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Spam deleted by QuickTopic 08-30-2015 06:07
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David Sooby
07-27-2015
04:09 UT
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David Johnson said:
> Of course, but surely Freas is more likely to have had some insight from Beam--if only via his art editor--
> than any of us here could ever hope to have.
Given
Kelly Freas' art style, and his habit (very pronounced later in his
career) of similar illustrations regardless of what story they are for,
it seems highly unlikely that his art gives any real insight into any
story, Piper or otherwise. In fact, given how illustrations for SF
stories are usually handled, it seems unwise to assume -any-
illustration gives insight into the story, unless that illustration is
done by the author himself.
I am impressed when an artist like
Darrel K. Sweet or Michael Whelan talks about actually reading the text
closely for inspiration for a story. Most artists don't bother to do
that. But even where they do read it closely, there is -never- any case
where they are given insight into the story by the art director. That's
not even remotely what a publishing art director does.
It's
interesting that Freas chose to portray the Martian mural as stylized,
despite the clear description in the story that the murals were quite
realistic. But I can't fault him for that; a stylized mural is more
visually interesting. Freas' painting works well as a piece of art; less
so as an illustration for "Omnilingual".
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
David "Lensman" Sooby
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David Johnson
07-25-2015
01:07 UT
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~
Jonathan Crocker wrote:
> At some point, it becomes a choice to what the reader is
> comfortable with. I can think that Omnilingual is a good story
> without believing in a lost Mars civilization for a moment.
Agreed.
Even Beam realized he was writing "alternate history" rather than
"future history" by the time Sputnik was launched. As Piper fans, we
have to accept this for much of the Future History. Not only is there
not--nor was there ever--a "lost civilization" on Mars, but there also
was no human expedition to Mars in the 1990s (and, thankfully, no atomic
war in the 1970s).
But that doesn't mean we can't enjoy stories
set in an place were both Mars and Venus are habitable for humans (in
certain conditions, at least), where nationalism is an archaic social
pathology, and where people are born in Antarctica while horse-mounted
barbarians roam across Eurasia. . . .
David
--
"You
either went on to the inevitable catastrophe, or you realized, in time,
that nuclear armament and nationalism cannot exist together on the same
planet, and it is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of
knowledge." - H. Beam Piper, ~Uller Uprising~
~
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Jonathan Crocker
07-24-2015
05:03 UT
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Actually, I enjoyed the snippets of the murals shown in the background,
very stylized. The whole picture is good, very evocative of the story.
When
the stories were written, there was enough unknown about Mars that a
lost civilization didn't seem totally out of the question - just as a
lost civilization on an unknown plateau in the vastness of the jungles
of South America, ripe for Professor Challenger to find, seemed quite
plausible enough to Arthur Conan Doyle. Or all those lost cities that
populated Africa in the stories before that.
At some point, it
becomes a choice to what the reader is comfortable with. I can think
that Omnilingual is a good story without believing in a lost Mars
civilization for a moment. The Martian Chronicles were a great read
too, even when you know that there aren't lost cities there.
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David Johnson
07-23-2015
19:22 UT
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~
Jackson Russell wrote:
> Actually, there is no real reason
> to accept this illustration as any
> kind of accurate description of
> a Martian.
Of
course, but surely Freas is more likely to have had some insight from
Beam--if only via his art editor--than any of us here could ever hope to
have.
> Quite often, the artist
> does not read the story and is
> only given vague details,
I
think you're correct generally but in this case, particularly given the
five other interior illustrations Freas did for the yarn, it seems
clear he was familiar with the story.
> which in Omnilingual were very vague indeed, to work from.
Apparently, not so vague that folks reading the story half a century later aren't able to conclude they describe humans. ;)
> At first glance the image in the
> background made me think
> Galileo. So what is the Martian
> looking at/for? Earth? For
> colonization? Fairly low tech for
> that in the illustration.
Again,
this is Freas taking his context from the yarn. This is an historical
scientist in one of those murals on the walls of the University. Freas
isn't showing us "what a Martian looked like." He's showing us what the
Martian artists who painted the murals thought a Martian looked like.
Cheers,
David
~
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Jackson Russell
07-23-2015
15:38 UT
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Actually, there is no real reason to accept this illustration as any
kind of accurate description of a Martian. Quite often, the artist
does not read the story and is only given vague details, which in
Omnilingual were very vague indeed, to work from. At first glance the
image in the background made me think Galileo. So what is the Martian
looking at/for? Earth? For colonization? Fairly low tech for that in
the illustration.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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David Johnson
07-23-2015
15:11 UT
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~
Jackson Russell wrote:
> Well within human norm, though it would be silly to think all
> Martians looked the same, even to us.
I
don't think the question we must ask ourselves about Freas' choice is,
"Could this be a human?" but rather, "Why did he--and the art editor who
bought his picture for their cover--chose to depict such an unusual
looking 'human'?" I mean, of the four beings shown in Freas' painting,
the Martian is certainly the physiological outlier. That seems an odd
choice if Freas--or the art editor--believed the Martians to be humans. .
. .
> My description in an earlier post was also well
within the human norm, if at extreme edges. It isn't impossible for a
Martian to be extremely obese.
Look closely. There are
many more differences from the "human norm" in that depiction than
merely "obesity." (Indeed, it's not clear to me that it's accurate to
describe this being's large size to being due to obesity.) Look, for
example, at the size of the hands and head as compared to the torso, or
at the thickness of the thighs as compared to the torso. . . .
I guess we see what we want to see in an image like this.
David
--
"I
was born in Antarctica, on Terra. The water's a little too cold to do
much swimming there. And I've spent most of my time since then in
central Argentine, in the pampas country." - Glenn Murell (H. Beam
Piper), ~Four-Day Planet~
~
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Jackson Russell
07-23-2015
04:57 UT
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Well within human norm, though it would be silly to think all Martians
looked the same, even to us. My description in an earlier post was also
well within the human norm, if at extreme edges. It isn't impossible
for a Martian to be extremely obese. The distance from the sun might
suggest the need for greater personal insulation, much like the Inuit
(Eskimo) enjoy for protection against the cold. My assumption was that
they either adapted to the cold, or became dependent on artificial
heat early on. Also, with the dying of the planet, food would become
more scarce forcing everybody to cut down and tighten whatever the
Martian equivalent of a belt is.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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David "PiperFan" Johnson  07-23-2015
03:33 UT
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~
What Kelly Freas thought Omnilingual's Martians (and Terrans) looked like
~
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Jackson Russell
07-22-2015
02:13 UT
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Actually, as the Terrans of the THFH lost all knowledge of their Matian
heritage, they considered themselves Terrans, plain and simple.
Martian Uber Allez and Terran Uber Allez is basically the same thing as
they are the same people, whether they know it or not. And it is my
use of the term, not Piper's. The point being that the Mars/Terra
civilizations are superior to all the rest. Physically, this may not
always be the case, but then, it doesn't need to be. Terrans have the
power and the knowledge, and that is where the true strength lies.
As
for making fire, I just can't see any way any species could lose it all
the way. Striking rocks to make sparks into dry grass is slow, but
evenbtually it will get the job done. Same with rubbing sticks together
vigorously - I hated that back in scouts - or even collecting a
burning branch from a tree struck by lightning and keeping it going.
Fire is too important to lose.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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David Johnson
07-22-2015
01:37 UT
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~
Jackson Russell wrote:
> On the Fuzzy-nauts issue, I have to go with Diehr in his first book.
> An ancient race with space travel sinking so low that they would
> lose fire making technology beggars the imagination.
Well,
keeping in mind that a) I've not read Diehr's books and b) I don't find
it necessary to explain how native Freyans can be inter-fertile with
Terro-humans, I would nevertheless point out that it's not essential
that there be "Fuzzy-nauts." Indeed, we've had some extensive
discussions here in the past about whether "ancient Fuzzies" might have
been "crew" or "cargo."
Furthermore, regardless of the "crew" or
"cargo" issue, even if the Fuzzies were "crew" it could be that they
simply weren't able to maintain a fire-making capability, whether that
be due to some sort of other catastrophe--perhaps they were dying in
droves early-on due to some particular pathogen in Zarathustra's
biosphere and just managed to maintain a breeding population--or merely
because those "ancient Fuzzy-nauts" were so used to the
"space-microwave" that they didn't have many fire-making skills in the
first place. . . .
> Then there is the zatku issue. how would they carry enough live
> landprawns in a ship to maintain reproductive viability, and
> moreover, why bother? If they had the technology to travel
> the stars, surely they had the med-tech to synthesize hokfusine
> in a more compact form.
I'm
afraid I don't understand why it's essential to conclude, if one
assumes the Fuzzies came from some other planet, that landprawns were
"extra-Zarathustrans" too. . . .
> But lets cut to the heart of it. Piper intended Little Fuzzy to be a
> one-off. He was talked into rewriting the ending to make it
> possible to do a sequel, which he did. Then he got talked into
> doing a third book. by this time he was as sick of writing about
> Fuzzies as Doyle was with Sherlock Holmes. So, we had three
> books and at no time did he even hint that Fuzzies came from
> outside of Zarathustran space. Frankly, the simple fact that he
> didn't have Fuzzies colonizing other planets nails the lid shut.
I
think your point about Beam's lack of enthusiasm for additional Fuzzy
yarns is a poignant one but, for me, it actually argues against the
point you're trying to make. We have clear evidence--in the form of
"When in the Course--" / ~Lord Kalvan~--that Beam was happy to abandon a
setting for the chance to make some money. And let's not forget what
his state of mind--and finances--must have been like by the time he was
writing the third Fuzzy novel. This leads me to take less and less
seriously the things Beam has to say in the later Fuzzy novels to try to
have his characters "explain" the ill-suitedness of the Fuzzies to
Zarathustra which he portrayed in ~Little Fuzzy~. For this reason, I'm
willing to overlook "inconsistencies" in ~Fuzzies and Other People~ more
so than any other of Beam's works (with ~Fuzzy Sapiens~ being a close
second).
> Finally, with the non-THFH story of A Planet for
Texans, Terrans were the technological and cultural superior of every
other species they encountered. Piper was very Terran Uber Allez in his
writings.
Well, putting aside for a moment that ~Texans~
was co-written with McGuire (and that we can find similarities in the
McGuire collaborations that aren't there in Beam's other work), I still
don't agree with this claim. First off, at least in the _early_
Paratime yarns, it would have to be "Mars Uber Alles." But whether it
be a yarn like ~Uller Uprising~ or a yarn like "Oomphel in the Sky"
there are plenty of examples in the Future History of Beam portraying
_some_ non-humans as being superior to _some_ Terro-humans (even--or
maybe especially--when those Terro-humans happen to have their hands on
the levers of the government).
Sure, Terro-human civilization is
superior to the non-human civilizations encountered in the Federation
era but this is because Beam is using the Federation as a parallel for
historical European colonial history. At the time Beam was writing it
was only just starting to become clear that "American
civilization"--which is nevertheless much-derived from European
civilization--would surpass European civilization. Certainly there
weren't many examples yet of European civilization being substantively
supplanted by "American civilization" that Beam might have adopted in
his fiction. (And, indeed, it seems that Beam suspected that "American
civilization's" days were numbered--in mushroom clouds!)
> I very much doubt he would have ever even conceived of an
> ancient race seeding the various planets with humans. Even
> the Martians weren't superior by the time the humans discovered
> them -- and I am still in the corner where humans were the
> descendants of Martians, and Freyans likely were as well.
Here
you seem to be contradicting yourself. If Freyans are Martians then,
again, it's "Mars Uber Alles," not "Terra Uber Alles." I don't see how
anyone gets past the idea that there must have been _some_ sort of
"ancient star-farers" if one concludes that there is some sort of
explanation other than the "unscientific one" for the inter-fertility of
Freyans and Terro-humans. If Freyans came to Freya from elsewhere,
they did so _long_ before anyone on Terra was building interstellar
spacecraft. . . .
Ptosphes!
David
--
"A lot
of technicians are girls, and when work gets slack, they're always the
first ones to get shoved out of jobs." - Sylvie Jacquemont (H. Beam
Piper), ~Junkyard Planet~
~
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David Sooby
07-21-2015
10:12 UT
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Jackson Russell said:
> On the Fuzzy-nauts issue, I have to go with Diehr in his first book. An ancient race with space travel sinking
> so low that they would lose fire making technology beggars the imagination. Fire keep you warm when it is cold,
> cooks food thus making it safer to eat, and frightens away dangerous wildlife. The diminutive stature of a Fuzzy
> makes fire an iron clad necessity.
That's
odd; the diminutive stature of chimpanzees, monkeys, and in fact the
vast majority of primates, doesn't make fire an "iron clad" necessity
for the survival of any of them. In fact, FUZZIES AND OTHER PEOPLE
shows Fuzzies as being quite competent at surviving in the wild, without
any use of fire. The only reason their species is on the decline is an
unfortunate genetic mutation that makes their health dependent on the
extremely rare element titanium.
