Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 11:01:56 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jerry Friedman 
Subject: Re: (urth) Pinocchio vs. the Tin Man


--- Michael Andre-Driussi  wrote:
> 
> >Matthew Weber taunts:
> >Wouldn't Jonas be a case of exactly that?
> >
> >Crush goes for the bait:
> >Yep. He would, among others.
> 
> I'm not sure what is going on with Jonas, what he means by his intent to
> become repaired (presumably it means he wants to become fully biological
> so
> as to be better suited for Jolenta).

Funny, that wasn't my impression at all--I thought he wanted to become
fully robotic--though he is in love or something with Jolenta.  Can we
imagine a prosthetic-bearing bio in love with a chem wanting to become
fully a chem?

> I guess it all resolves this way:
> since Severian heard the utterance and saw Jonas go into the mirror, the
> Claw heard it too, so that later on at that point in Severian's life
> when
> he really needed a friend, yet all there was at hand was a corpse, then
> the
> Claw drew down the Jonas software from the borderland between Briah and
> Yesod, installed it in the reanimated corpse, and thereby solved two
> wishes
> with one snappy miracle.

Or in possibly more sinister style, the Jonas software was hanging
around and took its opportunity.

Either way, do we see Miles going through a Silk-like recapture of his
identity?

> In any event, the transition from non-biological to biological is the
> Pinocchio scenario.

Not to mention Galatea, the Bicentennial Man, and Severian's brush-
into-squirrel dream.  Maybe above all, the amazing fact that we Homo
sapiens work by the laws of physics and consequently chemistry; we're
literally chems.

> Which is interesting because we tend to talk about
> Jonas as being the posterboy for the opposite, the Tin Man of Oz (a
> biological made non-biological).  Or Jonas as the Steadfast Tin Soldier
> (crippled; in love with a woman not of his type; swallowed by fish,
> delivered back to his first place, then cast into fiery dissolution).

Where's that from?

Thanks for the comment on _Michaelmas_, by the way.  I own that book,
but I never made any of those connections!

Jerry Friedman

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