Damn Your Anti Robot Bias, Lewis!

[krinndnz]

But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that's going to be Human and isn't yet, or used to be Human once and isn't now, or ought to be Human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.

- - The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
My emphasis. Gee thanks, Clive. I was just having a quick reread of the Narnia cycle (

Comments

[relee]

Voltron? VOLTRON!?

The witch Haggar from Voltron totally flew around in a Space Wardrobe too.

The Flying Lions, the Witch Haggar, and the Wardrobe in Space.

[krinndnz]

Unfortunately I never actually saw Voltron - no-TV upbringing - so I'm gonna need you or bossgoji or someone to explain that part to me.

[relee]

Most of the things that Voltron fought were the Ro-beasts created by the Witch, Haggar. Her spaceship looks like a sarcophagus and I was joking that it was a cabinet.

[krinndnz]

I've been meaning to read those for quite a while now, but The List is long. Right now if I was going to give a child something with talking "animals" and children having an Adventure, I'd try to get them to start reading A Fire Upon The Deep in the middle and shepard them past the Usenet parts.

[krinndnz]

Fiddlesticks! Twice cautioned. Well, it's not like The List was ever short.

[ribbin]

I've never been a fan of C. S. Lewis- clumsy writing, clumsy propaganda.

However, taken out of context, I think that he might be on to something about that hatchet. The important thing is that the quote does not advocate using the hatchet, simply feeling for it. So under that interpretation, we could read it as "if something doesn't seem quite right, go forth with caution," and that's something I can get behind.

Isn't that the same thing Asimov did with "Little Lost Robot"?

[eggshellhammer]

I'm with ribbin here. Honestly, in the particular context, the beaver is just giving good advice.

[krinndnz]

In context he also thinks Edmund will make a miles-long walk in the snow, unprepared, in about 20 minutes (and the matter of the statues establishes that Edmund burns through rather a bit of time). He's a well-meaning character, but perhaps not the sturdiest stick in the dam.

[eggshellhammer]

I like that metaphor.

[hemlock_martini]

Protip: hatchets tickle. Pretty much anything outside of heavy artillery is a nuisance, and for that, as long as you recognize the trajectory, you just get out of the way fast enough. Nukes and EMPs are a matter of shielding and prep time.

There will come a time when they reach for their hatchets, sure. Eventually they'll realize that nothing they do can hurt us, and not just that, we have no interest in fighting back. Hopefully by then they'll be fresh out of hatchets...

But also, yeah. I don't think Lewis was, necessarily, talking about us.

[krinndnz]

I think that you're counting on some alloys that didn't exist when Lewis was writing, and so he might have overestimated the efficacy of melee weapons. Also there's that outstanding design problem of coping with magic, either the Raistlin flavor or the Lion Jesus flavor.

[rax]

Kill It, Lion Jesus!

[krinndnz]

That, that was totally worth reading! :D