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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=dstockhoff@verizon.net
href="mailto:dstockhoff@verizon.net">David Stockhoff</A> </DIV></DIV></DIV>
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style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">On
4/3/2012 6:59 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:<BR><BR>> Without having read that story
yet, just commenting on this comment: <BR>> this is as clear an "aliens as
Fairies" story as one could imagine. AND <BR>> ... they appear to be robots
as well. Functionally speaking, that is: <BR>> they are immortal, logical,
unemotional, dying only from wear and tear, <BR>> functionally capable of
producing offspring but practically incapable.</DIV></DIV>
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style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">I
didn’t really get a “fairy” vibe, more of a “saucer alien from very
scientifically advanced race” vibe. Granted Wolfe has explicitly conflated
fairies and saucer aliens on at least two occasions, but I don’t think he’s
really doing it here.</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV><BR>> Not /terribly /different from Tolkien's high elves, who are
emotional <BR>> but in control, undying but capable of being killed, just,
and who <BR>> reproduce rarely. As Fairies, they need humans for something
they lack <BR>> and that only sentient mortality can provide.</DIV>
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<DIV>I’m not really up on my Tolkien, but I think if we are going to classify
races as fairies so broadly as even to include robots, we need to start
specifying subtypes.</DIV>
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<DIV>And while fairies might say “we are sane, our laws are just, you have
nothing to fear” they are usually obligated to add “unless you eat a bite of the
food we seem to offer you freely, in which case you are damned forever”.</DIV>
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<DIV>- Gerry Quinn</DIV>
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