"sibyl" as in "multiple personalities"
Now that we're plunging into the question of how many personalities are in/make up Maytera Marble, I'm reminded of the 1970s book and tv movie "Sibyl" that was all about the woman who had multiple personalities. Interesting touchstone, and I wonder if influenced Gene Wolfe's notion of Marble.
Leaving aside the complexities of Short Sun's multiple personalities, I guess my first question would be:
Is Marble's scattered nature due to an inherent quality of her original state, or is it due to a critical mass of recycled parts?
Because the swordmaster, for example, has a leg made from five others, iirc, and he does not seem to show the weirdness. Granted he is a bio, but we are saying that Rose herself may have been influenced by her chem parts.
So is there a level of prosthetic inclusion where the items are purely prosthetic (human level), and then a level beyond that where the prosthetics begin to influence the individual (cyborg), up to a level where the prosthetics either take over the individual or cause it to disintegrate under the babble (robot)? (This does have some bearing on the issue of Horn as a software prosthetic for crippled Silk.)
=mantis=
Sirius Fiction
booklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley
29 copies of "Snake's-hands" until OP!
http://www.siriusfiction.com/