(urth) S&S vs. SF in BotNS

[David Stockhoff]

On 12/20/2011 11:03 PM, Jeff Wilson wrote:
> On 12/20/2011 7:23 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
>>> From: Lee Berman<severiansola at hotmail.com>
>>>> Jerry Friedman: How about the analept of the alzabo and the effect of
>>> drinking
>>>> blook on the inhumi?  After a moment's thought, the only way I can
>>> understand
>>>> these is as magic, specifically the principle of contagion (if I 
>>>> have it
>>> right).
>>>
>>> I think the alzabo stuff is explainable by time period. There was a 
>>> very real
>>> and serious camp in the 1970's which thought memory might be carried 
>>> by RNA.
>>> Wolfe
>>> wouldn't be the only SF writer of that era to base fiction on it.
>>
>> Yes, but RNA in cooked flesh?  Surely it would have to be in the 
>> brain, but nothing in that scene (CotC, Ch. XI) seems to suggest that 
>> they ate Thecla's brain.  On the other hand, nothing seems to rule it 
>> out, either.
>> ...
>
> The leech and the old autarch mention that brains work best, but the 
> extremely well informed Ultan says that hands are sufficient. I think 
> that the memory RNA hypothesis of the time was license to go there, 
> but the exact mechanism is not important, similar to the way a 
> solution to transplant and implant rejection exists by implication in 
> the accounts of the leech and Jonas and Severian's comments on them. 
> The memory transfer is acknowledged subtextually by the author to be 
> more involved in that it requires a special animal, while the 
> rejection cure is apparently so well understood or had been at one 
> time that it is still readily available wherever surgeons are to be 
> found.
>
> Or possibly, Urthers have undergone a change or a culling so that they 
> don't reject implants or one another's tissue.
>
>


Ultan's remarks are key, although I think they do not refer only to the 
analeptic alzabo but to larger concepts of interest to Severian and 
Wolfe. At any rate, the principle of what you might call "spiritual 
cannibalism" already exists---that is, the pre-scientific concept that 
when you eat the seat of your dead enemy's soul, you eat his soul. Any 
further details will be particular to the genre, setting, or 
audience---in our case, "plausible" science.

In addition, if the brain is so potent, there was plenty of Thecla's to 
go around the table in thimblefuls. That would seem to make eating the 
body redundant, but it's easy to construct a social/ritual/magical 
explanation for this that would be acceptable to the Vodalarii, or to 
imagine that the feast was so much more, as a sensual or even as a 
bonding experience,  than a simple injection of cells/RNA to acquire 
memories. The presentation of the body alone suggests a cultural 
significance on the level of a spectacular wedding feast.