Jlawrence’s Comments (group member since Mar 08, 2010)

Jlawrence’s comments from the The Sword and Laser group.

Yeah, what Al said - I think you're safe once you put spoiler in the topic title. (If not, I too will run from the wrath of the Autarch!)

While Siri says he's uncertain, I agree with Halbot42 that the end of the book seems to heavily suggest that vampires overcame the easy prey of a society that had mostly gone to cyber Heaven. (presumably, the vamps would keep some of the humans alive, though, so as to not go extinct again themselves?). But it does seem kind of tacked-on, and too short of a span of time to happen, regardless.

I also am not sure what Sarasti was trying to make Siri see by assaulting him. If it was to see that the Captain was actually controlling everything - the attack and the stripping away of Siri's normal tools still didn't work, right? He still didn't know until the controlled corpse *told* him, right? It would be interesting if it was some kind of call for help through contact rendered in the only way a vampire knows, maybe? Like Adam, I was also confused by how the injuries were done.

It's interesting that Siri goes on his own big "consciousness was a mistake" rant right after describing the assault -- it seems like the solidification of *that* idea for him was the real result of the attack, instead of any revelation about the Captain / their mission.

Sean wrote: "If becoming post-human allows people to improve their subjective experience of the world, why is it bad? I mean, sure, for me now not facing any challenges would be a horrible thing, but once I gain the ability to tweak my mind, it becomes an irrelevancy."

Well, I don't believe the external world will vanish with the advent of the ability to edit your own subjective take on that world. Or, it won't vanish except for those who take the Heaven route (as presented in this book) of withdrawing completely from the external world to float in a sealed-off world of pure subjective experience.

Unless the posthuman world is one with only a single ideology / philosophy-of-living, there will still be plenty of people will conflicting beliefs and desires, and thus still a lot of challenges and problems about (including people who refuse to experience-edit). Sure, you can keep editing out the undesired elements of the external world, or tweaking your reactions to them, but unless you do a Heaven-like retreat, the external world and people who don't match your edited version will likely find new ways to grate against and contradict your subjective experience. This would also happen if you're in a virtual reality simulation that's in anyway shared with others. The solipsism of Heaven would be the only way to completely escape that.

Also, I would expect certain transhumans would be more interested in exploring and shaping the external world than in crafting a perfect subjective experience. The best imagining I've read of a society that includes both those posthuman ideologies -- withdrawing to sculpt subjective experience vs. exploring the universe via their enhanced powers -- is Greg Egan's short story "Wang's Carpets". And from looking on Wikipedia, I just found it was later expanded into the novel
Diaspora - just added to my to-read list!

If Nicole is able to use that RSS feed, here's a few things the app should tweak in the feed before presenting it to the user:

-- Remove the "Tralfamadorian," at the beginning of each post (that's the name of the dummy goodreads account subscribed to the email digest)

-- Each new post will be titled "New discussions from The Sword and Laser", since that's the subject line of the email digest. Maybe the app could replace that with the date of the post

-- "Want to control which emails..." to "Posted by Josh Lawrence" at the end of each post should be removed

The discussion of contact-less sex also made me think of the Orgasmatron from Woody Allen's Sleeper:

For the RSS feed, I tried out this trick of using Blogger's "post by email" feature to automatically receive the daily email digest of forum updates. Here's the feed:

http://swordlasergoodreads.blogspot.c...

Seems to work, but not sure the format will be right for Nicole. We could run the feed through feedburner for extra formatting, too - or try the same trick with a WordPress blog.

Oh, I can understand that, I play single-player more than multi-player as well, sometimes for that same reason. *But* to be fully parallel the way Heaven is presented in the book, you would not only be playing the game single-player, you would have to create all its content, all the levels, all the gameplay mechanics, all the art -- all yourself. And then you would play alone in the game you've created, sharing it only with occasional visitors from the meat world (instead of other Heaven inhabitants). People who love to mod games and who would love to sculpt entire virtual reality playgrounds usually want others to experience their creations.

It's that combo of being solitary and created-solely-by-its-inhabitant that makes Heaven sound more like a niche attraction than something people would flock to in large numbers. Maybe the idea is the software picks up on whatever you consider ideal and automatically creates that world around you, but that's not detailed in what I've read so far...

Yeah, there are several times the POV shifts, and each time it seems that it's Siri saying, "now imagine that you're X..." It does seem tied to his whole synthesist method of observing and analyzing others' points of views. He says several times that his own dealings with humans is similar to the Chinese Room scenario -- that he's faking feelings/interactions by following a large set of observed rules. There's things he tells us at other times that suggest that "I am a Chinese Room myself" is an overstatement, but the point of the space probe-identification may be that the exercise of identifying with them and imagining their motivations (even though they're machines) is what he also does with humans, too, just on a much more complex level. Ie, fellow humans are in a way as abstract to him as machines?

