Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Chapters 40 & 41:
Isaac and friends are trapped by the Council. Isaac's mind is set to work, in a very literal way, to attract his former pet.
The rippling tide of colours unfolded like anemones, a gentle, uncanny unfurling of enthralling shades. On both sides of the moth’s body, the perfectly mirrored midnight tinctures slipped like thieves down Isaac’s optic nerve and smeared themselves across his mind.

..but the constructs have their timing right, and the moth is crushed.

The Council has computed that the moths must be nesting in the glasshouse where the cactus people live.

Preparations for moth-hunting are made, both by the militia and by Isaac and his group who are joined by three mercenaries. Helmets with mirrors abound. An infiltration of the Glass house is planned.

The moths do their mating dance.
Interesting that the dominant one gains the right to be the female! I wish humans could be bigender/agender until it becomes time to mate, and only then- at the time of mating, decide whether we're going to be--the male or the female. Or, imagine we could have organs for being both, and both partners impregnate one another..- woo!

Yag narrates again, to bring us to the end of part 5.

I learned a new word!
Ratiocination = 1 : the process of exact thinking
2 : a reasoned train of thought

Hi, Trav, I hope you don't mind if I go overboard on a few etymological issues.

I loved "ratiocination", too. Especially in the context of the rest of the sentence:

"I rusted quietly for a year as I organised my new intellect. What started as a burst of self-knowledge became ratiocination and opinion. I self-constructed...I bade my worshipper open up the analytical engine of that other, my mate, and we connected. It was a revelation. Our viral minds connected and our steam-pistoned brains did not double in capacity, but flowered. An exponential blooming. We too became I."

"We too became I", but also we 2 (two) became 1 (one).

I loved the fact that reason was paired with opinion (or taste or judgement). Or, as it turns out, sentience is paired with "sapience" (the wiki article takes you to "wisdom":)



See also "Sapere aude" ("dare to be wise", or more precisely, "dare to know"):



This whole concept of "self-construction" was very important to my reading of the novel as well.

It's worth looking at all of the variations here:



Note the importance of "construct" and its use as a noun in PSS.

Here is the etymology of sapient and homo sapiens:

Re your bigender/agender comment, fluidity is part of CM's preoccupation with transition.

In fact, not just fluidity, fluids features throughout the whole novel.

The whole book could be subtitled "Fun with Thermodynamics".

I especially loved this sentence from chapter 39:

"The psychic plane was thick with the glutinous effluvia of incomprehensible minds."

More on Derkhan in chapter 41:

"Derkhan moved closer to Isaac in his exhausted misery and put her arm around him. He sniffled like a child in her arms, the dream of Lin still clinging to him."

More on what I describe as the band a parte aspect of the novel:

"We are one fat scientist, a crook and a journalist. We need some fucking professional back-up."

(view spoiler)[Later on, we get another one of these hilarious summaries of the plot:

""So it's me, the prof, the bird-man and the constructs." (hide spoiler)]

Ian wrote: "More on Derkhan in chapter 41:

"Derkhan moved closer to Isaac in his exhausted misery and put her arm around him. He sniffled like a child in her arms, the dream of Lin still clinging to him.""

Yes, she's a good friend, isn't she? A sweeter, caring side of the hard journalist showing through :) Actually, one sees her caring side when Ben is taken prisoner as well-- i think one definitely gets the impression that he is not as 'hard' as one would normally expect from a journalist.

Maybe she engages in her journalistic activities in the first place because she is a caring person.

I think CM actually quite often seems to portray Isaac as a big, overgrown child--which seems to somehow strengthen my idea of him as a kind of megalomaniac with lots of hubris. Now the poor man is undergoing some character growth. He sees he is not quite as omnipotent as he had always deemed himself to be.

Traveller wrote: "Now the poor man is undergoing some character growth. He sees he is not quite as omnipotent as he had always deemed himself to be. "

He is omnipotent with respect to the challenges that the world throws at him, just not with respect to women, from whom he seems to learn some life lessons.

I wonder if this describes the life of a writer who must plough away at their desk all day, and depend on the love of a good woman both to sustain them and tolerate their egocentricity.

I wonder what it would be like to be married to a female author? How would they find time to cook?

Ian wrote: "He is omnipotent with respect to the challenges that the world throws at him, just not with respect to women,"

Hmm. You think? I had thought that in the case of Isaac, it was the damage that Motley and the moths had done that had defeated him--not a woman?

Let me rephrase that. It was a collective effort that dealt with the threats. The women seem to be the ones who performed solidly and sensitively and without ego.

Ian wrote: "Let me rephrase that. It was a collective effort that dealt with the threats. The women seem to be the ones who performed solidly and sensitively and without ego."

Awww, but still..-poor Isaac. I can't help feeling sympathy for him...

I'll post some more threads today--apologies that i've been falling behind; RL has been leading me a merry dance, not to mention that i have to deal with a bit of concussion at the moment.

Are you OK?

Got quite a headache..-but we'll have to see. So unnecessary- don't know why these accidents happen to me! (Ok, maybe i know- the more haste, the less speed- something like that).

Have you consulted Dear Kindred yet?

Isaac moved closer to Derkhan in her exhausted misery and put his arm around her. "How is your concussion?" he asked. "Your friends at ²Ñ¾±Ã©±¹¾±±ô±ô¾±²¹²Ô²õ are worried about you."