> If they had the technology to travel the stars, surely they had the med-tech to synthesize hokfusine in a more
> compact form.
Obviously
they did -not- invent the technology to travel the stars. It's
understandable that Diehr didn't want to write a book with protagonists
who (as John Carr points out) talk and act like seven year old human
children; at least one account indicates Piper got tired of that
himself. But Diehr's Fuzzies are not Piper's Fuzzies. Even if you
ignore the fact that they all talk and act like pre-teen children, the
scientists in LITTLE FUZZY rate their intelligence at about equal to a
10-to-12 year old human. If Diehr's Fuzzies have an IQ equal to human
norm, and I think he's stated that's the case, then he has given them an
IQ about 63% higher than Piper gave them.
In no way can Diehr's
Fuzzies be reconciled with Piper's. The fact that Fuzzies' sapience is
questionable is the basis for the conflict, the main plot, in LITTLE
FUZZY. If Fuzzies were as intelligent as Diehr writes them, then their
sapience would never have been in doubt, and the story of LITTLE FUZZY
could not have happened.
Maybe -you- can believe that a species
in which a genius has the mentality of an average (not exceptionally
bright) 12 year old Terro-human can invent and build starships; I do
not.
> Finally, with the non-THFH story of A Planet for Texans, Terrans were the technological and cultural superior
> of every other species they encountered. Piper was very Terran Uber Allez in his writings. I very much doubt
> he would have ever even conceived of an ancient race seeding the various planets with humans. Even the Martians
> weren't superior by the time the humans discovered them -- and I am still in the corner where humans were the
> descendants of Martians, and Freyans likely were as well.
I
think you've got the tail wagging the dog. Piper wanted to write
stories about an interstellar Federation and Empire which were analogues
of our own history. That requires Humans be not merely the dominant
species in the galaxy, but to have no rivals for power. The closest
Piper ever comes to writing about another species as if it is nearly
equal to Terro-human is in ULLER UPRISING, in which the Terrans are the
analog of the British and the Ullerans are the analog of the Indians
during the time of the Sepoy Mutiny. In no other story does Piper even
come close to suggesting any alien species had a chance of wiping out a
Human colony, let alone threatening the Federation or Empire as a whole.
Whether
or not Piper bought into Campbell's idea of "Humanity Uber Alles" seems
rather irrelevant to me. I think Piper simply wasn't -interested- in
writing stories in which humans were not the dominant species. It's not
like he sold all of his stories to Campbell, yet you can't point to any
single story in which humans were seriously challenged for dominance by
any other species.
Contrariwise, Campbell certainly wrote
stories in which humans were seriously challenged for dominance. He had
them winning out because they were more inventive and/or cunning and/or
ruthless than the aliens. Three examples: "Who Goes There?", "The
Black Star Passes" (the novlet, not the collection) and "Cloak of
Aesir".
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman
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David Sooby
07-21-2015
09:18 UT
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David Johnson wrote:
> If ancient Freyans had to come originally from Terra and ancient Fuzzies came to Zarathustra from
> some other "Fuzzy Home" then it seems reasonable to assume that Beam intended for a similar agency
> to be involved in both cases of "ancient star-faring."
I
would agree if it wasn't for the fact that in FUZZIES AND OTHER PEOPLE,
Piper specifices that the genetic change in Fuzzies which caused their
unfortunate dependency on titanium, happened on Zarathustra "about the
time Terran humans were starting civilizations in the Nile and Euphrates
valleys". I'm not sure what Piper meant by that, but a brief Google
search suggests modern archaologists might put that any time between
6000-11,000 B.C.
> The issue of the Martians _never_ comes up in "When in the Course--" which seems very, very odd if
> Terro-humans of that era understood Terrans to be _descended_ from ancient Martians or even just
> understood ancient Martians and Terrans to both be "human." This is an enormously relevant point
> to the discussions which occur among the ~Stellex~ crew about the potential inter-fertility of
> Freyans and Terrans. That it never comes up makes it clear (to me, at least) that Terrans in the
> aftermath of the Penrose expedition do _not_ consider both Martians and Terrans to be "human."
But
the issue of whether or not Humans and Martians share a common genetic
ancestor never comes up in "Omnilingual", either, and the absence there
is far more glaring! I mean, these are archaeologists for heaven's
sake! They see statues which look Human, they see murals painted with
scenes which all appear either like something right out of Human
history, or something very similar; and yet not a single one of them,
during the course of the story, ever advances even the faintest
possibility that Martians and Terro-Humans are the same species!
To
me, this doesn't point to the idea never occurring to anyone. This
points to "scientific dogma" and suppression of the evidence. If you
say "That couldn't happen!" ...I point you to Alfred Wegener and the
theory of Continental Drift. There was plenty of evidence in support of
the theory, all of which was ignored by the scientific establishment.
I
suggest this is perhaps not much different than how Piper portrayed
wrong-headed anthropological dogma regarding the Kragans in ULLER
UPRISING.
Certainly in later times in the Federation, after the
time of "Omnilingual", there's no suggestion in any story that
"Terro-humans" originally evolved on Mars. In fact, the label
"Terro-human" strongly suggests the scientific establishment rejected
the idea. Piper underscored that by having a character in another story
make a passing reference to a supposed "scientific fraud" of finding
Martian script in a prehistoric cave painting on Earth. Surely Piper
wrote that to be an inside joke for his fans, who recognize it as an
ironic observation that what is or isn't considered "scientific fraud"
may be rather subjective, and possibly entirely wrong. (I note a
parallel in the recent controversy over /Homo floresiensis/ (aka
"Hobbits"), and the suggestion that some of the evidence might have been
at least misinterpreted, if not actually faked... before the consensus
of opinion eventually prevailed that the evidence is quite real, with
several samples showing similar characteristics, and that /H.
floresiensis/ is indeed now considered a previously undiscovered species
of our genus.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman
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David Sooby
07-21-2015
08:33 UT
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Jackson Russell said:
> Personally, I suspect that the Martians would have been taller, thinner and either albino or black.
> Height would be a result of the lower gravity not restricting growth the way it does on Earth. Thin,
> because the same degree of muscle mass is unnecessary to function in a low gravity environment. Albino
> if the magnetic shield remained intact until they left the planet; less solar radiation coming in.
> Black if the magnetic shield dispersed before they left the planet - and possibly what made Mars
> become uninhabitable - darkening the skin with more radiation.
And
yet, in "Omnilingual", we are told repeatedly that Martians appear
entirely Human in appearance; even Caucasian, if I interpret Martha
Dane's comments correctly. I'd argue, as part of my fanfix, that this
is more evidence that the Martians' genetic ancestors came from Earth,
and not all that long before, either, in evolutionary terms.
"Genesis"
describes different Martians with diverse hair color: "blonde" vs.
"dark-haired", but otherwise apparently not genetically diverse. Based
on a lot of hints in various stories, it seems that Piper identified the
Martian "race" with Cro-Magnon man. The term "Cro-Magnon" has fallen
out of favor in scientific circles, but the same genetic group is now
labeled "Early modern Europeans".
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Charley,
have you found one characteristic among these people that
differentiates them from us?" he asked. "Do they differ from us any
more than a full-blooded Mongoloid differs from a full-blooded Negroid
or Caucasian?"
"Well, no," Clifford grudged. "But they can't be
human! They evolved here on Freya; there's no genetic connection at all
between them and us."
He was trying very hard to be convincing. Maybe it was Charles Clifford, M.D., whom he was really trying to convince.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--"When in the Course"
Here
we see that even while protesting that Freyans "can't" be Terro-humans,
Clifford presents evidence of the very thing he says is impossible --
that the Freyans seem to be merely a different "race" of Humans, which
is what one would expect if a group of early Homo Sapiens had been
transported from Mars to Freya say, 100,000-150,000 years ago. (In the
foreword to "Genesis", John Carr puts the Martian attempt to colonize
Earth at 75,000 to 100,000 years ago. Clearly the transport of
near-human hominids from Earth to Mars must have happened earlier.)
Of
course, we have to be selective in which quotes we cite from "When in
the Course--"; quotes like this are show science that was outdated even
at the time Piper wrote the story:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Humanoid form, of course, was to be expected in any sapient race...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That, sadly, is part of the whole "parallel evolution" fallacy advanced in the story.
* * * * *
Magnetic
shield? Is there something in Canon about the Martians having an
artificial magnetic shield protecting the entire planet? If you mean
just the normal magnetic shield like the Earth has (but in our universe,
Mars is missing), then I'll point out that Earth's magnetic shield
doesn't stop all the UV radiation, and that's one of the two main
evolutionary factors causing a variation in skin albedo (i.e.,
reflectivity) and melanin content of people living in different
latitudes. The other factor is the need for human skin to create
vitamin D when exposed to sunlight; people living in northern latitudes
apparently have pale skin because melanin blocks too much of the
frequencies of light that stimulate vitamin D production.
The
effect of the Earth's magnetic field on shielding us from high-energy
radiation has been greatly exaggerated in the popular press, and by
"science made stupid" movies like "The Core". (Hey, I -like- "The
Core"; I love super-science stories. But I don't confuse it with
hard-SF!) Most of the high-energy radiation is blocked by the Earth's
atmosphere, not by the magnetic field. Note that the Earth's magnetic
field reverses about every 50,000 years, and as part of the process of
reversing, the field greatly weakens and mostly disappears. Clearly
there is not a mass extinction of animals from high-energy radiation,
nor have all the northern light-skinned races of Humans all or even
mostly been killed off every time the Earth's magnetic field reversed.
One
could argue that Martians, evolving much farther from the sun than
Earth, would all tend to be pale-skinned... which, apparently, is
exactly what Piper intended. In this scenario, dark-skinned Humans
would have evolved only -after- Martians colonized Earth, and spread out
from the original colony or colonies to different latitudes. One could
also argue that Martians, living in a thinner atmosphere with less UV
being blocked by the atmosphere, should all have been dark-skinned.
Clearly Piper didn't agree. Note that just as sunlight is weaker at
Mars, so is UV radiation, so at a minimum that's a mitigating factor.
> Coming to Earth would weed out the weak pretty quick. Three times the gravity, way more sunlight,
> thicker atmosphere...yeah, to survive they would have to build up some pretty impressive muscle
> mass compared to what they got by on previously.
This
is much more scientifically plausible if we stipulate that the
Martians' ancestors evolved on Earth, and in evolutionary terms were
only recently transported to Mars. There simply wasn't that much time
to evolve to Mars' lower gravity.
And I think that SF writers are
wrong to claim that Terro-humans born and raised on low-gravity worlds
will be tall and thin, despite that being a trope in many SF stories
(including Larry Niven's Known Space series). Experiments with rats and
other mammals born in zero-gee aboard space stations don't exhibit any
such ontogenetic changes (i.e., development of a human fetus in Mars
gravity). So if the Martians' ancestors were relatively recently from
Earth, individuals born on Mars would not necessarily be tall an thin.
They would tend to look human... exactly as described in "Omnilingual".
Now
it's certainly true that Humans born and raised on Mars should have a
weaker musculature; that under a weaker gravity, their muscles wouldn't
have been given enough workout to develop muscles like Humans raised
under Earth gravity. However, it seems likely that when the time came
for Martians to choose a limited number of colonists, they would almost
certainly have chosen individuals that were more robustly muscled than
the average. In fact, if there was much time to prepare, it seems
likely they would have instituted a training program to build up the
musculature of the colonists, and weed out the ones too weak to deal
with Earth's heavier gravity.
BTW -- Haven't we had exactly this
same discussion before? These points and scenarios seem all too
familiar. But perhaps it was on one of the Piper e-mail discussion
lists.
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Jackson Russell
07-21-2015
05:52 UT
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On the Fuzzy-nauts issue, I have to go with Diehr in his first book. An
ancient race with space travel sinking so low that they would lose
fire making technology beggars the imagination. Fire keep you warm
when it is cold, cooks food thus making it safer to eat, and frightens
away dangerous wildlife. The diminutive stature of a Fuzzy makes fire
an iron clad necessity. While Mayhar spun an entertaining yarn, nobody
simply gives up bothering to cook and start eating food raw. Then
there is the zatku issue. how would they carry enough live landprawns
in a ship to maintain reproductive viability, and moreover, why bother?
If they had the technology to travel the stars, surely they had the
med-tech to synthesize hokfusine in a more compact form.
But
lets cut to the heart of it. Piper intended Little Fuzzy to be a
one-off. He was talked into rewriting the ending to make it possible to
do a sequel, which he did. Then he got talked into doing a third
book. by this time he was as sick of writing about Fuzzies as Doyle
was with Sherlock Holmes. So, we had three books and at no time did he
even hint that Fuzzies came from outside of Zarathustran space.
