On Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:59:35 -0700 (PDT), "louann_m@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"
<louann_m@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>On Apr 28, 7:16 pm, John Schilling <schil...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> Of magic so limited its best use was to expend itself in sup****ting the
>> birth of science and technology.
>> The Solomonic Gold, seems to have only two tricks up its sleve, and one
>> of them is mostly useless. The other, the nigh-immortality bit, that
>> could be genuinely useful, except that there's no mention of a way to
>> make *more* Solomonic Gold, so you've basically got a way to sustain a
>> small, immortal elite.
>I thought that Enoch and his buddy had been made permanently immortal
>by direct Divine Intervention, a season ticket, while the Solomonic
>Gold was used to bring normal people back from death on a one-time
>basis.
Possible, but I doubt it on economy-of-technobabble reasons. In the
WWII section of _Cryptonomicon_, Root's recovery from what should have
been a mortal injury appears to be dependant on the contents of his
Mysterious Cigar Box, e.g. it is the result of a gadget or substance,
not intrinsic to Root himself.
If there is a known prevent-death or resurrect-the-dead gadget or
substance elsewhere in the story (the Solomonic Gold), it is most
reasonable I think to assume that the unknown anti-death agent here
is the same as the known one elsewhere. Root's cigar box contains
his stash of Solomonic Gold, and whatever else it takes to make it
work.
If a character is repeatedly seen Not Dying When He Should Have, by
traumatic injury in 1945 and by old age throughout the seventeenth
through twenty-first centuries, and that character is known to have
used a specific anti-death agent on one of those cases, it is again
most reasonable to assume that he's using the same stuff all along.
So, I think it most reasonable to assume that the divine intervention
took the form of, "Here's a stash of Solomonic Gold sufficient to keep
you and your buddy alive for the next few millenia, and work a subtle
miracle or two per generation along the way".
But the story doesn't change if we add your proposed complication,
with intrinsic immortality for Root and Leibniz. Either way, there's
not going to be enough Anti-Death Magic to change the world for the
better - except by carefully using what little there is, to sup****t
the efforts of those working to develop more effective and broadly
useful (i.e. non-magical, i.e.e. scientific) improvements. Whereupon
there will be no more need of magic.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*John.Schilling@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
* for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
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