From: Jon Camfield <griffjon@austin.rr.com>
Subject: RE: (urth) Sev's parents
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1999 23:09:18

>From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey@stic.net>
>Subject: No lie?

>"Having been reared among the torturers, I have never known my father or my
>mother. No more did my brother apprentices know theirs." . . . "Thus none of
>us knows our decent. Each would be an exultant if he could..." . . . "For
my part, I had already adopted as my own the device
>graved in bronze..."
>
>Sev boasts often of having a perfect memory. I have pointed out several
>instances (and there are more) where he contradicts himself. Either his
>claim to having a perfect memory is true or it isn't. If true he has, at
>times, given false testimony. If not true, then his claim to having a
>perfect memory is itself a lie, and anything he says is suspect.

May I offer a third possibility?  Sev's memory is too perfect.  As he
meta-commented on a few times, he would oftentimes get lost in memories,
and find himself crying or laughing in his Autarchial chambers.  I propose
that as he's churning these books out, he gets lost in his memories to do
so--lost enough such that after he gets into the flow, he neglects to
include facts which he knows, but does not treat at the time because he,
for all he knows as he is writing, is back at the citadel as a boy.  If you
wanted to get really complicated, you could analyze Sev's initial
meta-comments (when he speaks as the writer/as the adult) and if they get
scarce around the times he speak erroneously, though this is a decidedly
bad case to try that out on ;)


______________________________________________________
Jon "GriffJon" Camfield                    www.GriffJon.com
Web R&D, Competitive Intelligence; eCertain.com

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher
a hog, construct a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give
orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch
manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die
gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
--Robert A. Heinlein, _The Notebooks of Lazarus Long_

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