Fairies and Wolfe

Craig Brewer · 29 Mar 2012, 17:45 · from 2012-March.txt.gz

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From: cnbrewer at yahoo.com (Craig Brewer)
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:45:43 -0500
Subject: (urth) Fairies and Wolfe
In-Reply-To: <4F748F3A.7030807 at clueland.com>
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There's also the fact that the sun is renewed through some pretty spectacular technology, too. So if the central image of renewal and rebirth is technological...

Perhaps the difference is in the use. Baldanders is tech without wisdom and with hubris. Presumably, the Hiero-dul/gram/etc. combine technology with wisdom, understanding, at least more than Baldanders. Even Dr. Talos seems more human than Baldanders.

On Mar 29, 2012, at 11:35 AM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at clueland.com> wrote:

> On 3/29/2012 7:57 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
>> *From:* David Stockhoff <mailto:dstockhoff at verizon.net>
>> **
>> 
>> > I highly doubt that there is a correlation between "losing
>> technology" and true
>> > spiritual advancement in Wolfe, or entities like Jonas and the chems
>> would
>> > not be portrayed so humanistically.
>> Abaia, Erebus et al don?t obviously use technology either.
>> Of course it?s entirely possible and to my mind likely that Abaia, the
>> Green Man and the Neighbours have extremely advanced technology, so
>> advanced that it looks like magic. I speculated before that if a kiss
>> from Juturna can make Severian capable of breathing underwater, it may
>> well be that her saliva contains nanomachines that will remodel his
>> organs of respiration.
> 
> 
> Baldanders certainly uses technology to adapt himself to the water, Juturna may be likewise adapted with gills concealed by her green hair.
> 
> Nanomachines weren't a thing at the time of the BotNS' writing, and I don't think it fits the retro theme to invent "new" scientific justifications.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Jeff Wilson - jwilson at clueland.com
> Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
> < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >
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