Frankly, the simple fact that he didn't have Fuzzies colonizing other
planets nails the lid shut.
Finally, with the non-THFH story of A
Planet for Texans, Terrans were the technological and cultural
superior of every other species they encountered. Piper was very Terran
Uber Allez in his writings. I very much doubt he would have ever even
conceived of an ancient race seeding the various planets with humans.
Even the Martians weren't superior by the time the humans discovered
them -- and I am still in the corner where humans were the descendants
of Martians, and Freyans likely were as well.
That all said,
there is no reason somebody couldn't write some fanfic that goes the
other way. I doubt it would ever be published as a Piper connected
work. Still no reason not to do it. These days people self publish all
the time, often just putting their own work in a blog or private
website. Have fun with it!
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
|
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David Johnson
07-21-2015
05:07 UT
|
~
A while back, Jackson Russell wrote:
> I smell a story!
I've
been thinking about this in terms of the "ancient star-farers" who may
have transported ancient Terro-humans to Freya and ancient Fuzzies from
"Fuzzy Home" to Zarathustra. Given that it's not clear from what Beam
gave us whether or not there actually _were_ any "ancient star-farers"
(or that ancient Freyans came from Terra, or that--putting aside Tuning
for the moment--the Fuzzies are not native to Zarathustra) what would be
interesting from a storytelling perspective would be a yarn which gives
us, the readers, "the answer" and yet does so in a manner which leaves
it largely unknown to the general course of Terro-human (future)
history.
You know, like whatever happened to Ed Chalmers. Or
Merlin. Or Lucas Trask's "League of Civilized Worlds." I mean, sure,
we suspect _something_ happened in each of these cases but obviously
nothing widely-known enough to endure through (future) history to later
periods. We never hear anything in a later Future History yarn about
that "history professor, who got his past and future confused, and had a
lot of trouble as a result." We never hear anything about Merlin after
Conn Maxwell's engagement. We never hear anything about Trask's League
after the liberation of Marduk. . . .
So maybe, somewhere and
somehow, someone discovers the origins of the Freyans--and of the
Fuzzies--but does so in a way that doesn't leave a trail for someone in
~Junkyard Planet~ or ~Space Viking~ or the Empire yarns (or "The
Keeper") to remark upon.
Hmmm.
David
--
"You
had a wonderful civilization here. . . . You could have made almost
anything of it. But it's too late now. You've torn down the gates; the
barbarians are in." - Lucas Trask (H. Beam Piper), ~Space Viking~
~
|
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Tom Rogers
07-19-2015
01:01 UT
|
(Having cooled down from his evolution-why-does-nobody-ever-get-it-right rant ) I
think that lucky fan who owns Beam's artwork that appeared in Ventura
II might be Mark Olson. He created the page the image appears on, and he
certainly is a big-time Piper fan from way back. Edited 07-19-2015 01:02
|
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David Johnson
07-18-2015
16:35 UT
|
~
Jonathan Crocker wrote:
> For the Freyan/human thing - if they were interfertile without
> massive medical intervention slash gene splicing,
That
certainly seems to be what Beam intended to portray. I mean, he has
the characters in the yarn argue about it before it happens. Surely he
understood he was dealing with a controversial issue here and yet made a
conscious decision to come down on one side of it (for good or for
ill--and with whatever rationale he had in mind).
> then to my mind someone gave some humans a ride to Freya and left them there, and if Piper did that then he had a reason.
If
we must conclude that Beam was "hiding an easter egg" in Nancy
Patterson's "unlikely" pregnancy--again, a jump I don't need to make but
recognize others will find necessary--this seems the most likely
course. Then, the best place this "fits" with the rest of the Future
History is in the Fuzzies' ill-suitedness to the Zarathustran biosphere.
If ancient Freyans had to come originally from Terra and ancient
Fuzzies came to Zarathustra from some other "Fuzzy Home" then it seems
reasonable to assume that Beam intended for a similar agency to be
involved in both cases of "ancient star-faring."
> Every
other sapient race he bothered to describe was very much not human, but
Freya was described in Uller Uprising as "where the people were human to
the last degree" (which saw print) and the descriptions of the people
in "When In The Course" seem to show two groups of humans that differed
only by their birthworld
The ancient Martians discovered by
the Penrose expedition would seem to fit with these "human-like"
descriptions as well but for me, that's the most compelling evidence for
there _not_ being any "ancient" connection between Martians, Terrans,
and Freyans. The issue of the Martians _never_ comes up in "When in the
Course--" which seems very, very odd if Terro-humans of that era
understood Terrans to be _descended_ from ancient Martians or even just
understood ancient Martians and Terrans to both be "human." This is an
enormously relevant point to the discussions which occur among the
~Stellex~ crew about the potential inter-fertility of Freyans and
Terrans. That it never comes up makes it clear (to me, at least) that
Terrans in the aftermath of the Penrose expedition do _not_ consider
both Martians and Terrans to be "human."
Again, your light-years-per-kilogram-of-gadolinium may vary.
David
--
"Let's see yours. Draw--soul! Inspection--soul!" - Foxx Travis (H. Beam Piper), "Oomphel in the Sky"
~
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 07-18-2015
16:15 UT
|
~
A very fortunate Piper fan:
http://fancyclopedia.wikidot.com/h-beam-piper
(This original illustration first appeared in the fanzine _Ventura II_.)
~
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 07-18-2015
16:12 UT
|
~
"A Little Fuzzy Hunting"
Fascinating little tidbit here about some dedicated new Piper fansL
https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/trav...pz4uOPWJ/story.html
~
|
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Jonathan Crocker
07-18-2015
05:49 UT
|
For the Freyan/human thing - if they were interfertile without massive
medical intervention slash gene splicing, then to my mind someone gave
some humans a ride to Freya and left them there, and if Piper did that
then he had a reason. It may have been slated to be revealed later, he
may have decided that it wasn't a good idea and just dropped it, he may
have forgotten what it was or not seen any reason to follow up on a
story that was changed so drastically when it was published.
Every
other sapient race he bothered to describe was very much not human, but
Freya was described in Uller Uprising as "where the people were human
to the last degree" (which saw print) and the descriptions of the people
in "When In The Course" seem to show two groups of humans that differed
only by their birthworld - and while that didn't see print, it wasn't
for lack of trying.
|
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David Johnson
07-17-2015
21:42 UT
|
~
Jackson Russell wrote:
> - I think there is more than one
> Gimli given certain conflicting
> information -
Whatever
contradictions exist with respect to Gimli are certainly no more severe
than those we see across the Terro-human Future History for worlds we
actually visit like Freya and Fenris and Zarathustra. Given this it
seems . . . extreme to conclude there must be more than one Gimli.
David
~
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Jackson Russell
07-17-2015
15:42 UT
|
I just had a thought. I mentioned earlier that there seems to be two
Gimlis based on certain evidence in the writings. This is easily
explained with the loss of civilization and information. When the
Space Vikings got busy, they could find a planet that more or less
resembles one in the legends and say "Eureka! We found Gimli!" That
would explain why Gimli seems to be two months travel from so many
different places. Okay, so, later explorers find a planet orbiting a
K0 star with hirsute semi-intelligent inhabitants and say "Eureka! We
found Zarathustra!" even though the real Zarathustra is a thousand
light years in the opposite direction.
Couldn't happen?
Welllll...I seem to recall an explorer looking for India and bumping
into some islands way west in the Atlantic Ocean...
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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Jackson Russell
07-17-2015
15:28 UT
|
Personally, I suspect that the Martians would have been taller, thinner
and either albino or black. Height would be a result of the lower
gravity not restricting growth the way it does on Earth. Thin, because
the same degree of muscle mass is unnecessary to function in a low
gravity environment. Albino if the magnetic shield remained intact
until they left the planet; less solar radiation coming in. Black if
the magnetic shield dispersed before they left the planet - and
possibly what made Mars become uninhabitable - darkening the skin with
more radiation.
Coming to Earth would weed out the weak pretty
quick. Three times the gravity, way more sunlight, thicker
atmosphere...yeah, to survive they would have to build up some pretty
impressive muscle mass compared to what they got by on previously. The
really tall ones would be hampered by back and joint problems and
would also end up getting weeded out. The shorter healthier Martians,
busting their backsides just to stay alive, would not be able to coddle
the ones disabled by gravity, or at the very least, the women would
gravitate, if you will pardon the pun, towards the shorter ones who
would be better providers. Skin color, if Albino, would have to get
dark pretty quick - relatively speaking - to handle the suns rays. If
black, they would lighten up much later on when the populace started
spreading out into the cooler climates in order to efficiently process
vitamin D from the sun.
A tall - think basketball player - thin -
think Ethiopian during the drought back in the 80s - black or white
Martian would look pretty much human, yet different enough as to be
recognized as different.
Ha! Can't wait to see the battle over this!
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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Jackson Russell
07-17-2015
15:13 UT
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I think Ruth was being ironic about the Fuzzies and Humans becoming
inter-fertile. Kind of like saying an Atomic bomb is slightly more
powerful than a stick of dynamite. Also, he stated that science was
still on the fence about Cro-Magnon/Neanderthals mixing. The minimally
divergent DNA drift could simply be from adapting to two different
environments. No two planets could be exactly alike. However, either
way somebody will have the viability argument. If Freyans and Terrans
don't share a common Martian ancestry, then their mixing is even less
plausible than Martians and Neanderthals, who hail under the same sun,
mixing. The thing to remember here is that this is science FICTION.
We won't really know if these things are possible until we get out
there.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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David Johnson
07-17-2015
15:05 UT
|
~
Jay P Hailey wrote:
> I'd always assumed that by
having the Fuzzies utterly vanish, Piper was making a statement about
just how ruinous colonialism is for native populations - I'd always had
it in mind that Piper was saying "Yes, the Fuzzies were cool, but
there were too few of them and too many humans and the Fuzzies died
out."
I don't believe the Fuzzies "died out" but I agree with
your general thesis about Beam's portrayal of non-humans in Terro-human
civilization. It's clear from Paul's musings in "Ministry" that
Fuzzies are not driving miniature contragravity vehicles or commenting
on the news of the day with their personal voice-amplification devices.
> But then, what of the other aliens we see in the TFH? Do they have a role in the empires of the future?
This
is the (sad and) interesting thing. Even though there are, depending
upon how you count, about ten non-Terran races in the Federation era we
still see a human-dominated Empire. Yes, there are the Thoran "gurkhas"
among the Imperial guard but there are no non-human ministers or combat
pilots or professors (or students) or underworld thugs or anything else
in the four post-Federation era yarns we have. Apparently, Beam meant
to show us that Terran paternalism endures even more tenaciously than
does Terran civilization.
Yeek!
David
--
"Why not everybody make friend, have fun, make help, be good?" - Diamond Grego (H. Beam Piper), ~Fuzzy Sapiens~
~
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David Sooby
07-17-2015
10:34 UT
|
David Johnson said:
> Having never been a believer that the Martians found by the Penrose expedition are "humans"--
> the best we get from the story itself is an educated guess that their vocal organs are such
> that they could produce sounds which humans could understand...
Quoting from "Omnilingual":
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
...they
were still distinguishable, as was the word, Darfhulva, in golden
letters above each of the four sides. It was a moment before she
realized, from the murals, that she had at last found a meaningful
Martian word. They were a vast historical panorama, clockwise around the
room. A group of skin-clad savages squatting around a fire. Hunters
with bows and spears, carrying a carcass of an animal slightly like a
pig. Nomads riding long-legged, graceful mounts like hornless deer.
Peasants sowing and reaping; mud-walled hut villages, and cities;
processions of priests and warriors; battles with swords and bows, and
with cannon and muskets; galleys, and ships with sails, and ships
without visible means of propulsion, and aircraft. Changing costumes and
weapons and machines and styles of architecture. A richly fertile
landscape, gradually merging into barren deserts and bushlands--the time
of the great planet-wide drought. The Canal Builders--men with machines
recognizable as steam-shovels and derricks, digging and quarrying and
driving across the empty plains with aqueducts. More cities--seaports on
the shrinking oceans; dwindling, half-deserted cities; an abandoned
city, with four tiny humanoid figures and a thing like a combat-car in
the middle of a brush-grown plaza, they and their vehicle dwarfed by the
huge lifeless buildings around them. She had not the least doubt;
Darfhulva was History.
"Wonderful!" von Ohlmhorst was saying.
"The entire history of this race. Why, if the painter depicted
appropriate costumes and weapons and machines for each period, and got
the architecture right, we can break the history of this planet into
eras and periods and civilizations."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here the murals were of heroic-sized Martians, so human in appearance as to seem members of her own race...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Why, we don't even know that the Martians could make the same kind of vocal sounds we do."
