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

jerry_friedman · 30 Dec 2005, 21:15 · from rec.arts.sf.written.2005.mbox

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From: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Blish's "Conscience" vs. Wolfe's "Fifth Head"
Date: 30 Dec 2005 13:15:18 -0800
Message-ID: <1135977318.382507.90100 at o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>
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> <MPG.1e1e0926b714556398a8f6 at news1.eircom.net>

Gerry Quinn wrote:
> > > 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.

True.

> Nor, if it is evil, does it indicate *why* it is evil.

In this case, because it's egoistical, I think.

> Nor, if
> man cannot be improved, *why* man cannot be improved.

Because Wolfe is a Roman Catholic and believes in original sin, a human
flaw that can't be cured.

> 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.

I think it is religious.  Our hero lives at 666 Rue du Saltimbanque,
after all.  (I'm not sure about the street name, but I'm sure about the
Number.)  Another hint is that this gene wolf's name is quite possibly
Gene Wolfe.  I don't know whether the real Wolfe was saying that all
human cloning is evil--though if anyone interviews him, I think the
question would be a good one to ask, now that he probably could be
cloned--but I think he was at least saying that the Beast or the
Antichrist or whatever is that close.  Someone much like the author
could start a project to create it now by making people who are removed
from the natural process of reproduction--does that mean removed from
Christian redemption?  The day when "they'll want us" is the beginning
of the Christian Eschaton.  Rather chilling, even for a non-Christian
like me if I apply some WSOD.  So I think Galt_57 is on the right
track, except...

> > 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.

....it's not stupid or ignorant.  I see no reasoning Wolfe is incapable
of and nothing he doesn't know that leads him to it.  It's just based
on beliefs that you and I don't share, John.

> I think you are the one with strange issues.

There is no chance that he takes it personally because he's the 57th
clone of John Galt.  Right?

> 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.

Not only that, he believes in a very specific religion.

-- 
Jerry Friedman

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