(urth) Mystery of Ascia/Agia

[Son of Witz]

On Jan 20, 2011, at 4:41 PM, "Gerry Quinn" <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Son of Witz
> So, if my theory is right, that the culture of Kim Lee Soong was asian, and this culture is the humanity that spread into the universe with war, and that this culture still survives in Ascia, it makes perfect sense to think that "asian" is a much more likely source "soulless.".
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> On my right lay a man whose close-cropped scalp made me think at first that he was one of the slaves of the Pelerines. I called to him, but when he turned his head to look at me, I saw I had been mistaken.
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> His eyes were emptier than any human eyes I had ever seen, and they seemed to watch spirits invisible to me. "Glory to the Group of Seventeen," he said.
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> Here's the thing: the only thing Severian notices about him are his haircut and his empty eyes.  That doesn't sound like Ascians are racially very different from the folks in the Commonwealth.
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> Also, Asia isn't north of anywhere.  And if Asians move to North America and live there, they will after a few generations be North Americans.  All our ancesters came from Africa and we are not thereby Africans (for the most part; there may be Africans on the list for all I know).
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> Asia is a big place.  Wolfe may well believe that different races have different psychological characteristics, but I wouldn't expect him to either allocate them on a continental basis, or expect them to persist into the distant future in their current form.
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> - Gerry Quinn
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This quote from the battle,

"I think I must have cut down half a dozen Ascians before I saw that they all looked the same—not that they all had the same face (as the men in some units of our own army do, who are indeed closer than brothers), but that the differences among them seemed accidental and trivial."

-seems, to me, to suggest that Severian is encountering an unfamiliar race, as he seems to be having a very common quasi-xenohobic feeling, upon first encounter, that "they all look alike"

I'm happy to be wrong here, but I'm not convinced by the counter arguments.
There IS a distinct lack of strangely tilted or elongated eyes.  This makes a connection to Agia really weak indeed.

Re: north, I'm talking about an asian dominated North America, not the Asian continent.  Even if those North American Ascian's lose the distinctive eyes, they can still be descendants of asians, according to your argument. 

To me it seems obvious to connect the Kim Lee Soong era with the humanity that traded it's wild side.  This absolutely ties in with what we know about Ascian philosophy.  It seems an obvious connection.  Does anyone deny Kim Lee Soong is an asian name?  Why would Wolfe, who does A LOT of intentional linking of phonetically similar names, use the word Ascian for what are essentially a communist metaphor?  This is a man who was in firefights with asians.  Surely he saw that this association would be made. Maybe he had to get it out of his system but later felt a bit squeamish later when possibly accused of insensitivity.

(sorry for the cut and paste format wonkorama.)
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