"Oh,
yes, we do," Ivan Fitzgerald contradicted, safe on his own ground. "I
haven't seen any actual Martian skullsthese people seem to have been
very tidy about disposing of their deadbut from statues and busts and
pictures I've seen. I'd say that their vocal organs were identical with
our own."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So, Martians appear not
merely Human, but Caucasian in appearance. They appear Human in the
development of their culture, and their use of tools, both primitive and
technological. Statues and busts appear so Human that one member of
the expedition is sure their voices were identical to Human voices.
Their appearance, culture, and technologies are indistinguishable from
Human right down to the last detail.
If it is mere coincidence
that two species appear so identical in so many ways, then that is a
staggering series of coincidences, defying probability almost to the
point of mathematical impossibility. Occam's Razor does not merely
point to Martians and Humans being the same species; Occam's Razor
absolutely -requires- Humans and Martians to be one and the same
species.
However, I must admit that this argument is undercut by
the fact that none of the archaeologists in the story even mentions the
possibility that they -might- be human. Given that Piper presents them
to the reader as Human in every possible way, how can we explain the
scientists never even discussing the possibility? The only hint in the
story is the scorn heaped upon the protagonist for daring to suggest the
possibility that she might be able to decipher the Martian language; in
effect, to find a way to have a Rosetta Stone even though nothing like a
Rosetta Stone for Martian is believed to be possible. How much worse,
then, would it be for a scientist to suggest that the Human species
originated on Mars? It's not hard to believe that if any of them even
hinted that they seriously entertained the possibility, it would be the
end of their career, just as Lattimer browbeats Martha Dane with the
possibility that searching for a way to translation the Martian language
will be the end of -her- career.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman
|
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David Sooby
07-17-2015
08:56 UT
|
Apparently quoting Diehr's FUZZY SAPIENS:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"That
takes us back to environmental adaptation," said Ruth. "If the Martians
lived, say, ten or twenty thousand years on Terra adapting to the
gravity, eating the local cuisine, breathing the air and toiling under
the Terran sun they might have enjoyed, or suffered, depending on your
point of view, a DNA shift that would make them compatible with the
indigenous peoples -- provided they were fairly close to begin with."
"Using that logic," countered Gus, "Terrans and Fuzzies could become compatible in about a hundred thousand years."
"Fuzzies
are a bit further away from us, genetically speaking, than a
Neanderthal might have been," countered Ruth. "Unfortunately, science is
still on the fence whether humans and Neanderthals ever mixed. The DNA
debate has been going on since 1st century AE."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As
others have already pointed out, this is scientific nonsense. I'll
just add that it hearkens back to the hoary old science-fantasy (not
science-fiction) idea of "parallel evolution", which unfortunately is a
big part of "When in the Course--" Even worse, it implies that Fuzzies
and Humans are genetically separated only a bit further than Humans and
Neanderthals! Ummm... no. Nonononono. Neanderthals are part of our
genus; Fuzzies are a product of a completely different line of
evolution. They are not even mammals; they merely -resemble- mammals.
Mammals exist only as products of Terran evolution. At best, Fuzzies
are pseudo-mammals.
The idea that species which are the result of
independent evolution on different planets can nonetheless interbreed
belongs in A PRINCESS OF MARS and other Barsoom novels. It has no place
in hard-SF, or even the blend of hard-SF and superscience that Piper
wrote.
Now, if we're going to stick strictly to what Piper wrote,
then using the idea of parallel evolution may be defensible, since it
was presented (however wrongly) as a valid scientific concept in "When
in the Course--" But the idea that Humans and Fuzzy evolution might
converge? That may be appropriate in Furry fandom fanfic, but not in a
Piperverse pastiche!
BTW -- When Dier wrote FUZZY SAPIENS, it was
correct to say that whether or not Humans and Neanderthals interbred
was a controversial subject. It no longer is, after a lot of genetic
studies. There apparently was a surprising amount of interbreeding
going on, considering that genetically, we really are sufficiently
different from Neanderthal that geneticists consider us to be two
different species.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
David "Lensman" Sooby
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Jackson Russell
07-17-2015
05:59 UT
|
We know that Thor and Gimli - I think there is more than one Gimli given
certain conflicting information - are in the Empire. Thorans are the
Imperial Guardsmen or something like that. As for the Fuzzies - and I
do not go with this idea myself - if Terrans can revert to barbarism,
why not Fuzzies and other alien races?
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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Jay P Hailey
07-17-2015
05:18 UT
|
> We go round and round this particular pole, but I think the real
story is that
> Piper either forgot or ignored Ministry of Disturbance when he wrote Little
> Fuzzy. However, for the sake of continuity, it makes for a nice heated discussion.
>Jack
I have run into this with Star Trek fandom (Don't shoot!)
In
the end, when the source material contradicts itself, or, in the case
of Star Trek and Star Wars, contains something (Many things) Unpalatably
stupid, then you have to make you own "head canon".
Everyone
has an inner image of how their fandom should go, (None are identical)
and the trick is to understand this and be okay with it.
Pro-Fuzzy
types have to try to imagine just where the Fuzzies are in the later
Human empire and make a solution that makes sense.
Anti-Fuzzy types get to leave them out.
I'd
always assumed that by having the Fuzzies utterly vanish, Piper was
making a statement about just how ruinous colonialism is for native
populations - I'd always had it in mind that Piper was saying "Yes, the
Fuzzies were cool, but there were too few of them and too many humans
and the Fuzzies died out."
In my own Head Cannon, the Fuzzy population just stays small.
But then, what of the other aliens we see in the TFH? Do they have a role in the empires of the future?
|
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David Johnson
07-16-2015
00:59 UT
|
~
Hi Tom.
> Piper, like a lot of authors, asks his readers to suspend their
> disbelief in order to enjoy the tale. Huamans originating from
> Mars? OK. Hyper-drive? OK. Contra-Gravity. Sure. Freyans
> interbreeding with terrans? Unless they are an off-shoot of a
> common martian ancestor for humans and Freyans, NO.
>
> For me, this has always been the one thing in Piper's works that
> I cannot accept or ignore. For this alone, Campbell was right to
> reject "When in the Course..." It is a howler of a mistake. The
> reference in Uller is what it is, and I long ago decided to "read"
> it as a cultural reference and not a genetic one to preserve what
> little is left of my sanity :)
I
haven't had the same problem "suspending disbelief" with respect to
"When in the Course--" (but I admit the "peace" you've made with the
reference to Paula Quinton's Freyan great-grandmother in ~Uprising~ is
an elegant one).
Having never been a believer that the Martians
found by the Penrose expedition are "humans"--the best we get from the
story itself is an educated guess that their vocal organs are such that
they could produce sounds which humans could understand (as the
most-assuredly non-human Thorans and Sheshans apparently can also do)--I
think the only resolution to the "Freyan problem"--if one insists that
one exists--is to assume that Freyans will be discovered to be as
similarly ill-suited to their environment as the Fuzzies are to
Zarathustra and to conclude that ancient Terro-humans got to Freya in a
manner somehow similar to the way in which ancient Fuzzies got to
Zarathustra.
That could be by ancient, star-faring Fuzzies (my
preference), or some other yet-to-be-encountered ancient star-farers,
but "IMFH"--"in my Future History" for you non-Travellers--it wasn't
ancient Martians (or "Martio-humans").
Your light-years-per-kilogram-of-gadolinium may vary, of course. ;)
Cheers,
David
--
"A
girl can punch any kind of a button a man can, and a lot of them know
what buttons to punch, and why." - Conn Maxwell (H. Beam Piper),
~Junkyard Planet~
~
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Tom Rogers
07-15-2015
20:11 UT
|
Jack,
I totally agree with you about the whole Vulcan-Human
interbreeding thing. Precisely what I was talking about in my earlier
post. Unless one believes there is a common ancestor, or one believes in
the whole Pan-spermia thing, it is completely idiotic.
The only
thing I would say about lumping hyperdrive, collapsium and contragravity
into that pile is that, while all of these are highly unlikely to be
achievable (some moreso than others), they are not yet completely out of
the realm of being possible given our current understanding or, maybe,
ignorance, of physics. Evolution/genetics and their interplay, however,
is another matter entirely. Nothing even remotely possible along the
lines suggested by Piper or Diehr or Roddenberry.
As to Heisenberg compensators ... I'd rather rely on reversing the polarity of the neutron flow ;)
Tom
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Jackson Russell
07-15-2015
18:19 UT
|
The same could be said of hyperdrive, collapsium and contragravity.
Star Trek takes far more liberties than Piper or even Diehr ever did.
Still makes for an entertaining show. Heisenberg compensators
<<snerk!>.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
|
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Tom Rogers
07-15-2015
17:46 UT
|
Jackson Russell wrote (explaining what Wolfgang Diehr apparently wrote about):
>Wolfgang Diehr ventured the idea of adaptive evolution in his first book. <snip>
Mr.
Diehr could not be more wrong if he tried. "Adaptive evolution" is just
a fancy name for plain old Darwinian evolution via Natural Selection. A
species will adapt to its environment given time; if it doesn't, it
goes extinct.
What Diehr apparently tried to describe is more
akin to Lamarckian evolution, and even then he would still be
unbelievably wrong. If I am reading the quoted passage correctly, all
this talk of "DNA shift that would make them compatible with the
indigenous peoples, provided they were fairly close to begin with" is
pseudo-science of the most uninformed order! The idea that two entirely
different, unrelated species would converge genetically to the point of
inter-fertility via evolution as a result of adaptation to a common
environment is just plain ludicrous. Morphological convergence? OK - see
bats and birds, whales and fish, etc. Genetically? Just. Not. Possible.
Ever. Never. Period.
Homo sapiens sapiens and homo sapiens
neanderthalis were able to interbreed because they were, essentially,
THE SAME species (or close enough). Same goes for the Denisovan peoples,
and possibly for homo erectus and a few others.
Piper, like a
lot of authors, asks his readers to suspend their disbelief in order to
enjoy the tale. Huamans originating from Mars? OK. Hyper-drive? OK.
Contra-Gravity. Sure. Freyans interbreeding with terrans? Unless they
are an off-shoot of a common martian ancestor for humans and Freyans,
NO.
For me, this has always been the one thing in Piper's works
that I cannot accept or ignore. For this alone, Campbell was right to
reject "When in the Course..." It is a howler of a mistake. The
reference in Uller is what it is, and I long ago decided to "read" it as
a cultural reference and not a genetic one to preserve what little is
left of my sanity :)
Dropping earth fauna onto an earth-like
planet for a few millenia will only result in the earth-like fauna
evolving to better suit the local environment of the moment. It will
NEVER allow cross-breeding or hybrid births. Ain't. Gonna. Happen.
|
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David Johnson
07-15-2015
15:08 UT
|
~
Jackson Russell wrote:
> Ah! But did they go all that time with Terro humans?
Who knows? I suspect some did--perhaps even off Zarathustra--and some didn't (in the more remote areas of Zarathustra)
> The humans could have been nuked out of existence, wiped out
> by disease, pressed into military service and evacuated, or
> just plain used up the planet and bailed. Or even realized that
> they were stunting the Fuzzies growth as sapient beings and left
> to let the Fuzzies find their own way, maybe after salting the
> planet with enough titanium to keep them reproducing.
It
may be that some of each of these things happened in the centuries
between the events of the Fuzzy trilogy and the events of "Ministry."
> We really can't say they grew up side-by-side with Pappy Jack's
> descendants.
Agreed.
And I didn't say that. But what seems reasonable to assume is that
the history of Fuzzy-Terran interaction in Paul's time is much richer
than just the history recounted in the Fuzzy trilogy _and_ that much of
it is likely better known to folks of Paul's era than is the "true"
story of the Fuzzies first encounter with Federation era Terro-humans.
> Worst of all, the Zarathustran humans might have reverted to
> barbarism and hunted Fuzzies for fur and food (shudder!)
Yep. That may have happened too, if not on Zarathustra then perhaps on some other planet the Fuzzies had been "exported" to.
Yeek!
David
—
"When
somebody makes a statement you don't understand, don't tell him he's
crazy. Ask him what he means." - Otto Harkaman (H. Beam Piper), ~Space
Viking~
~
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Jackson Russell
07-15-2015
14:48 UT
|
Wolfgang Diehr ventured the idea of adaptive evolution in his first book. (Grumble grumble lots of typing)
Ben
continued, “Well, if we are all one big happy Martian family
shouldn’t Terran woman be considered equally as beautiful to our
eyes?”
“I choose to think they are,” said Gerd as he rubbed his arm and glanced at Ruth.
“Smart
man,” said Ruth with a wink. “The Martianists believe that the
Terran Colony might have mixed with the indigenous sapient race. The
Neanderthals.”
“This is the part that
really makes my head hurt,” groaned Gerd. “We are able to breed
with Freyans because Terrans and Freyans all came from Mars but we look
slightly different because we swapped a few genes with some primitive
monkey-boys which should be impossible since they weren’t Martians in
the first place.”
