar to the things done by others, who do not seem to do them by magic.  Why do you say Mucor in particular is magic?


> > 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). 
Yes, but since neither Silk nor Horn was ever possessed, that is the only information we can have.  It is intrinsic in the structure of the book, and not a reason to be suspicious.  
Possession by a god seems to be quite similar to possession by Mucor.  It leaves similar traces: Mamelta says ?I feel I am Mucor?.  While the possessee may not remember events, they seem to be compatible with what we are told by Kypris-in-Chenille

> > 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.

If a chem?s soul is not its mind, what is it?

And what about the Whorl gods?  We are told what they put inside possessees is the pattern of the god, the program.  That seems to identify the soul with the program, and by extension the mind. 

- Gerry Quinn




 
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