Lempriere's Dictionary Conundrum (Spoilers!)

[Tore Rye Andersen]

>From: "Ya Sam"

>Don't read this if you haven't read the book!



















>I finished this book which required a lot of browsing in dictionaries and 
>encyclopedias and realised that I didn't get something substantial in terms 
>of the plot. If there are any folks who read the book and understood it, 
>I'm appealing for your help. The 9 conspirators have been the nemesis of 
>the Lemprieres since the siege of Rochelle which took place 150 yeard 
>before the events described in the novel. How could they have lived that 
>long, without, uh, dying? Vacaunson was born in the beginning of the 18th 
>century, so he couldn't be at Rochelle during the siege. And why the fact 
>that his persecutors should be about 200 years old does not surprise 
>Lempriere himself? Or maybe they're all robots made by Vacaunson, but then 
>they couldn't be there because Vacaunson wasn't born at the time. I do 
>realise that I missed something, and I would be really greatful if anyone 
>could enlighten me in this respect.


Hi Ya Sam - you caught the gist of it. The nine conspirators are indeed 
robots - or, more properly, cyborgs (since there are still left-overs of the 
original humans in there), constructed by Vaucanson. This is stated more or 
less directly at various points in the novel (e.g. on p. 539 of the British 
paperback where the leader taps on his chest and says to John: "we changed 
in here", which elicits an interesting reaction from Vaucanson). And the 
other part of the chronological conundrum is easily solved. The Vaucanson of 
LD simply isn't the same person as the historical Jacques de Vaucanson (who 
died in 1782, before the main action of the novel). Clearly the Vaucanson of 
Norfolk's novel is meant to suggest someone with the real Vaucanson's 
mechanical skills, but they're not the same guy. This becomes evident on p. 
354, where Norfolk's Vaucanson thinks of what he derogatively calls "the 
toymakers, the Maillardets, the other Vaucanson (his namesake)" etc. The 
Vaucanson of Lemprière's Dictionary has the ability to construct immortal 
cyborgs, so I guess he's justified in thinking of his namesake as a mere 
toymaker....

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