“Science does hold
that some genetic exchanges between Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal man may
have occurred,” offered Ben, “but how would that be possible if
Cro-Magnons came from Mars?”
“That takes
us back to environmental adaptation,” said Ruth. “If the Martians
lived, say, ten or twenty thousand years on Terra adapting to the
gravity, eating the local cuisine, breathing the air and toiling under
the Terran sun they might have enjoyed, or suffered, depending on your
point of view, a DNA shift that would make them compatible with the
indigenous peoples…provided they were fairly close to begin with.”
“Using
that logic,” countered Gus, “Terrans and Fuzzies could become
compatible in about a hundred thousand years.”
“Fuzzies
are a bit further away from us, genetically speaking, than a
Neanderthal might have been,” countered Ruth. “Unfortunately,
science is still on the fence whether humans and Neanderthals ever
mixed. The DNA debate has been going on since 1st century AE.”
“About
a decade after the human genome was mapped some scientists managed to
map the Neanderthal genome,” pointed out Gerd. “They found possible
evidence that humans and Neanderthals mingled and mated about 80,000
years ago.”
Naturally, there is no way to prove or disprove
Diehr's supposition here without dropping some people or animals on a
planet very similar to Earth and waiting several millennia to see if
they move closer genetically to each other. Still, for Science Fiction
this is better than saying Vulcans and Humans, who don't even have the
same trace metals in their blood, can generate viable offspring.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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David Sooby
07-15-2015
08:50 UT
|
John Carr said:
> Obvious, things changed over the course of the first novel, and the 2 sequels. Had Piper written
> "Ministry of Disturbance" in 1964 or '65, he might have concluded the Fuzzies were sentient. But
> he didn't and we're stuck with this continuity issue.
David Johnson has pointed out quotes showing that the sapience of Fuzzies is ambiguous in both the Federation and Empire eras.
It
puzzles me that Piper fans even consider this to be a conflict in
continuity, let alone something worth arguing over or accusing the
author of making a "mistake" over. Given the ambiguity of Fuzzy
sapience, why would anyone be surprised that the Federation and the
Empire would come to different conclusions regarding the question?
I
find it very strange. In fact, it seems like they're making more or
less the very error which they're accusing Piper of making. You would
think anyone who's read LITTLE FUZZY would realize the question of Fuzzy
sapience is an ambiguous one, but apparently they either forgot or
somehow managed to ignore the issue.
Contrariwise, I'm sure Piper didn't forget the ambiguity.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
David "Lensman" Sooby
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David Sooby
07-15-2015
08:16 UT
|
David Johnson said:
> FWIW, I think it's clear that Beam is showing Paul here as being genuinely uncertain
> about the Fuzzies. Obviously, for whatever reason, he thinks they warrant being
> considered in the list of "races [of] intelligent beings" even though signalling that
> some of his contemporaries might dispute the fact. (Otherwise, why would he mention
> them at all?)
<snip>
> All we can gather from Paul's internal musing is that there remains some question about
> Fuzzy sapience in his time and that there also continues to be no consensus manner for
> determining sapience. In my mind, those are both elements of Beam doing a good job of
> telling us a story about the relationship of Empire civilization to that of the fallen
> Federation era.
Now
there is a post which deserves to be archived. (Archived in full;
apologies for the snippage.) This subject has come up before, I think
more than once before, and this is by far the most insightful and
thoughtful post I can ever remember seeing on the subject.
Well done, sir. I find your analysis to be entirely persuasive.
|
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David Sooby
07-15-2015
07:59 UT
|
John Carr said:
> "When in the Course..." was still being submitted by Ken White, Beam's agent,
> during the period when Piper wrote Space Viking, so he would have considered
> it part of his future history at that time.
>
> It wasn't mentioned in his letter about his future history to Peter Weston,
> when he went over the T-HFH stories, because it wasn't published; therefore,
> it was in limbo and not officially a part of his future history, but only
> because it wasn't in print.
Well,
that certainly puts a different light on things. The fact that "When
in the Course--" isn't listed on Piper's own list of Future History
stories is the main reason I considered it only semi-canonical. In
light of what you wrote here, I think "When in the Course--" should be
considered just as much a part of the Canon as SPACE VIKING.
Thanks for the information, John.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
David "Lensman" Sooby
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David Sooby
07-15-2015
07:46 UT
|
Jackson Russell said:
> What are these Ancient Ones to which you allude? Genesis makes no mention of a pre-existing
> sapient race that colonized Mars, nor do I recall any story in the THFH or Paratime as
> suggesting there was ever a species more advanced than humans. And, frankly, if I was going
> to run around the galaxy seeding planets with humans, I wouldn't bother with the red dust-
> ball. I would head straight to the lush verdant planet with lots and lots of water closer
> to the sun.
This
was my suggestion for how to resolve the question of how it's possible
for Terro-humans, Martians, and Freyans to all have a common recent
ancestor; as well as resolve this question: "If humans evolved on Mars,
then why are we so closely genetically related to other Earth
life-forms?"
If a hominid like Homo Erectus evolved on earth,
then the Ancient Ones (or whatever you want to call the now-disappered
aliens) transported a breeding stock of them to Mars, where Homo Sapiens
evolved; then as described in the early Paratime stories, a
colonization attempt from dying Mars to Earth succeeded in bringing Homo
Sapiens to Earth, that would bring everything into line with what we
know from the fossil record and the genetic evidence of modern science.
Of course, you still have to postulate the alternate reality Mars of
"Omnilingual"; clearly that is not the Mars of our universe!
This
would be a fanfix, or fannish retcon, for the Piperverse; stipulating
additional facts and events not alluded to in any story, but which don't
actually contradict Canon.
I have also thought of an alternate
scenario: After the expedition to colonize Earth left Mars, the
survivors left on Mars managed to invent a long-range matter
transmitter, which they could not control, and sent colonists to distant
Freya instead of to much nearer Terra. But that doesn't resolve the
question of why human genetics shows our ancestors evolved on Earth; it
doesn't explain how pre-human hominids got transplanted from Earth to
Mars. The scenario of the Ancient Ones requires the least number of
additional assumptions, and therefore is preferred by Occam's Razor.
> Piper was very Terran Uber Allez in his writings, which Campbell would have eaten up
> according to Isaac Asimov. A pre-existing superior species would have gone against
> everything he ever wrote.
I take it, then, that you've never read "Omnilingual". :)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
David "Lensman" Sooby
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 07-15-2015
05:30 UT
|
~
"What I was getting now . . . was the beginning of the First Fenris
Civil War. A long time from now, when Fenris was an important planet in
the Federation, maybe they'd make today a holiday, like Bastille Day or
the Fourth of July or Federation Day. Maybe historians, a couple of
centuries from now, would call me an important primary source, and if
Cesrio's religion was right, maybe I'd be one of them, saying, "'Well,
after all, is Boyd such a reliable source? He was only seventeen years
old at the time.'"
Happy Federation, er . . . I mean, Bastille Day. ;)
David
--
"Good things in the long run are often tough while they're happening." - Otto Harkaman (H. Beam Piper), ~Space Viking~
~
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Jackson Russell
07-15-2015
04:54 UT
|
Ah! But did they go all that time with Terro humans? The humans could
have been nuked out of existence, wiped out by disease, pressed into
military service and evacuated, or just plain used up the planet and
bailed. Or even realized that they were stunting the Fuzzies growth as
sapient beings and left to let the Fuzzies find their own way, maybe
after salting the planet with enough titanium to keep them reproducing.
We really can't say they grew up side-by-side with Pappy Jack's
descendants. Worst of all, the Zarathustran humans might have reverted
to barbarism and hunted Fuzzies for fur and food (shudder!)
The
real drag is that even if somebody writes a plausible story explaining
what happened it will be decried as non-canonical and won't solve a
thing.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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David Johnson
07-15-2015
04:35 UT
|
~
Jackson Russell wrote:
> "Every one of the thousand three hundred and sixty-five inhabited
> worlds, a trillion and a half intelligent beings, fourteen races--
> fifteen if you counted the Zarathustran Fuzzies, who were almost
> able to qualify under the talk-and-build-a-fire rule."
>
[snip]
>
> The Empire is still using talk and build fire. Period. Yet 1500
> years earlier Pendarvis made it clear that the lack of TaBF doesn't
> rule them out. We go round and round this particular pole, but I
> think the real story is that Piper either forgot or ignored Ministry
> of Disturbance when he wrote Little Fuzzy.
FWIW,
I think it's clear that Beam is showing Paul here as being genuinely
uncertain about the Fuzzies. Obviously, for whatever reason, he thinks
they warrant being considered in the list of "races [of] intelligent
beings" even though signalling that some of his contemporaries might
dispute the fact. (Otherwise, why would he mention them at all?)
Whatever
this says--or doesn't say--about the Empire's standards for determining
sapience I think, as I've already said, it shows Beam telling us that
the Empire is still trying to "put Humpty Dumpty back together again"
when it comes to grappling with knowledge from the Federation era.
Regardless
of what happened a thousand years or more back in Judge Pendarvis'
courtroom the Fuzzies have had a _much_ longer history, in Paul's time,
of living with Terro-humans and it's likely that what's recorded of this
history is much more voluminous than are the records of the Fuzzies'
actual first encounter with Terro-humans on Zarathustra. There have
probably been _multiple_ opinions about the sapience of Fuzzies in those
intervening centuries with bases in all sorts of things from practical
matters like communication and technology use to
socio-politico-religious opinions tied to various sorts of racial
supremacy (or inferiority).
All we can gather from Paul's
internal musing is that there remains some question about Fuzzy sapience
in his time and that there also continues to be no consensus manner for
determining sapience. In my mind, those are both elements of Beam
doing a good job of telling us a story about the relationship of Empire
civilization to that of the fallen Federation era.
Yeek!
David
--
"Why,
here on Odin there hadn't been an election in the past six centuries
that hadn't been utterly fraudulent. Nobody voted except the nonworkers,
whose votes were bought and sold wholesale, by gangster bosses to
pressure groups, and no decent person would be caught within a hundred
yards of a polling place on an election day." - Emperor Paul XXII (H.
Beam Piper), "Ministry of Disturbance"
~
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Jackson Russell
07-15-2015
00:23 UT
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I smell a story!
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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Otherwhen@aol.com
07-14-2015
22:07 UT
|
Fuzzy Sapience
This is an odd problem since Piper wrote
both books around the same time, although "Ministry of Disturbance"
(as a shorter piece) was finished first. Here's Mike Knerr's comment:
Mike
Knerr wrote in "PIPER": “The Little Fuzzy idea, still in the womb
and kicking for birth, seemed to go into false labor early in April
1958 when Beam picked up a copy of John Dewey’s Reconstruction in
Philosophy ‘and came across an idea [“Ministry of Disturbance”]
that looks like something useable. Hope I can get a story out of
it.’
Piper finished "Ministry of Disturbance" and
sent it off to his agent 2 months later, on June 7 1958. He started
the first draft of "Little Fuzzy" on August 1, 1958 and worked on it
for the rest of the year, but didn't finish "Little Fuzzy" until April
of 1959. Since "Ministry of Disturbance" was written before Beam had a
finished draft (mostly some ideas) of "Little Fuzzy" I suspect that
he didn't know, or wasn't sure, at that point in time whether or not
the Fuzzies were sentient.
Obvious, things changed over
the course of the first novel, and the 2 sequels. Had Piper written
"Ministry of Disturbance" in 1964 or '65, he might have concluded the
Fuzzies were sentient. But he didn't and we're stuck with this
continuity issue.
The fun for us writing in the Piperverse is to find a way to resolve these issues.
John Carr
We
go round and round this particular pole, but I think the real story is
that Piper either forgot or ignored Ministry of Disturbance when he
wrote Little Fuzzy. However, for the sake of continuity, it makes
for a nice heated discussion.
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Jackson Russell
07-14-2015
21:27 UT
|
"Every one of the thousand three hundred and sixty-five inhabited worlds, a trillion and a half intelligent beings,
fourteen
races--fifteen if you counted the Zarathustran Fuzzies, who were
almost able to qualify under the talk-and-build-a-fire rule."
vs
"They don't talk, and they don't build fires," Ahmed Khadra said, as though that settled it.
"Ahmed, you know better than that. That talk-and-build-a-fire rule isn't any scientific test at aH."
"It's a legal test." Lunt supported his subordinate.
"It's
a rule-of-thumb that was set up so that settlers on new planets
couldn't get away with murdering and enslaving the natives by claiming
they thought they were only hunting and domesticating wild animals," he
said. "Anything that talks and builds a fire is a sapient being, yes.
That's the law. But that doesn't mean that anything that doesn't
isn't. I haven't seen any of this gang building fires, and as I don't
want to come home sometime and find myself burned out, I'm not going to
teach them. But I'm sure they have some means of communication among
themselves."
plus
"Who's going to define sapience? And
how?" Rainsford asked. `Why, between them, Coombes and O'Brien can even
agree to accept the talk-and-build-a-fire rule."