Yeah, it seems a really unappealing version of transcendence-through-cyberspace. It would be different if the corporation behind Heaven were explicitly building experiences known to be endlessly captivating to those who jacked in to them - then I could buy large numbers of people escaping to it. Or if the cyber-world and the shaping of it was shared to certain degrees. But to be all alone and have to create your perfect world on your own - I could see certain subset gravitating to that, but it seems like to a much larger number would find that a burden instead of cyber-bliss.

It was excellently put together and mostly true to the source, but I was a wee bit disappointed in some way I can't put my finger on. I think anticipation had built up my expectations to the height of the Wall itself, but instead of feeling overwhelmed by AWESOME, I mostly thought, "well-done." Maybe it's some kind of intangible feel to certain scenes that didn't fully come through, like Alex was saying above.

Despite that, it was a solid start and I'm very interested to see how the rest of the adaptation goes.

Matt and Tamahome, yeah apparently HBO's online streaming thing (HBO Go) will only be available if you are an HBO subscriber through a cable TV service. Too bad, I bet there's a lot of current non-subscribers who would pay for HBO streaming. For iTunes, HBO has famously waited til a season is over until making it available (boo!).

I'll assume further conversation here would be from those who've read Urth, so instead of a spoiler tag I'll just a big fat warning:


*** URTH SPOILERS AHOY ****




There's so much going on in this book, it could easily fill up a forum of its own. I'll just touch on some things I liked:

- Loved the first scene being a little jab at Severian's arrogance - he accidentally almost kills himself while trying to carry out his grandiose gesture of throwing his second copy of Book of the New Sun into space

- Zak's gradual transformation into Tzadkiel

- Severian being placed in Typhon's time after he leaves the ship, first stumbling into playing the role of the Conciliator, then playing it full tilt

- The Claw going full circle. When in Typhon's era, Severian ends up giving the rose bud thorn he picked from the beach in Citadel to one of Typhon's deserting soldiers (who see him as the Coniciliator). It makes sense that this gift becomes the holy relic (encased in a gem) the Pelerines carry for many centuries and which Severian picks up (via Agia) in his own time. It is soaked with his own blood from when he clenched it in his fist earlier in Urth, which could explain why it seems in sync with the powers he begins to use throughout Book of the New Sun (he thought at that time that the power came from the Claw, but the Claw was resonating with his own power and his own blood).

- Severian's power is not just a incidental gift for passing the trial (as we guessed elsewhere) but is the direct result of passing the trial. His power is drawn from the White Fountain - the white hole (he repeatedly calls it a star) that is being moved across space to rejuvenate the sun. His consciousness is connected to it in some way. The power he draws from it (which once seemed to be the Claw's power) consists both of time manipulation (he is able to walk the Corridors of Time) and direct re-shaping of matter (for healing). At first I didn't like the addition of the latter aspect, preferring it to be wholly time-based, but I guess if we accept the possibility of aquastors, the direct control of matter is fair game as well.

- I liked the idea of the White Fountain having to be moved through space at "normal" speeds, ie not time-travel tricks for it. Thus it takes millennia to arrive, and is actually first visible in Earth/Urth's sky sometime between Apu-Punchau's time and Typhon's time. The New Sun has been on its way for millennia the entire time of Severian's story in Book of the New Sun. When Severian walks the Corridors of Time back to to time before the White Fountain is visible from Earth, he can no longer draw upon it and thus loses his powers. That is when he becomes Apu-Punchau. All of this ties into the idea that not only does the past effect the future, but the future effects the past, underlined earlier by Dr. Talos in Sword when he told Severian, "just as the momentous events of the past cast their shadows down the ages, our own shadows race into the past to trouble mankind's dreams".

- The coming of the New Sun is not unambiguously good or utopian - its coming will subject Urth to an destructive cataclysm (almost as severe as the alternative doom by ice) before it can rejuvenate. Thus Severian is the bringer of apocalypse as well as rebirth. It is suggested this is partly why he, a torturer, was chosen.

- The idea that the heirodules and hierogrammes, while seeming like omniscient beings to humans, are actually part of a grand bureaucracy themselves (there are hundreds of worlds that undergo trials similar to Severian's for Urth), as unsure of their ultimate purpose as humans are. This actually echoes some of the discussion we had about the bureaucracy of angels/demons in Good Omens (how they did not know all either - their encounters with 'ineffability.') ;)

- The importance of the idea of aquastors, how some spiritual questions get tied to them. More on this in the Corridors of Time thread.

Book of the New Sun is a complete novel in four parts - The Urth of the New Sun was published some years later, as a sequel (or coda) to Book of the New Sun.

I wasn't very impressed with Urth the first time I read it - the writing didn't seem as strong as the previous books, the setting for a large part not as interesting. It had been a while since I'd finished BotNS, so various references back set off little *pings* in my head, but no big *ah-ha's!*.

