Dreamsongs Revisited: The Nature of Greenseeing

[Phylum of Alexandria]

(This is an expansion of a comment I made in a topic post from a few weeks ago.)

I've been re-examining GRRM's short stories to see what seems similar and different from ASOIAF thus far. If you haven’t read Dreamsongs, be warned: Spoilers for several stories below.

This post is about greenseeing. I'll probably have a few different posts based on different stories and themes.

The temptation when reading GRRM's other works is to assume that similar details or plots in the older stories will help predict what happens in ASOIAF, but we tend not to mention what is not carried over into ASOIAF, at least so far. Here I try to sort the confirmed from the disconfirmed, at least based on the material we have at present. Here goes!

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A Song for Lya. 

Overview: The Greeshka is introduced as a deadly parasite; its hosts regarded as willing victims of its psionic lure. This possibility never fully goes away, but is complicated by the fact that the organism does seem to offer some sort of blissful psychic afterlife for the people it consumes. Whether that’s part of the psy-lure is never resolved, but the difference doesn’t seem so dramatic by the story’s end.

The telepaths who interact with the Greeshka insist that it is not sentient in any way. If it’s manipulating people, it’s not via conscious intention. It may simply enable the formation of a psychic hivemind among those it has consumed, and the hivemind does the luring on their own. It’s also possible, however, that the telepaths simply cannot penetrate the mind of the Greeshka, and so they read it as simple and harmless.

What’s similar to ASOIAF: An entity worshipped as a god feeds upon those whose psychic powers it enables. Its worshippers simply view the sacrifice as a necessary balance to honor their god. But the consumption is written as a horror: the passive entity seems to be parasitic in some way. And the idea of human conversion to an earlier non-human ritual practice is present in both stories.

What’s different so far: The psychic afterlife that adherents experience upon Final Union is a proper hivemind, and a proper heaven. It is a feeling of bliss, acceptance, and total love, though this may simply be psionic love-bombing for the sake of lure. Yet Bran’s greenseeing in the weirwood does not seem to function in the same way. It seems that Bran has great freedom in how he utilizes his time wedded to the trees, as if they were a psychic vehicle for him to ride.

Notably, Dany experienced a flood of temptations that served to test her in the House of the Undying. And once she passed the test, she ultimately was lured to the Undying themselves, who tried to feed upon her soul. This may tell us something important about the Shade trees that enable the power of the Undying, but my guess is that they are yet another psychic vehicle like the weirwood, except the drivers here are more ruthless or desperate actors.

And Seven Times Never Kill Man. 

Overview: The Jaenshi are a race of sentient creatures who worship translucent stone pyramids that contain images of their gods inside. They ostensibly craft the pyramids, but that could just be the mistaken assumption of the story’s main character. It is entirely possible (and I’m inclined to believe) that the pyramids actually function as psy-manipulation technology created by the Githyanki, or their masters, the Hrangans.

When under the influence of the pyramids, the Jaenshi live in perfect harmony with their environment. Those who stop worshipping the pyramids exhibit not just physical changes (like a different eye color) but behavioral as well, losing their self-regulating harmonious style of living. Not to mention losing their memories. When back in the presence of the pyramids, the godless can be swayed back into their devotional style.

The story focuses on a bloody conflict between the Jaenshi and a colony of ruthless, dogmatic humans. The Steel Angels claim what they feel is granted to them by their god, and destroy anything they regard as heresy. By the story’s end, most of the Jaenshi are wiped out. And yet, their pyramids thrive. The image of the Steel Angels’ god appears inside of the pyramids, which their leader, who had been having dreams of such occurrences, interprets as a prophecy. The pyramids are then worshipped by the Steel Angels, and these humans too begin to take on self-regulating harmonious style of the Jaenshi. Curiouser and curiouser.

What’s similar to ASOIAF: Another “mindless” object of religious devotion that seemingly exhibits psionic powers. The worshippers are connected to nature, and live in a balanced, self-culling style, just like the Children of the Forest. They too have amber eyes, though only when under the sway of the gods. It’s not clear if the CotF were psionically “captured” in this way. More human conversion into an alien cult.

What’s different so far: We don’t get a firsthand perspective from the pyramid cult, so unfortunately we don’t know how to relate the psionic experience to the weirwoods or Shade trees. Also, in the larger setting of the And Seven Times Never Kill Man story, the presence of ultra-intelligent bad actors such as the Hrangan make the notion of secondhand manipulators of psionic astral planes more of a plausible option to consider.