"Huh-uh!"
Brannhard was positive. "Court ruling on that, about forty years ago,
on Vishnu. Infanticide case, woman charged with murder in the death of
her infant child. Her lawyer moved for dismissal on the grounds that
murder is defined as the killing of a sapient being, a sapient being is
defined as one that can talk and build a fire, and a newborn infant
can do neither. Motion denied; the court ruled that while ability to
speak and produce fire is positive proof of sapience, inability to do
either or both does not constitute legal proof of nonsapience. If
O'Brien doesn't know that, and I doubt if he does, Coombes will."
Brannhard poured another drink and gulped it before the sapient beings
around him could get at it. "You know what? I will make a small wager,
and I will even give odds, that the first thing Ham O'Brien does when
he gets back to Mallorysport will be to enter nolle prosequi on both
charges. What I'd like would be for him to nol. pros. Kellogg and let
the charge against Jack go to court. He would be dumb enough to do that
himself, but Leslie Coombes wouldn't let him."
The Empire is
still using talk and build fire. Period. Yet 1500 years earlier
Pendarvis made it clear that the lack of TaBF doesn't rule them out.
We
go round and round this particular pole, but I think the real story is
that Piper either forgot or ignored Ministry of Disturbance when he
wrote Little Fuzzy. However, for the sake of continuity, it makes for a
nice heated discussion.
Jack
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mmoeser237@aol.com
07-14-2015
18:55 UT
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Sorry being late to the discussion, been off exploring the wet 70% of the planet.
Re: intelligence & lack of fuzzies in later intelligent species list
Is it possible that the later Empire could be using a different set of definition criteria than used earlier?
Rather
than speak & build a fire, could their test be speak, build a fire
and "x" (where "x" is something that would exclude Fuzzies).
Mark Moeser
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Otherwhen@aol.com
07-13-2015
17:57 UT
|
RE: "When in the Course..."
"When in the
Course..." was still being submitted by Ken White, Beam's agent,
during the period when Piper wrote Space Viking, so he would have
considered it part of his future history at that time.
It
wasn't mentioned in his letter about his future history to Peter
Weston, when he went over the T-HFH stories, because it wasn't
published; therefore, it was in limbo and not officially a part of his
future history, but only because it wasn't in print.
John Carr
I
just thought it would work better, for attempting to view the Canon as
a consistent whole, if we assume Piper himself did not consider "When
in the Course--" to be part of established canon when he wrote SPACE
VIKING, and if we assume that by that time Piper thought the earlier
work would never be published.
But, John, you're the expert
here. If you say that Piper simply lost track of what he had written
between "When in the Course--" and SPACE VIKING, and that we have no
good reason to prefer what's in the latter over the former, then I'm
certainly not going to argue with you.
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Jackson Russell
07-13-2015
13:52 UT
|
The competence issue is less a matter of sapience than cultural
compatibility.
A 15th century European would have been deemed incompetent by the
Chinese for his failure to thrive in their culture. And I very much
question if the Khooghra, deemed sapient on the talk and build fire
rule, could be considered competent in any culture other than their
own. Maybe not even then. Taking a 17th century Australian Bushman
and dumping him into 21st century New York might be a better
comparison. He simply would not have the tools to survive in that
environment on his own. The same goes for Fuzzies, though they adapt
fairly quickly and accept the training that is offered to help them do
so.
As for a different standard between the two eras, both cite
the talk and build fire rule. Where is the difference? That was the
whole point of the trial; to prove sapience without the hard and fast
rule. My thinking is that after the collapse, Zarathustra became a
lost planet. The hub of the empire had moved in a different direction
and most of the Old Federation planets had been rediscovered by the
Space Vikings, who wouldn't want to share their discoveries lest others
poach on their territories. By the time the Empire found Zarathustra,
maybe the Fuzzies didn't want to be found out as sapient right away.
If the humans had been gone for several hundred years after the
collapse, the Fuzzies might be wary of the strange new Big Ones and
tried to stay out of their way. Or, maybe there still were humans on
the planet but they were not nice people and the Fuzzies went
underground (metaphorically) to stay out of their way. Fire attracts
attention, so they stopped making them, at least where they could be
spotted. Shifting back to hypersonic speech patterns would disguise
their linguistic skills. When the Empire shows up and demonstrates
that they are nice people, the Fuzzies came out of hiding to make
friends.
Or...big or, here, the in-house Big Ones encouraged the
Fuzzies to hide their abilities from the Empire until they knew it was
safe. I am hanging no hat on the writings of authors other than Piper
where Fuzzies are concerned. As I said before: Sapience - three full
books. Newly sapient - one whole sentence. Which would have the
higher odds in Vegas, baby?
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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Jackson Russell
07-13-2015
13:36 UT
|
What are these Ancient Ones to which you allude? Genesis makes no
mention of a pre-existing sapient race that colonized Mars, nor do I
recall any story in the THFH or Paratime as suggesting there was ever a
species more advanced than humans. And, frankly, if I was going to
run around the galaxy seeding planets with humans, I wouldn't bother
with the red dust-ball. I would head straight to the lush verdant
planet with lots and lots of water closer to the sun. Piper was very
Terran Uber Allez in his writings, which Campbell would have eaten up
according to Isaac Asimov. A pre-existing superior species would have
gone against everything he ever wrote.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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David Sooby
07-13-2015
07:33 UT
|
Jackson Russell said:
> The Fuzzies have three books backing them up (not counting Tuning, Mayhar, Diehr and
> <<shudder>> Scalzi) while you have one or two sentences in MoD.
Seriously,
you're declaring victory because people writing Piper pastiches or (in
Scalzi's case) "reboots" have declared them to be "sentient"?
LOL! Thanks for the laugh.
But I certainly agree this argument has progressed past the point of serving any useful purpose.
> But just for fun, lets take a poll. Everybody in the list who thinks the Fuzzies
> are sapient in the 7th century AE can say Yay, those that think they didn't rise
> to that level until Empire can say Nay.
I
think you lost the train of your own argument here. Nobody is
suggesting Fuzzies evolved sapience between the time of the Federation
and the time of the Empire.
The Federation legally declared them
"sentient", yet treated them as incompetent to be full citizens; the
same legal status as human children (minors) or as mentally deficient
human adults. Whether or not that qualifies as "sentient" isn't a
matter of fact, but opinion. It depends on where you draw the line
between "sentient" and "non-sentient".
The entire story of LITTLE
FUZZY only works -because- Fuzzy sentience is ambiguous. The basic
conflict which makes the story demands the question not have a clear-cut
answer, altho the dilemma is resolved in a "deux ex machina" fashion at
the climax of the story, when the Navy suddenly and surprisingly
provides proof that they can talk.
Yet despite this clear
ambiguity, Jackson, for some reason you can't wrap your mind around the
concept that the Federation and the Empire draw the line in different
places.
BTW, this is why I say that Scalzi's FUZZY NATION cheats
the reader; it removes the central conflict from the story. There is no
question from the very first encounter with the Fuzzies, in Scalzi's
story, that they are fully sapient. I don't think it's a bad book
because of the revisionism; I think it's a bad book because it's bad
storytelling.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman
|
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David Sooby
07-13-2015
06:58 UT
|
David Johnson said:
> Beam is pretty clear in attributing the "backwards" civilization of Fourth Level to a
> "failed colonization attempt" in "Police Operation" but then to a "genetic accident"--
> without any mention of extraterrestrial origins--in ~Lord Kalvan~.
But
we don't need to see these two versions of the origin story as
contradictory. We can choose to see them as two incomplete versions of
the same story, thus:
The genetic accident happened on Mars, to
the Martians. The timeline split as a result of this accident. In some
timelines, this mutation spread throughout the Martian population; in
others, it died out. Populations with a higher proportion of the
mutated gene(s) had a higher chance of surviving the colonization
attempt.
Pretty sure we've had this same exact discussion before.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman
|
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David Sooby
07-13-2015
06:44 UT
|
Jackson Russell said:
> I will even go so far as to say that Freyans are also Martian descendants based on their interfertility with Terrans.
If
we're going to practice scientific revisionism in light of more recent
discoveries (i.e., genetics), then this conclusion seems inevitable. Or
at least, that Freyans, Martians, and Terro-Humans had a fairly recent
(in evolutionary terms) common ancestor. However, given that Piper
established very firmly in "When in the Course--" that the question
didn't have a clear answer, I suppose it's a mistake to want a clear
answer on the subject.
But that doesn't stop me from hoping the
forthcoming Pequod Press collection about the early days of the
Federation will have a story that explains (a) how homnids were
transported to Mars, where Homo Sapiens evolved before colonizing Earth
(the latter presumably a colonization attempt more successful than the
one depicted in "Genesis"*); and (b) how hominids were also transported
to Freya, presumably by the same star-faring species... the Ancient
Ones?
We might postulate that the technology of these Ancient
Ones was all biotech, and so simply decomposed after they vanished,
leaving no trace of their existance for archaeologists to find.
*"Genesis"
depicts only one or two Martian survivors; hardly enough for a breeding
population, or to have much genetic impact on the local Earth
(European?) population of ape-men, if the survivors and their
descendents had had interbred with the ape-man species.
~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman
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David Sooby
07-13-2015
06:24 UT
|
John Carr wrote:
> Beam wrote "When in the Course" in 1960, after he had written "Little Fuzzy." Since
> he attempted to sell it first to John Campbell, I would assume that it was a finished
> story taking place in the Terro-Human Future History.
Hey,
thanks for letting us know when the story was written. I see if I had
waited a few minutes to start writing my last post on the subject, I
would have had that question answered!
> This assumes that Piper wrote it in such a way to be inconsistent with the TFH before
> he re-tooled the story.
This seems to be a response to my posts on the subject.
John,
I wasn't at all trying to suggest Piper was being -intentionally-
inconsistent with what he had written in "When in the Course--".
I
just thought it would work better, for attempting to view the Canon as a
consistent whole, if we assume Piper himself did not consider "When in
the Course--" to be part of established canon when he wrote SPACE
VIKING, and if we assume that by that time Piper thought the earlier
work would never be published.
But, John, you're the expert here.
If you say that Piper simply lost track of what he had written between
"When in the Course--" and SPACE VIKING, and that we have no good reason
to prefer what's in the latter over the former, then I'm certainly not
going to argue with you.
|
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David Sooby
07-13-2015
06:14 UT
|
Jonathan Crocker wrote:
>> Name another animal that can lie for personal gain. Not. A. One.
>
> I don't know, my dog makes a good try at convincing me that the empty dog food bowl had nothing
> to do with her, and that I should fill it up right now....
I
recall Larry Niven writing that a dog can lie to you. That really
puzzles me; I can't think of a dog I ever owned trying to communicate
something to me that it didn't honestly believe.
|
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David Sooby
07-13-2015
06:04 UT
|
> Either Piper liked the name Gimli and having that world next door, or the Federation people
> really weren`t that scientific when it came to looking for planets: If Gimli is next to both
> Fenris and Zarathrustra, it took roughly 250 years between the settlement at Fenris and the
> settlement of Zarathrustra, when it was pretty close by.
It
may have been Piper's intent for every planet to have a unique name,
but we're not required to believe this is so in the Piperverse. Authors
generally avoid using the same name for two different places in works
of fiction, to avoid confusing the reader. But in the real world, the
same name for multiple places happens frequently. It gets -really-
confusing in the USA, where some States have more than one town with the
same name!
Even if there is an official Federation registry of
planet names, and that registry rejects any name previously used, that
doesn't prevent people in an outlying area from using their own name for
a planet. If planets are not officially named until they're given a
charter -- as seems to be suggested by the fact that Zarathustra
apparently was not officially named until 25 years before LITTLE FUZZY
-- then I can easily see that a planet could be discovered and
unofficially named by an explorer, and the planet could perhaps be known
by that name for decades or ever centuries, before it's ever actually
settled and given an official name by the Federation (or Empire).
That could easily account for different planets called "Fenris" in different parts of the Federation or Empire.
A
well-known example in our world is Netherlands vs. Holland. Altho
Holland is actually a region within the Netherlands, many people use the
two names interchangeably.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman
|
|
David Sooby
07-13-2015
05:33 UT
|
David Johnson said:
> The version published in ~Federation~ is the version that Beam originally submitted for
> publication so while it may be that Beam's _editor_ (Campbell) "never intended" for it
> to be seen in print, it seems pretty clear that "seeing it in print" was Beam's original
> intention (unless we assume he submitted what he believed to be "unfinished" manuscripts
> to Campbell, which is a bit of stretch to say the least).
You're correct, it was a mistake for me to assert that Piper "never" intended "When in the Course--" to be seen in print.