This time, I still didn't find the writing to be as good, but definitely got much more out of the re-read, in large part due to still having a lot of Book of the New Sun still fresh in my head, so all the interconnections Wolfe was making were much clearer.

I still think the 4-part BofNS works as a standalone whole (especially after this recent re-read), even with what it leaves ambiguous. But I also now believe you can get the most out of the series by reading Urth shortly after finishing Citadel.

If you've been intrigued by the puzzles of the New Sun, I highly recommend reading Urth.

If you've read Urth, what did you think? Some spoilery comments below.

Wow, very interesting! Glad Gaiman is getting to co-write the adaptation.

69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess - Yes, you'd think with that title I would've stayed away, and I *would* have, but it was the monthly pick in a bookclub I was in with several friends - I read enough of it to hate it and its author. Aimless, pretentious junk hiding behind lazy avant-garde rationales and pseudo-edginess.

Also, Wuthering Heights drove me crazy (never finished) - I wanted to shoot both protagonists in the head with a historically-accurate-for-the-time pistol. I think I will try that one again at some point, but in general I have so much on my to-read list that I have no problem putting a book down unfinished if I'm really not liking it.

Not any novels I've read off-hand, but James Tiptree (aka Alice Sheldon) has a number of excellent short-stories where that's the case. See the collection Her Smoke Rose Up Forever.

A kind of sequel to the What do you think of Severian (if finished Claw)? thread - if you've finished Citadel, what do you think of him now?

I definitely held him less at a distance by the end of this re-read (but probably still at more of a distance than my initial read). He still seems a highly problematic candidate for being humanity's representative in a cosmic trial, but I felt like he definitely grew up some, overcame some of the warping influences of being raised by the torturers, and went through a pretty significant moral development. Some of that development's big points:

- His mercy towards Thecla (first betrayal of guild), but this first step was obviously more of a personally motivated action than a moral one
- His mercy towards Agia, freeing her after he thwarted her ambush at the mine
- Healing of the sick girl in the hut (the first time, I believe, that he healed someone just because they were ill, as opposed to previous attempts that were from results of some violence he'd been in)
- His refusal to kill Cyriaca - second betrayal of guild and beginning of full-fledged exile
- His spiritual revelation about the nature of the Claw on the beach
- His return to Nessus. As Autarch he frees the prisoners of Antechamber and the Matachin tower, abolishes torture, reforms the guild.

What did you think of him by the end?

Adrienne wrote: But why is only Severian's life reshaped? What makes him special enough to warrant this reshaping?

Again, URTH SPOILERS! ***********





It takes many millennia for the The White Fountain / Severian's star to move reach our sun (no time travel tricks for it) -- so it could be that Severian is actually Urth's last chance - the last Autarch who could pass the trial in time for the White Fountain to *start* moving in the past soon enough to reach our solar system before Urth freezes over. Well-meaning Hierodules move down the timeline where completely cruel, "proto Severian" fails the trial and intervene to give him and Urth a chance.

Also, in their conversation in Apu-Punchau's tomb, when Severian mentions his perfect memory, the heirodule Familius says,

"For that you were chosen, Severian. You and you alone from many princes. You alone to save your race from lethe."

And we are shown the coming of the New Sun will not just be rejuvenation - it will also be an apocalypse. Much of Urth will be destroyed and most of its population will die in the flood the New Sun causes, before it can rejuvenate. So his role as torturer - as someone who can destroy even that which he loves - is stated as being part of why he was chosen as well. I liked that that dark side of the renewal was addressed and tied to Severian's dark side (his problematic nature as a savior makes more sense that way.)

Adrienne wrote: " wouldn't have appreciated the books as much if the viewpoint switched around...

Oh yeah, I was just toying with the idea of alternating first-person accounts, but as much as I'd like to read excerpts from a Diary of Dorcas, I agree that the singular first-person viewpoint of Severian is essential to the nature and method of these books.

Also, after Citadel and especially after Urth, I'm thinking the "madness" aspect of our unreliable narrator is actually a bit of a red herring. There seems to be no real pay-off for it -- no scene, as far as I can tell, that is presented as completely real one place and later revealed to have been completely imagined. And it otherwise becomes a kind of wily-nilly "X or Y was all a dream!" thing. I think its real purpose, given how Severian relates it in those early Shadow chapters to possibly wishing Vodalus into being like an "eidolon", is to foreshadow how important the concept of eidolons / aquastors become later (spoilery further discussion of that in the Corridors of Time thread).

Boots, yeah I agree the alternate time lines in Ash's tapestry metaphor and the fact that it seems new ones can be created definitely fits in with a branching universes/ quantum many-worlds interpretation set-up. At the very least, we have Ash's no New Sun timeline vs. the Green Man's New Sun arrived timeline, even if we don't have baroque Severian branching.

