Fairies and Wolfe

Jeff Wilson · 30 Mar 2012, 15:28 · from 2012-March.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at clueland.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:28:22 -0500
Subject: (urth) Fairies and Wolfe
In-Reply-To: <36657F5D1C0E40AA928985D5C2A5B42E@Rover>
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	<36657F5D1C0E40AA928985D5C2A5B42E@Rover>
Message-ID: <4F75D116.1050507 at clueland.com>

On 3/29/2012 12:28 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
> *From:* Jeff Wilson <mailto:jwilson at clueland.com>
> On 3/29/2012 7:57 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
>  > *From:* David Stockhoff <mailto:dstockhoff at verizon.net>
>  > > 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.
> I agree that Claw was written before Drexler popularised the concept of
> nanomachines, and that Wolfe would probably not have been thinking
> specifically of them. But I think it actually is the sort of thing he
> deliberately leaves open. I don?t believe he would imagine that Juturna
> could do this by ?magic?, even if he has not thought much about the
> specific sort of technology she would use.
> [Of course there is also the possibility that she is lying, but I doubt it.]

What/where does she mention it?


-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at clueland.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >

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