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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=danldo@gmail.com
href="mailto:danldo@gmail.com">Dan'l Danehy-Oakes</A> </DIV></DIV></DIV>
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Gerry Quinn wrote:<BR><BR>> > You said: “a sword, a giant, a sleeping
beauty, magic, palaces”. But none<BR>> > of those are really much
like their fairy-tale counterparts. The sword has<BR>> > no magic
powers. Baldanders, fair enough, Severian even fights him in his<BR>>
> castle, though not for gold. Dorcas isn’t really a sleeping beauty –
we<BR>> > don’t know she was dead until she is already leaving the
narrative. Magic<BR>> > is tech. Palaces... the House Absolute
is underground.<BR>><BR>> > What we have learned of these things from
fairy-tales doesn’t really help us<BR>> > here. They don’t mirror
their fairy-tale counterparts. BotNS really isn’t<BR>> > a
fairy-tale in any strong sense. Or so it seems to me.<BR>><BR>> >
Conversely, understanding magic as technology does help us see what’s
going<BR>> > on.<BR><BR>> Contraconversely, understanding technology as
magic, a la Clarke's<BR>> Third Law, _also_ helps us see what's going on.
Wolfe goes out of his<BR>> way to provide a pseudoscientific explanation for
at least some of<BR>> Severian's miracles; but does anybody really believe
that they are<BR>> _not_ miracles? The clue for this is near the beginning of
CLAW, where<BR>> it is observed that the real miracle is that the laws of the
Universe<BR>> are such that the Cathedral of the Pelerines will rise<BR>>
non-miraculously: Wolfe is reminding us that there will always be a<BR>> way
to "explain away" a miracle ... but that miracles happen,<BR>> nonetheless.
(This is also my understanding of Dr Crane's<BR>> "explanation" of Silk's
enlightenment, btw: plausible bullshit.)</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV><BR>> tBotNS is indeed a fairy story, a once-upon-a-time whisking away
of<BR>> the reader to a land where miracles happen, giants (who
somehow<BR>> resembles Queequeg...) battle heroes, the dead walk, and
monarchs live<BR>> in invisible palaces. (Even the invisible palace hides an
invisible<BR>> palace!) If it questions the assumptions of the fairy story,
and<BR>> especially the happy ending, well so too does it question
the<BR>> assumptions of classic science fantasy: and we cannot understand
that<BR>> questioning unless we understand "what we have learned of these
things<BR>> from fairy-tales."</DIV>
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<DIV>You are right about technology as magic, but I don’t think that BotNS maps
well onto fairy stories. Not every story containing magic is a fairy
story, or a sword and sorcery tale, or any particular genre of magical
tale. I would see a typical fairy story as largely about personality
(albeit often clinically insane personalities). A dysfunctional
family is frequently the main driver of the plot. Baldanders is not so bad
a fit as a fairy tale giant, but I don’t really see too many fairy tale tropes
in BotNS. </DIV>
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<DIV>Even the fairies themselves don’t seem evident on Urth, and that is unusual
for Wolfe. You might find fairies or fairy-like beings on Blue, or even on
the Whorl - and perhaps they will return to Ushas - but on Urth they have been
crushed under the weight of ages. There are new monsters, but no real
fairies or ghosts. Anything even vaguely close is a consequence of
technology or physics.</DIV>
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<DIV>- Gerry Quinn</DIV>
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