Sunday, 27 April 2014
The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump by Harry Turtledove

It wasn't until a later read that I started thinking about the "djinnetic engineering" subthread, which I'd initially thought of as a throwaway. I've brought it up in religious discussions, where it usually elicits great consternation.

30 April 2014 at 19:28
Anthony G Williams said...
Really? What is it that causes such consternation?

1 May 2014 at 07:01
dlw said...
Turtledove's book is based on Old Testament Judaism, in a setting where much of what we think of as "religion" is repeatable science. God can be detected, though He doesn't have much to say. Demons, djinn, and angels manifest. There is a proven afterlife. Souls can be detected and manipulated.

With the "djinnetic engineering" in the book, a soul can not only be manipulated, but pieces can be snipped off, joined together, and inserted into another living human. In this case, children who were born without souls. The soulless don't make it to the afterlife; their death is final. The question raised in the book is, now that the donors of those soul parts are "incomplete", can they still be admitted to Heaven, or will they remain in Purgatory? And the people with the Frankensteined souls; will they make it to Heaven, or will they be stuck in between too?

The example question I use is usually along the line of, "You just found out that your child was born without a soul. They're never going to make it to the afterlife with the rest of the family. Do you let your child die the final death, or do you take the risk, along with other donors, that all of you may be found unfit? And would clipping off part of your soul be considered only mutilation, or, since it might affect your afterlife, would it be a form of suicide, which is a prohibited action?

Donating a kidney or bone marrow is one thing; facing Purgatory or possibly eternal damnation would be something else entirely.

Turtledove actually mentioned the dilemma, but didn't explore further down that path, probably since it wasn't relevant to the plot line. But, *within the context of the story,* it's a very interesting ethical problem.

The characters in the book have a sort of laisseze-faire Judaism. They don't have faith in the Christian sense, since their worldview is demonstrably real.

It seems a lot of people are happy with faith, but the idea of practical real-world interaction with their diety etc. makes them uncomfortable. It's sort of like the Terry Pratchett quote, "Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more."

24 May 2014 at 02:11
Anthony G Williams said...
That's an interesting take on it...I do wonder what Turtledove actually intended!