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Cytat
Do celu tam się wysiada. Lec Stanisław Jerzy (pierw. de Tusch-Letz, 1909-1966)
A bogowie grają w kości i nie pytają wcale czy chcesz przyłączyć się do gry (. . . ) Bogowie kpią sobie z twojego poukładanego życia (. . . ) nie przejmują się zbytnio ani naszymi planami na przyszłość ani oczekiwaniami. Gdzieś we wszechświecie rzucają kości i przypadkiem wypada twoja kolej. I odtąd zwyciężyć lub przegrać - to tylko kwestia szczęścia. Borys Pasternak
Idąc po kurzych jajach nie podskakuj. Przysłowie szkockie
I Herkules nie poradzi przeciwko wielu.
Dialog półinteligentów równa się monologowi ćwierćinteligenta. Stanisław Jerzy Lec (pierw. de Tusch - Letz, 1909-1966)
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.We do assure you that there is a reason for this warning, a peculiarity ofthe way these humanoids build their minds.The process is confined to theearly stages of their lifespans, and it involves the use of animals as iconicimages.Any tourist who manifests his, her, its, etc.self is liable to enter intothe culture as a new icon, with unpredictable results.Do not fail to make the scheduled voluntary inspection of the Toy Roomat the base in St Albans.There you will observe primitive constructs knownas teddy bear and womble.On no account be tempted to purloin one ofthese exhibits and convey it to a local nursery or open-air crèche with theintention of providing slightly more response than the infant humanoid isexpecting.The joy of infants at a toy becoming as interactive as a pet maybe delightful, and it may indeed reinforce the cultural message the childwould normally get.However, a favourable outcome cannot be guaranteed,and the penalties for infringement are therefore severe.The penalties are even more severe (if that is possible) for inflictingmischief on humanoid children by programming them inappropriately fortheir culture.Manifesting one s self in the form of a teddy bear is expresslyforbidden, even in the unlikely event that its behaviour remains withincultural norms.Manifesting one s self in one s habitual form is even morestrongly forbidden, because it is impossible to predict what seed it mightplant in the infant brain.(This directive is phrased metaphorically.170 DRAGONS, TEDDY BEARS, AND TODDLERSParasitic herbiforms should note that its literal interpretation is alsoforbidden.)(Earth Prospectus, page 88734.)We saw in the last chapter that aliens will not, almost cannot, look likeEarthly lifeforms such as vertebrates or insects or octopuses in detail,that is.Some of the features of these animals, though, such as their size,the appearance of their sense organs, their disposition to have the senseorgans near the brain, and their locomotion, may be like that of someEarthly creatures.But the combinations will be different: extelligentaliens might have exoskeletons where we have endoskeletons, theymight have wheels or fur or electric organs or acd (which weignorant Earth people don t know about this category no doubtincludes most of the universe s tricks).However, when we invent aliens for films, even for books, thetemptation is to use familiar characters in familiar combinations.Earlier we gave some consideration to the biology of real aliens, and hada quick look at some invented alien ecologies.Clearly there werereasons for picking out the mobile trees of Epona; as Jack recalls, theywere the result of some argument among the Contact group that wasdesigning that world.The near-adult-stage giant-caterpillar predatorsof the Chtorr invaders of Earth were like that so that when the adultsappeared, the caterpillar image could justify our being fair with thereaders.In Legacy of Heorot, Niven and Pournelle invented the grendel, amonster distinguished by its astonishing speed.The harmless samlon ,which swim in the rivers and lakes and are eaten by Terran colonists forfood, turn out to be grendel children.Grendel biology (but not speed)is based on an Earthly organism, the frog with nasty habits.This frog,Xenopus, lives in Africa.It is to be found in dish-shaped pondscontaining only Xenopus adults, which are carnivores, Xenopus tadpoles,which are algivores, and algae (plus a bacterial decay recycling circuit,of course).The adults eat the tadpoles, having provided themselveswith the next step down in the food chain.The grendel variants of thesequel were determined by the earlier invention of the simpler islandgrendels in the first book.Ray Bradbury s Martians in The Silver Locusts were fanciful and171 WHAT DOES A MARTIAN LOOK LIKE?philosophical because his elegant prose was well adapted to that kind offaerie.This is in total contrast to the Red and Green Martians of EdgarRice Burroughs, who were noble-but-warlike savages, appropriate tohis culture; they were alien transplants of sword-and-sorcery heroConan the Barbarian.Burroughs s Red Princess of Mars was nearenough human, so that John Carter could first fall for her, then shackup with her.Adolescent Jack was worried about sexual intercoursebetween a human and an egg-laying female alien the shell-makingequipment might have given the man quite a shock.Spock, in the first series of Star Trek, was portrayed as a human-without-emotion, a completely rational person; he was supposed to bea half-breed between a human and a Vulcan, humanoids from totallydifferent evolutionary trees.The Star Trek office, when informed thatthis was unlikely in the extreme, invented an Ancient Alien Race thathad spotted the galaxy with DNA of such kind that it would inevitablyprogress to organisms indistinguishable from Hollywood actors with abit of facial wax and funny ears.In this chapter we look at some of the fictional aliens that humanshave invented.We argue that many are rooted in the nursery talesexamined by Shepard in Thinking Animals, or the supernatural myth-creatures of other cultures, from which they have often metamorphosedby adoption into western folk tales or even the serious theatre.Some ofthe aliens that our race has invented relate to more biological phobias,like our irrational fears of spiders, mice or non-poisonous snakes
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