So far we don’t have any engineers like that in ASOIAF. While I wouldn't be against GRRM seeding some ideas about the weirwoods having their own biological imperatives that may subtly influence how greenseers' thoughts and actions are expressed, I don't think there's a way to bring in a God Ecologist type manipulator character into the story without some terribly bad writing. 

...Except, of course, if the manipulators are Bloodraven, and the CotF. Or Bran, at least later on in the story. We already know that Bloodraven fills that role to some extent. This type of manipulation would be another variation on the "drivers of the vehicle" interpretation of the weirwoods. I'm fine with such a direction in the magical plot.

With the Thousand Worlds stories, the larger backdrop of intergalactic warfare allowed for commentary about the reaches of power and information control that was relevant for their Cold War context. With ASOIAF, the core problem of the story should be rooted in humanity itself, albeit rendered into a destabilizing force via magical amplification.

Nightflyers.

Overview: A crew of academics board the Nightflyer space vessel for an inter-galactic voyage in search of a mysterious ancient race of beings known as the Volcryn. A telepath is included on the team to potentially communicate with this alien race, but this man insists that there is a hostile alien presence on the ship. Most of the crew suspect the ship's captain, Royd Eris, as he does not show himself and seems to be keeping secrets.

In fact, Royd is not hostile; he is a gender-swapped clone of a woman who grew him in order to have a friend and sexual partner. This woman, who he regards as his mother, was a gifted telepath who had been tormented for her gift. She thus developed a sociopathic fear of and contempt for other people. Upon dying she imprinted her mind onto the ship's computer, and so the alien presence that the psychic crew member detects is actually the ship itself, as haunted by the angry digital ghost of Royd's mother/lover. The Volcryn themselves seem to be too primitive to have conscious thought, but they emit psionic energy that helps Royd's latent telekinetic abilities to emerge and help him battle his "mother" over control of the Nightflyer.

What's similar to ASOIAF: A frail albino man plays voyeur and benevolent manipulator to others, like Bloodraven. Aside from psychic powers enabling the control of corpses for zombie assassins, psychic powers also enable the storing of minds into receptive vessels, or vehicles. This is not a hivemind, though multiple minds could potentially inhabit the same psychic space and perhaps vie for control. There’s also the seemingly mindless organism that catalyzes the psionic powers of those around it, not unlike the Greeshka and the pyramids, but without any real hint that they might be sentient or nefarious. Also implied in ASOIAF and stated explicitly here is that psychic ability comes from recessive genes.

What's different so far: The details are quite different: ASOIAF has no gender-swapped clones, no memory crystals, and no sociopathic computer program trying to keep her existence a secret. Not to mention, the genre framing of the stories are different, and so what is explained in Nightflyers that might be left mysterious in ASOIAF. Thus, a mention of recessive genes like in Nightflyers will almost certainly never be featured in ASOIAF, though Martin may subtly gesture toward such concepts (i.e., “the seed is strong,” and “the chosen ones are not robust”).

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tl:dr. Maybe the view will change upon the release of Book 6, but I am now leaning against the idea of active psy-manipulation on the part of the weirwoods. As long as it's properly "fed and watered," perhaps the magical organism cares not how its hosts utilize its powers.

Perhaps the dangers of the weirnet really lie in who might be inhabiting it. And perhaps this is where Bran and Euron’s stories can meet.

Thoughts?

 

[Sandy Clegg]

11 hours ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

ASOIAF has no gender-swapped clones

Love research topics like this, nice stuff!

Gender-swapped clones ... Was this part of Nightflyers? Wow. I've been trying to deliberately avoid reading GRRM's other stuff as I want my ASOIAF ideas to be unsullied (as it were), but with all these repeated motifs of psionic abilities and hive minds, it seems there might well be a common thread linking them to this series. As this is his grand oeuvre, GRRM likely would want to bring all his favourite elements into the mix somehow.

I'm quite intrigued by the idea of gender-swapping/clones in ASOIAF as it is something that is at least 'adjacent' to some of the themes we see in the books. Theon's castration/conversion into a different identity. The Unsullied, Varys, etc. The conversion of Craster's boys into White Walkers (if it happens like the show). Cersei claiming she should have been born a man. Arya disguised as 'Arry. Alleras/Sarella. Even in the prologue we get Ser Waymar asking Gared if he is 'unmanned by the dark'. 