Rather:
Altho Piper did originally intend for that to be seen in print, by the
time he wrote SPACE VIKING he no longer thought the earlier work would
ever be published, and so I submit that Piper did not feel bound by
anything he had written in the earlier story. He was free to use
different assumptions regarding hyperspace travel in later stories...
and he did.
I don't know when "When in the Course--" was written,
but the rewrite, "Gunpowder God", was published in 1964. SPACE VIKING
was published in 1962.
|
|
Otherwhen@aol.com
07-13-2015
05:18 UT
|
Re: "When in the Course...'
Beam wrote "When in the Course"
in 1960, after he had written "Little Fuzzy." Since he attempted to
sell it first to John Campbell, I would assume that it was a finished
story taking place in the Terro-Human Future History.
This assumes that Piper wrote it in such a way to be inconsistent with the TFH before he re-tooled the story.
It was not rewritten by Ace, as I have a copy of the original ms. They published it as written.
Piper's
T-HFH was a living organism, as we have discovered, and he was not
entirely consistent. Nor should we expect him to have been, since he
wrote these stories long before the computer age.
I know
full-well how difficult it is to keep the continuity straight on the
Kalvan stories. And I have my computer files, an 80-page dramatis
personae and the resources of this List and several continuity
editors...
Piper only had himself and his notebooks. And with all
the history he stuffed into his stories, it's amazing there aren't
more issues for us to discuss!
John Carr
Was is finished product ready to roll, or did someone have to finish it out for Ace?
|
|
David Johnson
07-12-2015
16:29 UT
|
~
Jay P Hailey wrote:
>> Perhaps the (second) Terran Federation flag is a modified version
>> of the original UN flag, with the projection of the globe being
>> from the South Pole, reflecting the shift of Terran civilization to
>> the Southern Hemisphere in the aftermath of the devastation
>> of the Northern Hemisphere in the Atomic Wars.
>
> (Scribbling notes) Go on. (Scratches chin to seem knowlegable)
:)
I'm afraid there's not much more to add. I'm not aware of any other
references to the flag or other "livery" of the Terran Federation.
What's
interesting though is that Beam seemed to see the "livery" of the
United Nations enduring (in some fashion, at least) through _two_
iterations of the Terran Federation. We don't get any indication in
"Omnilingual" (or "The Edge of the Knife") about what the "livery" of
the "first" Federation might have been (other than that it was meant to
"replace" the UN). All of these other references in ~Uller Uprising~
and "Graveyard of Dreams" / ~Junkyard Planet~ are referring to "second"
Federation "livery."
It may simply be that when "South Africa,
Australia and New Zealand, Brazil, the Argentine, etc." formed the
"second" Federation they simply reached back to draw upon the legacy of
the original UN. (Though if they did this, it would seem odd that they
would maintain the North Polar projection of the globe which appears in
the original UN symbol.)
On the other hand, I'm beginning to
wonder if the United States--and therefore the "first"
Federation--didn't perhaps play a larger role in the formation of the
"second" Federation than would initially seem to be the case given
Beam's description from "The Future History." General Lanningham brings
the atom bomb plans to South America in 114 AE, five years _after_ the
end of the Fourth World War (which destroys civilization in the Northern
Hemisphere). This implies that the "debacle" which led to Lanningham's
flight may have happened in U.S. territory in the _Southern_Hemisphere_
(with Antarctica being the most likely locale). In any event, it makes
clear that something that could still be called "the United States"
survived the Fourth World War and the devastation of the Northern
Hemisphere. If this entity played a "behind the scenes" role in the
formation of the "second" Federation--which makes sense when the Terran
Federation nomenclature is maintained for the new entity--then it could
be that the "first" Federation "livery" was _also_ based upon the
original UN "livery" and persists in some form into the "second"
Federation incarnation in the same way that they name persists. (It
could also be that the U.S. played a role in the creation of the
"second" Federation similar to that played by the U.S. in the creation
of the League of Nations, having much to say about its organization but
ultimately not joining itself. That bit of "historical legacy" would be
very much like Piper.)
All of this, of course, begs the
question of who the opponent of the "first" Federation _was_ in the
Fourth World War. Sure, the war may have been sparked by the "revolt of
colonies on Mars and Venus" but surely these primitive settlements were
not up to the task of "destroying civilization" in Terra's Northern
Hemisphere on their own.
The answer to this question, I think,
comes from two items. The first is Canada's secession from the British
Commonwealth "fore-membered" by Chalmers in "The Edge of the Knife."
The only reasonable rationale for Canadian secession from the
Commonwealth is some sort of rupture between its original British
sovereign and its huge American neighbour. The second item comes from
"The Keeper" where Britain is described as "the last nation to join the
Terran Federation." We're not told whether this was the "first" or the
"second" Federation but given that "The Keeper" takes place in the
_fifth_ Empire era it seems likely that the distinction between a
"first" and "second" Federation would have been lost--or else would be
explicitly mentioned--and therefore that Britain was the last nation to
join the "second" Federation.
This admittedly shaky line of
musing leaves us with the Fourth World War being fought between a
U.S.-led "first" Federation and some other alliance of nations--and
off-world colonies--led by Britain. And that _both_ the U.S. _and_
Britain survive into the "second" Federation era in some form despite
the destruction of civilization in Terra's Northern Hemisphere.
Still scribbling? ;)
David
--
"I
was born in Antarctica, on Terra. The water's a little too cold to do
much swimming there. And I've spent most of my time since then in
central Argentine, in the pampas country." - Glenn Murell (H. Beam
Piper), ~Four-Day Planet~
~
|
|
David Johnson
07-12-2015
15:53 UT
|
~
Jay P Hailey wrote:
> That's how I'd tend to run it in "TFH: The RPG"
>
> I tried that once, but my players were so steeped in Star Wars and
> Star Trek, that they couldn't let go of that sort of imagery.
Ooooh! Would love to hear more about this. Might there be an e-mail/on-line version?
Jumping!
David
--
"A
lot of technicians are girls, and when work gets slack, they're always
the first ones to get shoved out of jobs." - Sylvie Jacquemont (H. Beam
Piper), ~Junkyard Planet~
~
|
|
David Johnson
07-12-2015
15:50 UT
|
~
Jay P Hailey wrote:
>> I presume you're talking about "When in the Course--".
>> But Piper never intended for you to see that in print.
>
> This assumes that Piper wrote it in such a way to be inconsistent
> with the TFH before he re-tooled the story.
>
> Was is finished product ready to roll, or did someone have to
> finish it out for Ace?
The
version published in ~Federation~ is the version that Beam originally
submitted for publication so while it may be that Beam's _editor_
(Campbell) "never intended" for it to be seen in print, it seems pretty
clear that "seeing it in print" was Beam's original intention (unless we
assume he submitted what he believed to be "unfinished" manuscripts to
Campbell, which is a bit of stretch to say the least).
Ptosphes!
David
--
"Do
you know which books to study, and which ones not to bother with? Or
which ones to read first, so that what you read in the others will be
comprehensible to you? That's what they'll give you [at university].
The tools, which you don't have now, for educating yourself." - Bish
Ware (H. Beam Piper), ~Four-Day Planet~
~
|
|
Jay P Hailey
07-12-2015
05:14 UT
|
> True, but you could argue that all of the Viking ships were of
> the same 'vintage', as opposed to old Stellex and newer
>
Voortrekker; or that none of the Viking ships were in as bad a state
> as the Stellex - even the Space-Scourge had been fixed up by
>
combined crews before the first joint raid with Nemesis. Or it could
> be a bit of both - in "When In The Course" when we first meet the
> Federation people, there's a line about "Luther Smith looked at
> Margaret Hale, the hyperdrive engineer; she'd told him just how
> many more jumps her Dillinghams were good for." In a bad
>
analogy, the Stellex had an old weak tires they were nursing along,
> taking it slow, and preying they didn't have a blowout.
Which was written when? I'd lean more towards the later story
containing more of a "True" intent.
I
was left with the strong impression that Hyperspace was one speed for
everyone, but that the speed went up over time, due to technological
advancements.
That's how I'd tend to run it in "TFH: The RPG"
I
tried that once, but my players were so steeped in Star Wars and Star
Trek, that they couldn't let go of that sort of imagery.
|
|
Jay P Hailey
07-12-2015
05:08 UT
|
> I presume you're talking about "When in the Course--".
> But Piper never intended for you to see that in print.
This assumes that Piper wrote it in such a way to be inconsistent with the TFH before he re-tooled the story.
Was is finished product ready to roll, or did someone have to finish it out for Ace?
|
|
Jay P Hailey
07-12-2015
05:06 UT
|
> Perhaps the (second) Terran Federation flag is a modified version of
>
the original UN flag, with the projection of the globe being from
> the South Pole, reflecting the shift of Terran civilization to the
Southern
> Hemisphere in the aftermath of the devastation of the Northern > Hemisphere in the Atomic Wars.
> Znidd Suddabit!
>David
(Scribbling notes) Go on. (Scratches chin to seem knowlegable)
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 07-11-2015
06:25 UT
|
~
(Second) Terran Federation flag similar to UN flag?
We
know that Beam--or his editor--had a change of heart about the flag of
the Terran Federation when expanding "Graveyard of Dreams" into
~Junkyard Planet~. Originally, he'd written, ". . . a lot of boxes and
crates painted light blue and marked with the wreathed globe of the
Terran Federation and the gold triangle of the Third Fleet-Army Force
and the eight-pointed red star of Ordnance Service." In ~Junkyard
Planet~ this became ". . . a lot of boxes and crates, painted light blue
and bearing the yellow trefoil of the Third Fleet-Army Force and the
eight-pointed red star of Ordnance." The light blue is still there but
the "wreathed globe of the Terran Federation" is gone.
But
there's another reference to the flag of the Terran Federation, in
~Uller Uprising~. "Once that pole had lifted a banner of ragged black
marsh-flopper skin bearing the device of the Kragan riever-chieftain
whose family had built the castle; now it carried a neat rectangle of
blue bunting emblazoned with the wreathed globe of the Terran Federation
and, below that, the blue-gray pennant which bore the vermilion
trademark of the Chartered Uller Company."
~Uller Uprising~ was
written several years before the rest of Beam's Future History yarns,
when the actual UN (and its flag) was less than a decade old. Perhaps
the (second) Terran Federation flag is a modified version of the
original UN flag, with the projection of the globe being from the South
Pole, reflecting the shift of Terran civilization to the Southern
Hemisphere in the aftermath of the devastation of the Northern
Hemisphere in the Atomic Wars.
Znidd Suddabit!
David
--
"I
was born in Antarctica, on Terra. The water's a little too cold to do
much swimming there. And I've spent most of my time since then in
central Argentine, in the pampas country." - Glenn Murell (H. Beam
Piper), ~Four-Day Planet~
~
|
|
David Johnson
07-09-2015
04:52 UT
|
~
Jonathan Crocker wrote:
> Either Piper liked the name Gimli and having that world next door,
> or the Federation people really weren`t that scientific when it
> came to looking for planets: If Gimli is next to both Fenris and
> Zarathrustra, it took roughly 250 years between the settlement
> at Fenris and the settlement of Zarathrustra, when it was pretty
> close by.
>
> I respectfully suggest that this gets chalked up to the writer liking
> the name `Gimli`, and that fact quietly getting swept under a
> convenient rug. :)
Gimli is an interesting place, as this (incomplete) "Developer's Report" suggests:
http://www.zarthani.net/dev_report-gimli.htm
Though
he never got around to taking us to Gimli, Beam still told us an awful
lot about it: native sapient species, Federation era naval base, Viking
era trade planet, Empire era university. He clearly had an affinity for
the world and one suspects he would have had yarn to tell about Gimli
had he lived to make the effort.
David
--
"Why not everybody make friend, have fun, make help, be good?" - Diamond Grego (H. Beam Piper), ~Fuzzy Sapiens~
~
|
|
Jackson Russell
07-09-2015
04:48 UT
|
Yeah, everything is two months from Gimli. There is another Gimli
mentioned somewhere in the Empire. Now, if you want to reeeeeally blow
your mind, go back to Four Day Planet and ask yourself where they got
veldtbeast carniculture several decades before Zarathustra was a
Federation planet.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
|
|
Jonathan Crocker
07-09-2015
04:20 UT
|
I just found something interesting - I`d been re-reading Four Day
Planet last week, and then having a look at the Zarthani.net site
tonight - under the `gleaning` section for Fuzzy Sapiens, there was a
quote: "In a month, word will have gotten to Gimli; that's the
nearest planet, and in two months a ship can get here from there." (p.
