Blish's "Conscience" vs. Wolfe's "Fifth Head"

Gerry Quinn · 29 Dec 2005, 14:55 · from rec.arts.sf.written.2005.mbox

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From: Gerry Quinn <gerryq at DELETETHISindigo.ie>
Subject: Re: Blish's "Conscience" vs. Wolfe's "Fifth Head"
Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 14:55:03 -0000
Message-ID: <MPG.1e1e0926b714556398a8f6 at news1.eircom.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
References: <1135781723.546189.19520 at g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <douf3o$bho$1 at news.datemas.de> <1135795018.842798.188130 at g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1135804521.649021.27000 at o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com> <1135815134.304806.19780 at g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>

> > I have read "Fifth Head" several times, and I never saw it as
> > condemning cloning itself.
> >
> > In the case of the story, an aberrant personality attempts to improve
> > himself through successive generations of clones. But improvement means
> > change, and I don't think he really wants to change himself. So he ends
> > up repeating the same mistakes, and never getting better.
> 
> Well, I see it as basically a statement that mankind can't be improved.

Sounds like a lot to read into a story involving clones that don't 
improve. 

The second part features humans who disimprove (in most ways anyway, 
though they develop psychic powers), and aliens who do improve (at 
least if emulating man is considered better than emulating rocks and 
trees).  So maybe you are on to something with the 'improvement' theme.  
But you read too much of your own obsessions into it.

> You see we were made the way we are by our "creator" and this is the
> only way we can be (ie Biblical viewpoint). Any attempt at improvement
> is "evil" and goes against the will of our "creator." 

One attempt at improvement that fails hardly says that all attempts are 
evil.  Nor, if it is evil, does it indicate *why* it is evil.  Nor, if 
man cannot be improved, *why* man cannot be improved.

In the novel, cloning is banned on Earth, hence the experiments can 
only be conducted on a frontier planet.  Presumably cloning tends to 
cause problems.  That is hardly an exceptional premise for a SF novel.  
Nor is it especially religious, or even technologically or socially 
unlikely. 

> ones are
> unnatural and evil. Blah, blah, blah. But this is all so stupid and
> lame that I'll hide these ignorant sentiments as the unstated
> underlying basis of a story.

I think you are the one with strange issues.  I suspect you would 
dislike most of Wolfe's work even more, though, since he does value the 
religious impulse - something that appears to enrage you.

- Gerry Quinn

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