(urth) Merger

[James Wynn]

> Gerry-
> Spare us the psychoanalysis.  If you can show Becan fighting alzabo 
> instincts, I am prepared to be convinced.  The fact that I do not 
> agree with your conclusions does not in itself demonstrate the 
> limitations of my mentality. 1. Severian attacked, thinking he could 
> scare away the zoanthropes; the alzabo might reasonably have drawn the 
> same conclusion.  Severian and alzabo are approximately equal in 
> fighting terms. It was not a suicide mission. Alzabos probably have a 
> big appetite. 2. Severian killed four zoanthropes. The alzabo killed 
> three zoanthropes, and Casdoe.  So Becan-in-alzabo was still working 
> to kill and eat his family, not to save their lives.

Why should I show anything? Does Severian's analysis of why Becan Alzabo 
fought not impress you at all? He describes an equal merging of the 
desires between Becan and the animal. But you say it's just the animal 
after all? I'm merely just adopting the actual explanation expressed in 
the text after all.

> If you think Becan was fighting the alzabo, the only grounds you seem 
> to have for arguing this are that he made the alzabo attack rashly 
> when it would have been better advised to slink away.  But the purpose 
> of Becan-in-alzabo was still to eat his family, not save their lives.  
> That's not much in the way of fighting alzabo instincts.  Why would he 
> fight some instincts, and not others?

The stated purpose of the Becan Alzabo was to reunify Becan's family. He 
even devoured his wife as he was dying. Last meal? What was the survival 
benefit of this?

>> 1) The alzabo might well have been engineered to allow dead humans to 
>> live on in an animal, and then it went feral.
>
> Right... and instead of making a pretty creature with hands, for 
> example, the engineers made a ravening monster seemingly designed to 
> slaughter humans.  Why would they do that, given that the prey of your 
> hypothethical creature would presumably have gone to it willingly?

???
Why would you assume the engineers had full freedom to create an animal 
in any form they wanted? On the other hand, why would the resurrected 
humans not prefer to be in an alzabo rather than a pomeranian?

>> 2) A naturally mutated ability of a True Merge with their prey that 
>> transformed the alzabo into something new does not necessarily mean 
>> the New Creature was less robust than alzabos without that ability to 
>> merge at all.
>
> If I understand you correctly, you are speaking of something like a 
> wolf that suddenly finds the minds of its human prey merge with its 
> own.  But why would such a creature have the urge to eat other 
> humans?  Surely its first thought would be to protect them by eating 
> animals instead!

No. You don't understand what I'm saying. An animal alzabos presumably 
eat anything. If alzabos' natural prey is a social animal, then the new 
creature would naturally seek to unify others of his prey's kind.

>> The "new creature" wants to thrive and survive just as the alzabo and 
>> its prey wanted to survive and thrive. It's rather crabbed thinking 
>> to insist that the interests of the New Creature are usually 
>> evolutionarily subversive to the interests of the alzabo animal -- or 
>> to its prey for that matter. Look at how it worked with Becan's family.
>
> You're not really making sense to me here.  Certainly the alzabo wants 
> to survive and thrive.  It does this by killing its prey, as it killed 
> Becan's family.  What's unusual about this?   A wolf would have done 
> the same.

AS DESCRIBED BY SEVERIAN the Becan alzabo behaves as an animal alzabo, 
but it's interests are different. But the apparent motivation is 
radically different from the actual motivation, and the motivation is 
what is really interesting to Wolfe. The discussion about why the 
burning tent ascended is a more emphatic example of this, but he often 
does the same thing more subtly without overtly explaining it.

**MINOR SPOILER**
Wolfe has a new story out called "Innocent". The narrator is in jail as 
a child abductor/molester. But, in fact, he rescued the child from an 
abductor/molestor. The truth is, the narrator is a werewolf. Even though 
his every action in the presence of the child is that of a pedophile, 
his actual interest was to devour the child and that's all.
**SPOILER END**

>> But evolution doesn't work that way. If an animal has an ability that 
>> helps it survive better in a particular environment it goes with it. 
>> And there is no book of rules that says Life must work according to 
>> Such-and-Such order.
>
> Ummm... the very basis of evolution is survival of the fittest. 

No. It is natural selection, and that is not remotely the same thing.

> Fit alzabos are alzabos that eat well and mate with lots of lady 
> alzabos.  Alzabos whose instincts in this regard tend to be subverted 
> by the minds of their prey are unfit alzabos, who leave fewer progeny. 

There's absolutely NO reason to assume this and we no nothing about 
alzabo reproduction. The variations even among mammals are far more 
broad than you seem to believe.

> Over time, the alzabo population may be expected to become very good 
> at preventing the instincts of its prey from interfering with its own, 
> even as it benefits from their minds.

Once again. You seem to believe that evolution works with some sort of 
plan in mind. If a merger works, there is no pressure for the alzabo 
biology to change. That would be like saying that over time crocodiles 
should have evolved the ability to run like gazelles.

> And indeed, this prediction of Darwinian theory is confirmed - Becan's 
> intellect is seemingly unimpaired, yet he concurs wholeheartedly with 
> the alzabo's instinct to kill and eat his family.

Why his family? Why a house with multiple people in it protected by a 
man with a sword? Why not someone walking alone in the woods? Why not a 
zoanthrop?

~ u+16b9