(urth) Violet=Plutonium

James Wynn crushtv at gmail.com
Mon Nov 14 06:20:07 PST 2011


>> James Wynn: The tricky part for the councilors was connecting the chems
>> consciousness to the the living councilors. This is easier to do than it
>> might appear because (I propose) chems were made to receive the scanned,
>> memory wiped souls of bios just as the Mainframe is received the scanned
>> souls of Typhon's family and inner court.
>
> Lee Berman wrote:
> [...] I wonder if this might apply to BotNS. Why would the factory want to program Jonas
> to read fiction during his off hours?

The chems also wear perfume and the original chem owner of Rose's hand 
used to "practice her hand". There is a practical reason for them to 
smell and judge good smells (the females anyway), because they have to 
cook. But this is a convenient way to accomplish the judging part.

Until now, I did not apply this to Jonas. It seemed unlikely that Wolfe 
would have thought of this method and done so little with it until the 
mid 90s. Now I'm not so sure. This might explain how Jonas "becomes" 
Miles. In truth (according to this theory), Miles *will* become Jonas. 
Severian's speech to Jonas will be in Jonas's subconscious and sometime 
after he leaves Sev, he remembers it and does not return. On the other 
hand, it might be simpler to propose that Jonas is made from what is 
left of Miles's biological parts, and as with Chelle's new arm in "Home 
Fires" those parts remember.

J.



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