(urth) S&S vs. SF in BotNS

[David Stockhoff]

On 12/21/2011 3:19 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
>> >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.
>   
> But then why do we have to imagine it, and why the red herring of Severian's and Ultan's interchange about the corpse's hands, as Jeff mentioned above?  If Wolfe had wanted us to think of this as science fiction, he could easily have restricted the whole thing to brains, which would indeed have been licensed by the RNA and planaria beliefs of the time and by the reference to holography, another sf cliche back then (though not tremendously compatible with the RNA theory).  He seems to undercut this deliberately by implying that the memory is in the whole body, when we know perfectly well that injuries that don't interfere with brain function don't affect the memory.

First, Wolfe undercuts everything he does. Rather than repeat himself, 
he throws out a data point that is near another one. He also likes to 
parrot historical concepts, especially commonsense ones that are 
probably wrong, whether they explain things or not. I think he truly 
enjoys imagining what the world would be like if it actually ran the way 
we think it does. When he has Latro see gods, he doesn't mock the Greeks 
but rather ourselves, including our inability to see miracles.

Second, I think the remarks about hands have to do with how the universe 
(and the Increate) works as a whole. It's a clue about how Yesod manages 
Briah, for example, and Tzadkiel.

Third, did Wolfe want us to think BNS was SF? If so, he failed. He had 
Vodalus give a feast in a scene that contains no SF whatsoever, and gave 
us enough contradictory theory about the process that we would not know 
what to expect when the moment came for actual practice. (Science is 
supposed to predict!) And when the time comes for the real thing with 
the old Autarch, the ritual's brutal simplicity reveals that feast as 
orgiastic and hollow pageantry in comparison.