I've just finished Urth, so....


***Urth of the New Sun spoilers!***



Now I believe Severian was either wrong about the "other Severian" or I was jumping to a wrong conclusion in thinking that Severian believed that Apu-Punchau was what the "other Severian" became. Because Urth makes it clear that Severian, the narrator of these books, travels back in time and becomes Apu-Punchau.

Urth also provides an explanation for his various death-defying acts / resurrections - and a way this could work without endless parallel world branching. Near the end of the novel, after he has lived and died as Apu-Punchau, he somehow awakes, next to the entombed body of Apu-Punchau. The hierodules Ossipago, Famulimus and Barbatus are in the mausoleum with him. Severian asks how this can be, because he *is* Apu-Punchau. The hierodolues reveal that he is an aquastor - they created him from the memories inside Apu-Punchau's brain, just as the aquastors of Master Malrubius and Triskele had been formed from Severian's mind in the earlier books, and as "those who hated Severian" had been formed as aquastors during Severian's trial.

Obviously, for creating a Severian double from the mind of a deceased Severian, Wolfe is allowing memories to persist for some time in a dead person's brain - but that idea has been introduced and reinforced in the earlier books by the corpse eater's practices / the merging with deceased Thecla / the alzabo, etc.

It's revealed that the hierogrammate Tzadkeil did the same when Severian died from a fall on the ship early in the novel -- Severian even found the body at the time, but did not accept its significant similarities to himself.

It's also that Severian's power (drawn from the New Sun) includes the ability to achieve resurrection through an aquastor double. The New Sun was still too far away when they hierodules came to the tomb, so they did it for him, but once it draws near enough to Urth, an Apu-Punchau created aquastor-double stirs from the tomb, while the hierodule-created double uses the power of the New Sun to return to the future. It is assumed the Apu-Punchau double is the Severian who takes on the "vivimancer" career and appears at the end of Claw.

The hierodules tell Severian that it is dangerous for a double to meet itself - that is why they only raise aquastors from the dead. A meeting of live doubles can result in the obliteration of both and death of the anima (soul) that is replicated in the aquastor. This is the reason for the debilitating disjunct that occurred when Severian directly struggled with Apu Punchau at the end of Claw.

Severian's evasions of death in the early books could likewise be a series of aquastor creations at the time of death, engineered either by outside forces (hierodules) or by Severian's own awakening powers from the New Sun. That allows, within the story we're told, multiple Severians who nonetheless are all within the same timeline. (I think this resurrection-via-aquastor power is different from the healing / resurrections Severian performs on others however, I think those are still either time-based (short rewind) or the kind of fullscale matter-rearranging-fixing we see him perform as the Conciliator in Urth).

This still doesn't rule out the "other Severian" in a completely alternate timeline, whose lack of success spurred hierodule intervention to create the (new but single) timeline we get as the story of these books. Andre-Driussi speculates that other, "proto" Severian never met Thecla or Dorcas, never went through any moral growth, and thus was still completely cruel at the time he took the throne (and I assume this would be why he would fail the trial -- and Master Ash would come from that timeline).

I agree that the gaps probably arise from Severian being such a "a bad interpreter of his own emotional life" that he omits things that are quite significant (his feeling of revulsion after performing Agilius' execution you mention; Thecla sometimes trying to claw his eyes out when enraged while imprisoned -- for that matter, the exact nature of his relationship with Thecla). I believe the omissions are in line with various elements that are meant to make the reader approach what Severian says critically, so as to start puzzling out what's really going on.

I'm still undecided on which puzzles in the books are solvable, but I think the 'nature of Severian's true feelings' / 'why he omits what he does' might be the most difficult. First of all, because of the very murkiness of the defining someones 'true motivations', as you've noted ("we're a deep mystery to ourselves"). Then you have Severian's omissions and his possible insanity (the possibility of purely imagined incidents). And finally, the fact that we're stuck inside his viewpoint. We get pieces of other people's viewpoints when he chooses to recount them -- like Dorcas mentioning his getting ill that sparked your thoughts on this -- but that's very different from some kind of consistent external viewpoint (extra puzzle pieces) that would help shape a fuller portrait -- eg, if Wolfe had constructed the novel so that chapters from Dorcas' or Jonas' viewpoints alternated with Severian's. But instead it is Severian's tale solely.

Any first person narrative invites this tension between "what really happened" and the narrator's subjective viewpoint / story-telling choices. But this tension is certainly highlighted in Severian.

Scientists have discovered a symbiotic, DNA-sharing relationship between algae and salamanders, which could open up the possibility of algae implants for humans in the future. Interestingly, the immediate benefit is internal oxygen-production, the potential of "breathing under water" via bioengineering, as opposed to the Green Man's photosynthesis.

http://io9.com/#!5789151/future-human...