One thought that did occur to me is that when GRRM began these books there was a lot less awareness of trans issues, and  - in the 25+ years since he began them - this has become an area where a writer might need to tread more carefully these days. Gender-swapping/clones may be something that he planned to initially include, but one could see how the current climate may have cooled him on the idea of exploring this. By his sheer fame, it's likely that there could sadly be some form of public blowback. 

Now personally, I think GRRM has shown that he of course has the skill to approach this topic intelligently and so I hope he doesn't abandon any plans he had. But it does beg the question: when the writing of  a book series spans 3-4 decades, how does the tide of political change (especially LGBTQ+ issues) factor into what is deemed appropriate?

Sorry this got off topic. Anyway I love the idea of a 'malicious astral plane engineer' as the big bad in ASOAIF - a false god if you will, something which may be an opposing force to the weirwood net rather than a part of it.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

31 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Love research topics like this, nice stuff!

Thanks! Stuff like this is fun to write.

31 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Gender-swapped clones ... Was this part of Nightflyers? 

Yes, the elevator version of Nightflyers is one of the battiest things I've encountered, though it reads sober enough from page to page.

33 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

I've been trying to deliberately avoid reading GRRM's other stuff as I want my ASOIAF ideas to be unsullied (as it were), but with all these repeated motifs of psionic abilities and hive minds, it seems there might well be a common thread linking them to this series. As this is his grand oeuvre, GRRM likely would want to bring all his favourite elements into the mix somehow.

There are certainly tons of similarities and common patterns found in his earlier work. Sometimes entire characters seem to be reborn in a new story context (Rhaegar and Sand Cleg being the most obvious).

As I said above, I think there is a peril inherent in such comparisons: because while the common content is surely there, we don't know the extent it's been recontextualized and tweaked versus borrowed wholesale for his ASOIAF endeavor. The tweaks and difference could prove crucial! Thus my attempt to be a bit more rigorous in this respect.

But as ASOIAF is only 2/3 finished, and GRRM loves ambiguity more generally, my attempts at rigor might not mean much by the time the story is done! Still, I think it's a worthwhile effort. It gets my juices flowing. 

39 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

I'm quite intrigued by the idea of gender-swapping/clones in ASOIAF as it is something that is at least 'adjacent' to some of the themes we see in the books. Theon's castration/conversion into a different identity. The Unsullied, Varys, etc. The conversion of Craster's boys into White Walkers (if it happens like the show). Cersei claiming she should have been born a man. Arya disguised as 'Arry. Alleras/Sarella. Even in the prologue we get Ser Waymar asking Gared if he is 'unmanned by the dark'. 

I do get the feeling that these atypical sexual and gender dynamics could play a role in the magical mechanics of the broader story. I'm thinking it might specifically pertain to the trees and their guardians, but who knows. We also know that dragon sex is as changeable as flame. I am going to do another one of these posts focusing specifically on the ambiguity of gender.

43 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

One thought that did occur to me is that when GRRM began these books there was a lot less awareness of trans issues, and  - in the 25+ years since he began them - this has become an area where a writer might need to tread more carefully these days. Gender-swapping/clones may be something that he planned to initially include, but one could see how the current climate may have cooled him on the idea of exploring this. By his sheer fame, it's likely that there could sadly be some form of public blowback. 

That's true, and it's funny you mention LGBT+ issues. I was thinking recently as I've been going through Dreamsongs that GRRM is very much interested in "queerness" broadly speaking. In other words, he's interested in the in-between, the hard-to-categorize, the ambiguous and ambivalent, in the margins, in the grey. It's not surprising that he would cover some aspect of sexual queerness too.

Still, GRRM is a straight man who was born in 1948, and came into his own in the 1970's, a time known for its edginess in art. I think it's probably good that sex and gender have not yet come to the fore of his magical plot in ASOIAF, as he now has more queer perspectives to consider before fleshing that material out (assuming that he ultimately will do so). GRRM tries to be a thoughtful person, yet his clunkiest moments come when he's not fully invested in a perspective, such as the Dothraki, as opposed to the Free Folk. I think the extra consideration would only benefit his writing.

[Sandy Clegg]

47 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Still, GRRM is a straight man who was born in 1948, and came into his own in the 1970's, a time known for its edginess in art.

I wasn't going to mention his inherent "Boomer-ness" lol but yes he is very much not an archetypal person of his generation, being a child of Woodstock and the edgy counter-culture of the early 70s. Let's see more exploration of the in-between areas in ASOAIF, I say. Into the unknown. This also harks back to his love of HP Lovecraft, another big influence of his. This series will definitely get weirder before it concludes.