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It's an old Fred Saberhagen book. It may be three books in one about a boy who finds an Elephant. I read about fifteen years ago, but it popped in my head when I was writing a post on the music thread.
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I'm going to see if I can track down another copy of the book, but from what I remember, the Elephant was obviously a tank to us, but a living Elephant to Rolf.
Maybe I'm making a bigger deal out of it than Saberhagen, but that's a very greek way of approaching the elephant, which is odd because most new books with Greek Gods don't capture that animism(I'm hesitant to use the word for no other reason than it's latin) in greek everyday life. It's wasn't a matter of belief or faith in the Elephant, Rolf was sitting there in the elephant, I imagine the Elephant was the equivalent of Cerberus.
There is a way in which Christianity divided the Gods from mortals, and opened the door-- a door that's always a little more open or shut-- for cold science, but I wonder at what cost.
I wonder how much anthropormorphizing is appropriate? When I say that my computer doesn't want to work? Or every that microwaves give people cancer? In a way, I think it's appropriate to ascribe the predicates "want" and "give" to those nouns?
I think that Rolf understood the tank as living a thing, an elephant. I understood it to be a bunch of metal. Neither of us reached our understanding as a matter of faith or belief, but as a matter of understanding what is right there in front of us, and I'm trying to understand the implications of this, how it informs the difference between four people sitting at a table and a family dinner.
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Ardneh was a computer. The elephant that the kid was riding in was a tank. But to a person who sees beings where we see machines, the tank revealed itself to him as an Elephant.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Empire of the East is one of my favorite fantasy series, I love it and have read it many times. I have a copy signed by the author.
*********possible SPOILERS****
The tank had a logo from it's military unit, the logo was an elephant. I don't remember if Ardneh had a logo. Lightning was a dream image of it Rolf had.
The elephant logo led to a local oral legend about elephants, but I don't remember Rolf feeling it was alive, after his initial confusing encounter with it. He didn't understand it, but it seems like he gradually began to conceive of it as a very complicated machine.
Ardneh is different. It was a huge computer, presumeably with some AI capabilities, in our present day. After the Change occured, which changed physical laws making possible magic, demons and elementals, Ardneh possibly became more than a machine.
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Irami, I was wrong, Rolf did feel that Elephant was alive. I realized that soon after I left the library yesterday.
However, to quibble after I made a larger error, is anthropomorphizing the proper term? That means to ascribe human characteristics to something not human. Whereas Rolf thought a machine was a powerful beast or beast/god. If a god, perhaps animism is closer, yet still not perfect. If a beast, I don't know what the proper term is for that category error. Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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