Those chems

Roy C. Lackey · 03 Sep 2002, 19:36 · from urth-v0209.mbox · original

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Those chems
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 14:36:34 -0500
Message-ID: <urth-v0209-1658 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0209/1658.txt.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Matthew wrote:
>The suggestion that Marble's behaviour is an affectation is an interesting
>one.
>
>An affectation. A show, pretense, or display. Behavior that is assumed
>rather than natural; artificiality. A particular habit, as of speech or
>dress, adopted to give a false impression.

That definition fits Marble perfectly!

>Programmed behaviour - in the literal sense of being codes and
>instructions - is as "natural" to the chems as any learend behaviour is to
>humans.  Marble's modesty is exactly the opposite of an affectation.  It
>is likely as deep seated in her as any instinct in us, perhaps more so,
>and for a very specific reason: to make her (and her kind) not only fit in
>with the human society in which she exists but also to make her a model
>for that society.  Yes, it is an artifice to give a false impression -
>that she is human.  But it is not assumed or adopted: it and other such
>manerisms are fundamental to her creation.

I don't think so. Marble was not programmed on Urth to be a sibyl. I don't
know how/why she became a sibyl, but several decades back she was a maid.

>So too with gender.  Gender-less chems would not, could not have performed
>so well in the role assigned them. A difference so fundamental between
>gendered humans and non-gendered chems would have been a significant
>barrier to the chems function.  Just look at where Marble is; in a
>religious establishment and a teacher of the young. Church and school, two
>central institutions for society and thus most effectively placed.  She
>should be an examplar for the children and adults who come into contact
>with her.

After entering the religious order she "assumed" and "adopted" the
conventions of the order. Marble is the only example I am aware of of a chem
entering the order. That being so, her programmers on Urth assuredly did
_not_ waste her storage space by giving her unneeded (and from her
programmers' perspective, pointless) "manerisms" "fundamental to her
creation". I mentioned that chems have a certain ability to learn from
experience. That is what she did. She adopted the mannerisms of the bio
sibyls, acquiring her modesty from their nun-like example.

Marble and Olivine are the only female chems I can recall from the LS/SS
books. Olivine does not share Marble's sense of modesty. She spied on Silk's
nakedness. Olivine clothes herself like a human, not from innate modesty,
but because male chems she encounters want to mate with her. She doesn't
want to mate, apparently because she is "ashamed" of her imperfections.
(RTTW, 240)

[snip]

>What should our view of chems be?  The mainframe view of a small, useful
>tool?  Or the passenger view of personality and fellow?

Wolfe clearly intended the latter, as I think I indicated. Olivine is a
pathetic figure, like some street urchin out of Dickens. But, hell's bells,
somebody smear some grease on her sticking relays and get rid of that
annoying stammer and lurch!

-Roy

--=20

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net