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

jerry_friedman · 01 Jan 2006, 18:39 · from rec.arts.sf.written.2006.mbox

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From: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Blish's "Conscience" vs. Wolfe's "Fifth Head"
Date: 1 Jan 2006 10:39:48 -0800
Message-ID: <1136140788.099115.191800 at g43g2000cwa.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> <1135977318.382507.90100 at o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com> <MPG.1e20a0c25ed57a9398a911 at news1.eircom.net>

Gerry Quinn wrote:
> > Gerry Quinn wrote:
>
> > > 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.
>
> Even if that is why (and I don't know that it was necessarily the
> reason), having a flaw that cannot be cured does not prove that one
> cannot at least improve!

Of course not.  I think Galt is right to say that Wolfe is against this
attempt at improvement, and that he probably is against many like it.
He's certainly in favor of the traditional method of doing one's best
to live up to one's values, and the Christian method of trying to
accept God's grace (which he presumably believes in).  Galt left that
out of his sweeping statement.  I suspect Wolfe's extremely dubious
about other methods.

> [And you don't have to be a Catholic to believe in original sin - one
> might draw a similar conclusion from the study of Darwin!]

Similar, but not the same.  For one thing, in sf, the flaws we inherit
from our ape ancestors are conceivably curable.

> > > 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.
....

> Interesting.  I lent my copy, and I want it back!  Of course Wolfe
> plays with lots of things, and not all the clues need add up to a
> single answer.

I certainly can't claim I know what everything in the original novella
adds up to, and I understand even less about the other two (which Wolfe
apparently didn't have in mind when he wrote the first one).

-- 
Jerry Friedman

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