Traveller wrote: "Ian wrote: "More on Derkhan in chapter 41:

"I think CM actually quite often seems to portray Isaac as a big, overgrown child--which seems to somehow strengthen my idea of him as a kind of megalomaniac with lots of hubris. Now the poor man is undergoing some character growth. He sees he is not quite as omnipotent as he had always deemed himself to be."

My impression as well. At first, I thought of Isaac as a tinkerer, part Peter Pan who didn't want to grow up and part teenager who wanted to be an important and powerful adult. Maybe there are big-boy themes of growth and transition, philosophical debates on environmental chaos that can and probably will be unleased, etc., but I can't help but think of the old saying "play with fire and you'll get burned." And now, by this point, he's understanding that but it's really too late. It's not just that he knows his life will never be the same, I think he's realizing his life should not have been what it was, that he was more boylike than he should have been.

On the slake-moths, of course all the passages with them have been jaw-dropping! Then he just furthers it with the mating dance. The "agender" bit opened my eyes, made me think of them more like a dominant species of this world. I mean, they are almost programmed to survive and take over - like they could feed on sentience until all that remain were them and the constructs. Again, is CM invoking some sort of environmental/world growth statement or just having a lot of fun stretching our imaginations? Maybe both.

And yes, it would be interesting if we humans were bigender/agender - deciding outcomes based on the moment, no predilections, no forced cultural expectations. Would add a decided zest to life, huh?

Do you think there are any parallels here between Yagherak's choices and and the moth's ability to choose their fate? Something's nagging my mind but I don't know ...

Ian wrote: "The whole book could be subtitled "Fun with Thermodynamics"."

You made me remember college physics ... and my thermo class that I never quite made it through, probably because entropy was a vexing topic to understand. Then I thought, didn't CM use the word entropy somewhere in PSS? Whether or not, I thought of your etymology studies (loved the links, by the way) and so I ran to wikipedia and found "social entropy." It read: Social Entropy implies the tendency of social networks and society in general to break down over time, moving from cooperation and advancement towards conflict and chaos. Hmmmm.

Nice to see someone posting here again for a change! I feel very bad that i haven't opened the last threads yet-- i'm a bit behind with my re-read, though i do have the next thread half-done, just waiting to be finished and posted.

Please give me grace until tomorrow, then i will finish up the last threads and we can go to the end of the book and have a nice discussion.

Then we can discuss the interesting parallel re Yagahrek and the moths that you drew, Allen!

Allen wrote: " It read: Social Entropy implies the tendency of social networks and society in general to break down over time, moving from cooperation and advancement towards conflict and chaos. Hmmmm. "

Thanks, Allen.

I am interested in the socio-political implications of the Construct Council and the concept of self-construction.

The Council is a composite, where all of the parts add up to a whole.

Knowledge and power are centralised.

However, there is an element of one for all and all for one, which is the motto of not just the Three Musketeers, but Switzerland as well:



Initially, I felt there was an element of idealism in this vision of collectivism.

However, I wonder whether CM was ultimately critical of this Council as a form of Fascism, where the bound sticks or "fasces" represent "strength through unity".

Traveller wrote: "Nice to see someone posting here again for a change! I feel very bad that i haven't opened the last threads yet."

You've done a great job, Trav.

Bizaarrely, the first thing that struck me in this section was, "Isaac has a beard?" I don't know if it had been mentioned before, but if so, I hadn't noticed, so this throway line in the chapter opening stood out more than probably intended.

Traveller wrote (comment 1): "The moths do their mating dance.
Interesting that the dominant one gains the right to be the female! I wish humans could be bigender/agender until it becomes time to mate, and only then- at the time of mating, decide whether we're going to be--the male or the female."

Yay, China!

Ian wrote (comment 3): "fluidity is part of CM's preoccupation with transition. In fact, not just fluidity, fluids features throughout the whole novel."

Yes, I've been focusing on food, but fluids as well - and that fits better with transistion.

Allen wrote (comment 15): Do you think there are any parallels here between Yagherak's choices and and the moth's ability to choose their fate? Something's nagging my mind but I don't know ..."

No idea, but I like your thinking.

Ian wrote (comment 2): ""I rusted quietly for a year as I organised my new intellect. What started as a burst of self-knowledge became ratiocination and opinion. I self-constructed...I bade my worshipper open up the analytical engine of that other, my mate, and we connected. It was a revelation. Our viral minds connected and our steam-pistoned brains did not double in capacity, but flowered. An exponential blooming. We too became I."...but also we 2 (two) became 1 (one)."

This book is raising lots of questions about the nature of consciousness, both for various types of hive minds, but also for non-organic intelligence. "It cannot sense my mind. I am invisible to it... I do not dream... I am a calculating machine that has calculated how to think."

Allen wrote (comment 15): "On the slake-moths, of course all the passages with them have been jaw-dropping! Then he just furthers it with the mating dance."

Yep, horrifying as they are, they are hypnotic, even on paper. And this bug-sex lacked the icky undertones of some of what we've had previously.

Cecily wrote: "This book is raising lots of questions about the nature of consciousness, both for various types of hive minds, but also for non-organic intelligence. "It cannot sense my mind. I am invisible to it... I do not dream... I am a calculating machine that has calculated how to think.""

I like your observations there, Cecily! It fits in quite a lot with another book we had read recently, William Gibson's Neuromancer .

Gibson in general, and Neuromancer in particular are on my radar (but not yet on my shelves). Is it the best of his to start on?

I've only read that one to start with, but we had a nice discussion about it here if you'd like to join it sometime. His And Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine is also on my radar.