Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright
Authors: John C. Wright
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our next episode. Perhaps there will be even less of Bilbo in Part Three.
Let us be clear on that last, dumb, super dumb, stupidly dumb scene of dumbfounding dumbness. Let us review, one more time, the steps of this awesome, awesome plan:
1. Send down Bilbo.
2. Have him take off his magic ring while standing directly in front of the dragon’s nose.
3. Listen for the sound of the dragon inexplicably not killing the hobbit in one-eighth of one second.
4. Rush into the dragon’s lair.
5. Hope he misses you while trying to swat you.
6. Dance on nose.
7. Swing on things, run in circles.
8. Hit him with a zillion cubic feet of molten metal. Watch to make sure he is not wounded or inconvenienced in any way as he shakes it off.
9. Watch as he flies off for no reason whatsoever, during the one moment when nothing in Middle Earth or Upper Heaven or Lower Hell could possibly have forced him to depart, namely, the very moment when someone is trespassing on his horde.
Since that was the plan anyway, I wonder why the plan was not to forget about the stupid map and key and Durin’s Day and all that rigmarole, march into the front gate, hope the dragon misses, et cetera, and watch him fly off to go burn Laketown, and then gather up as much loot as your donkeys can carry. Repeat every week for 151 weeks or until you have all the hoard.
The paramedics had to haul my broken and bleeding body and wet, soggy brain out from the theater after the riot police, mistaking my hysterical leaping and gargling caused by post-traumatic movie disorder for a threatening gesture, had been forced to club me down, and as I was dragged away, leaving a long slimy snail trail of popcorn butter-flavored oil behind, my last words could be heard, as weak as twitching ants blinded by exposure to fumigation fumes who crawl out into the sunlight to die:
“Shoot… him. with… an… elf… arrow….”
Whistle While You Work
If, like me, you have too much free time on your hands, you have probably wondered why Snow White, at least as Walt Disney portrays her tale, has small woodland animals to help her with her household chores, with bunnies and chipmunks scrubbing dishes, songbirds helping to sew, and fawns dusting the furniture with their white tails.
If, like me, you have too much education on your hands, you have probably used Aristotelian categories to analyze the question.
If, as a child, you ever asked the question, “But WHY must I go to bed?—I am not sleepy!”, and heard the answer, “Because Daddy says so!”, and you found the answer unsatisfying, you experienced the frustration of hearing the wrong kind of answer to the right kind of question.
The sleepy child is asking for a justification, asking what fair purpose lights out for unsleepy children serves, and the impatient parent is explaining a formality, that a command from a lawful authority must be obeyed independent of its fairness. It answers a different “why” than the “why” that was asked.
Aristotle answers that there are four kinds of answers to the question “why”.
1. Final cause is motive, or, in other words, it is the answer in terms of that for the sake of which the thing is done to explain the thing.
2. Formal cause is structure, or, in other words, it is the answer in terms of how the thing is put together, the relation of parts one to another.
3. Material cause is substance, or, in other words, it is the answer in terms of the content, what stuff the thing is.
4. Efficient cause is the past, or in other words, it is the answer in terms of the history of cause and effect leading up to the event being described.
In this case, we can discard the answer that, “Snow White has maidservant bunnies because Uncle Walt put them in the story”—this tells us the efficient cause, and we don’t care about that.
Likewise, we can dismiss the answer that, “Snow White has maidservant bunnies because it is a fairy tale and therefore made of
Let us be clear on that last, dumb, super dumb, stupidly dumb scene of dumbfounding dumbness. Let us review, one more time, the steps of this awesome, awesome plan:
1. Send down Bilbo.
2. Have him take off his magic ring while standing directly in front of the dragon’s nose.
3. Listen for the sound of the dragon inexplicably not killing the hobbit in one-eighth of one second.
4. Rush into the dragon’s lair.
5. Hope he misses you while trying to swat you.
6. Dance on nose.
7. Swing on things, run in circles.
8. Hit him with a zillion cubic feet of molten metal. Watch to make sure he is not wounded or inconvenienced in any way as he shakes it off.
9. Watch as he flies off for no reason whatsoever, during the one moment when nothing in Middle Earth or Upper Heaven or Lower Hell could possibly have forced him to depart, namely, the very moment when someone is trespassing on his horde.
Since that was the plan anyway, I wonder why the plan was not to forget about the stupid map and key and Durin’s Day and all that rigmarole, march into the front gate, hope the dragon misses, et cetera, and watch him fly off to go burn Laketown, and then gather up as much loot as your donkeys can carry. Repeat every week for 151 weeks or until you have all the hoard.
The paramedics had to haul my broken and bleeding body and wet, soggy brain out from the theater after the riot police, mistaking my hysterical leaping and gargling caused by post-traumatic movie disorder for a threatening gesture, had been forced to club me down, and as I was dragged away, leaving a long slimy snail trail of popcorn butter-flavored oil behind, my last words could be heard, as weak as twitching ants blinded by exposure to fumigation fumes who crawl out into the sunlight to die:
“Shoot… him. with… an… elf… arrow….”
Whistle While You Work
If, like me, you have too much free time on your hands, you have probably wondered why Snow White, at least as Walt Disney portrays her tale, has small woodland animals to help her with her household chores, with bunnies and chipmunks scrubbing dishes, songbirds helping to sew, and fawns dusting the furniture with their white tails.
If, like me, you have too much education on your hands, you have probably used Aristotelian categories to analyze the question.
If, as a child, you ever asked the question, “But WHY must I go to bed?—I am not sleepy!”, and heard the answer, “Because Daddy says so!”, and you found the answer unsatisfying, you experienced the frustration of hearing the wrong kind of answer to the right kind of question.
The sleepy child is asking for a justification, asking what fair purpose lights out for unsleepy children serves, and the impatient parent is explaining a formality, that a command from a lawful authority must be obeyed independent of its fairness. It answers a different “why” than the “why” that was asked.
Aristotle answers that there are four kinds of answers to the question “why”.
1. Final cause is motive, or, in other words, it is the answer in terms of that for the sake of which the thing is done to explain the thing.
2. Formal cause is structure, or, in other words, it is the answer in terms of how the thing is put together, the relation of parts one to another.
3. Material cause is substance, or, in other words, it is the answer in terms of the content, what stuff the thing is.
4. Efficient cause is the past, or in other words, it is the answer in terms of the history of cause and effect leading up to the event being described.
In this case, we can discard the answer that, “Snow White has maidservant bunnies because Uncle Walt put them in the story”—this tells us the efficient cause, and we don’t care about that.
Likewise, we can dismiss the answer that, “Snow White has maidservant bunnies because it is a fairy tale and therefore made of
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