136) For some reason, that sounded familiar. I flip back through
Four Day Planet, and there in the debriefings at the end of the
adventure, Bish Ware said that Gimli was the next planet out from
Fenris, too. It`s on page 199 of the 1984 Ace publication of Four Day
Planet - Lone Star Planet. Either Piper liked the name Gimli and
having that world next door, or the Federation people really weren`t
that scientific when it came to looking for planets: If Gimli is next
to both Fenris and Zarathrustra, it took roughly 250 years between the
settlement at Fenris and the settlement of Zarathrustra, when it was
pretty close by. I respectfully suggest that this gets chalked up
to the writer liking the name `Gimli`, and that fact quietly getting
swept under a convenient rug. :) Edit - and ten minutes later, I find that same fact listed on the `gleanings` page for Fuzzies and Other People! Ah well. Edited 07-09-2015 04:28
|
|
David Johnson
07-08-2015
03:34 UT
|
~
Jackson Russell wrote:
> I will even go so far as to say that Freyans are also Martian
> descendants based on their interfertility with Terrans.
Great Ghu! Now that's a whopper! ;)
Of
course, I seem to remember a discussion some time ago about it being
the same folks transporting Martians--or ancient Terrans--to Freya and
the Fuzzies to Zarathustra. . . .
> A short story on your own website supports that theory.
I
guess I need some sort of disclaimer at Zarthani.net. Just because
I've posted something Piper-related that doesn't mean I always agree
with the perspective or ideas presented therein. ;)
Oath to Galzar!
David
--
"Do
you know which books to study, and which ones not to bother with? Or
which ones to read first, so that what you read in the others will be
comprehensible to you? That's what they'll give you [at university].
The tools, which you don't have now, for educating yourself." - Bish
Ware (H. Beam Piper), ~Four-Day Planet~
~
|
|
Jackson Russell
07-08-2015
02:26 UT
|
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Yeah, I have three dogs of my own. Frankly, they don't
do mendacity well at all. They manage guilt reeeeal well. And while I
won't say they have an actual language, I understand them well enough.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
|
|
Jonathan Crocker
07-08-2015
00:06 UT
|
Jackson Russell wrote:
> Name another animal that can lie for personal gain. Not. A. One.
I
don't know, my dog makes a good try at convincing me that the empty dog
food bowl had nothing to do with her, and that I should fill it up
right now....
But she's not Lassie, so I make no claim of sapience for her.
|
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Jackson Russell
07-07-2015
16:07 UT
|
Piper didn't need to hammer the point of Martian origins in every story.
I get tired of Remo Williams' origin being recapped in every
Destroyer book. I suspect there were some editorial shenanigans taking
place as well pushing for the Martian origin to be played down. As for
genetic accidents, that could be anything from a mutation the
encouraged racial mitosis to incidental interbreeding with Neanderthals
(which modern science supports, BTW.) I will even go so far as to say
that Freyans are also Martian descendants based on their
interfertility with Terrans. A short story on your own website
supports that theory.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
|
|
David Johnson
07-07-2015
15:01 UT
|
~
Jackson Russell wrote:
> The Martians landed 75,000 years ago, and got busy expanding
> the population and using up the planets resources. 12,000 years
> ago, the planet they exhausted was Earth. Facing extinction from
> resource privation, that got lucky and developed/discovered the
> Paratime conveyor, allowing them to leach off of other, less
> developed timelines.
Like
I said, with a big enough shoehorn, it works. Of course, then there's
the matter of the Martians of "Omnilingual" apparently managing to
survive another 25,000 years after their brothers and sisters left for
Earth. . . .
> Genetic accidents can happen to Martians, too.
Well,
sure, but Beam is pretty clear in attributing the "backwards"
civilization of Fourth Level to a "failed colonization attempt" in
"Police Operation" but then to a "genetic accident"--without any mention
of extraterrestrial origins--in ~Lord Kalvan~.
> Genesis is about the Martian colony attempt that almost didn't
> make it. They lost all memory of their Martian heritage, as did
> pretty much everybody except First Level who enjoyed the most
> successful colonization. The two are not mutually exclusive.
> It is just a matter of interpretation.
I
agree that "Genesis" works as a "Fourth Level" Paratime yarn, if one
sticks with the "Police Operation" model. (It works less well under the
~Lord Kalvan~ model.) But I think it takes too big of a shoehorn to
push all of these in with the Martians of "Omnilingual."
Is it time for that poll now? ;)
David
--
"We
talk glibly about ten to the hundredth power, but emotionally we still
count, 'One, Two, Three, Many.'" - Otto Harkaman (H. Beam Piper), ~Space
Viking~
~
|
|
Jackson Russell
07-07-2015
13:03 UT
|
Actually, no.
The Martians landed 75,000 years ago, and got busy
expanding the population and using up the planets resources. 12,000
years ago, the planet they exhausted was Earth. Facing extinction from
resource privation, that got lucky and developed/discovered the
Paratime conveyor, allowing them to leach off of other, less developed
timelines. Genetic accidents can happen to Martians, too. Genesis is
about the Martian colony attempt that almost didn't make it. They lost
all memory of their Martian heritage, as did pretty much everybody
except First Level who enjoyed the most successful colonization. The
two are not mutually exclusive. It is just a matter of interpretation.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
|
|
David Johnson
07-07-2015
04:23 UT
|
~
Jackson Russell wrote:
> Lord Kalvan is a Martian.
Hah! I love this line! It's funny on so many different . . . levels! ;)
> So is everybody in Paratime and the THFH. Most of them simply
> lost the knowledge of their heritage over time. This is an
> everybody know thing.
Seriously, how do you explain Beam's shift from this, in "Police Operation":
"There
are five main probability levels, derived from the five possible
outcomes of the attempt to colonize this planet, seventy-five thousand
years ago. We're on the First Level—complete success, and colony fully
established. The Fifth Level is the probability of complete
failure—no human population established on this planet, and indigenous
quasi-human life evolved indigenously. On the Fourth Level, the
colonists evidently met with some disaster and lost all memory of their
extraterrestrial origin, as well as all extraterrestrial culture. As far
as they know, they are an indigenous race; they have a long pre-history
of stone-age savagery."
to this, in ~Lord Kalvan~"
"Twelve
thousand years ago, facing extinction on an exhausted planet, the First
Level race had discovered the existence of a second, lateral, time
dimension and a means of physical transposition to and from a
near-infinity of worlds of alternate probability parallel to their own. .
. .
"Second Level that had been civilized almost as long as the
First, but there had been dark-age interludes. Except for paratemporal
transposition, most of its sectors equaled First Level, and from many,
Home Time Line had learned much. The Third Level civilizations were more
recent, but still of respectable antiquity and advancement. Fourth
Level had started late and progressed slowly; some Fourth Level genius
was first domesticating animals long after the steam engine was
obsolescent all over the Third. And Fifth Level on a few sectors,
subhuman brutes, speechless and fireless, were cracking nuts and each
other's heads with stones, and on most of it nothing even vaguely
humanoid had appeared.
"Fourth Level was the big one. The others
had devolved from low-probability genetic accidents; it was the maximum
probability. . . ."
It would seem that Beam himself, in the
time between "Police Operation" and ~Lord Kalvan~ had given up on the
idea that the Paratimers were Martians (and, by the way, decided that
Paratime civilization was a whole lot younger).
(Of course, with
a big enough shoe-horn, one might claim that these two descriptions are
not contradictory, with the First Level Martians migrating to Earth
75,000 years ago, and then discovering paratemporal transposition just
12,000 years ago.)
Oath to Galzar!
David
--
"I
remember, when I was just a kid, about a hundred and fifty years ago--a
hundred and thirty-nine, to be exact--I picked up a fellow on the
Fourth Level, just about where you're operating, and dragged him a
couple of hundred parayears. I went back to find him and return him to
his own time-line, but before I could locate him, he'd been arrested by
the local authorities as a suspicious character, and got himself shot
trying to escape. I felt badly about that. . . ." - Tortha Karf (H. Beam
Piper), "Police Operation"
~
|
|
Jonathan Crocker
07-07-2015
03:55 UT
|
Here's a couple of snippets I'm going to reply to -
>And all those instances point to every ship traveling at exactly the same speed.
Actually, it doesn't - page 85 of Space Viking, 1963 edition, when Boake Valkanhayn arrives back in the Tanith system:
"Prince
Trask, Count Harkaman," he greeted. "Space-Scourge, Tanith; thirty-two
hundred hours out of Wardshaven on Gram, Baron Valkanhayn commanding,
accompanied by chartered freighter Rozinante, Durendal, Captain Morbes.
Requesting permission and instructions to orbit in."
From that,
it took two hundred hours longer for the freighter to make the trip to
Tanith, and the warship dialed down their speed to keep pace. Granted,
the freighter was only one part in fifteen slower than the warship, but
that speaks to David's earlier point about R&D flatlining.
>Now,
if you want to continue to argue that by some bizarre chance every ship
just -accidentally- has the same speed in the Space Viking era, even
though the speed depends on the mass/power ratio, you go right ahead.
I
don't wish to argue that, I have not ever argued that. If you are
misunderstanding me to such a great degree, I really am wasting my time
with this.
|
|
Jackson Russell
07-07-2015
03:36 UT
|
Lord Kalvan is a Martian. So is everybody in Paratime and the THFH.
Most of them simply lost the knowledge of their heritage over time.
This is an everybody know thing.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
|
|
David Johnson
07-07-2015
03:32 UT
|
~
Jackson Russell wrote:
> What? This was in question? Of course they are.
Well, if that's how you're gonna be, then what happen to those Martians by the time Beam got 'round to writing ~Lord Kalvan~?
;)
David
--
"Oh,
my people had many gods. There was Conformity, and Authority, and
Expense Account, and Opinion. And there was Status, whose symbols were
many, and who rode in the great chariot Cadillac, which was almost a god
itself. And there was Atom-bomb, the dread destroyer, who would some
day come to end the world. None were very good gods, and I worshiped
none of them.” - Calvin Morrison (H. Beam Piper), ~Lord Kalvan of
Otherwhen~
~
|
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Jackson Russell
07-07-2015
03:28 UT
|
What? This was in question? Of course they are.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
|
|
David Johnson
07-07-2015
03:18 UT
|
~
Jackson Russell wrote:
> But just for fun, lets take a poll. Everybody in the list who thinks
> the Fuzzies are sapient in the 7th century AE can say Yay, those
> that think they didn't rise to that level until Empire can say Nay.
Great
Ghu, not a poll! Next thing you know we'll be holding a poll about
whether the Martians of "Genesis" are the same "First Level" Martians
who colonized Terra in (the "Police Operation" version, if perhaps not
the ~Lord Kalvan~ version, of) Paratime and whether both are the same
Martians of "Omnilingual."
Oath to Galzar!
David
--
"I
remember, when I was just a kid, about a hundred and fifty years ago--a
hundred and thirty-nine, to be exact--I picked up a fellow on the
Fourth Level, just about where you're operating, and dragged him a
couple of hundred parayears. I went back to find him and return him to
his own time-line, but before I could locate him, he'd been arrested by
the local authorities as a suspicious character, and got himself shot
trying to escape. I felt badly about that. . . ." - Tortha Karf (H. Beam
Piper), "Police Operation"
~
|
|
Jackson Russell
07-07-2015
02:53 UT
|
Actually, you seem fixated on ignoring the fact that they do talk. That
Judge Pendarvis ruled them sapient. Why? To support a throw away
sentence in Ministry of Disturbance. It is an inconsistency, plain and
simple. And Pendarvis made it very clear that while the ability to
talk and build fire was legally proof positive of sapience, the
inability to do either was not proof of a lack of sapience. I suspect
some future writer will find a way to explain this inconsistency. The
Fuzzies have three books backing them up (not counting Tuning, Mayhar,
Diehr and <<shudder>> Scalzi) while you have one or two
sentences in MoD.
But just for fun, lets take a poll. Everybody
in the list who thinks the Fuzzies are sapient in the 7th century AE
can say Yay, those that think they didn't rise to that level until
Empire can say Nay.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
|
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David Sooby
07-07-2015
02:33 UT
|
Jackson Russell said:
> You totally skipped over "and can teach others" part. I am unaware of any chimpanzee or gorilla
> that has taught another ape how to sign. Or even their own offspring. It is not the ability to
> learn that I am hanging sapience on, since even dogs can learn rather clever tricks, but the
> ability to pass on that knowledge and build on it.
In
which case, the Empire's test for sapience should have nothing to do
with speech or making fire! Rather, the test you're talking about would
be the ability to teach learned skills to others of their own species.
But that's not the story Piper wrote; that would be someone else's
story.
Jackson, you seem to have an idee fixe that this was a
"mistake" on Piper's part, by insisting that Fuzzies -did- pass the
"talk and build a fire" rule, altho in that Empire story, it was said
that Fuzzies barely missed qualifying. Furthermore, you seem to be
twisting every indication in the Canon to shoehorn it into that
inflexible, preconceived idea.
As Sherlock Holmes put it in "A
Scandal in Bohemia": "It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has
data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of
theories to suit facts."
However, at this point I give up.
Jackson, you go right ahead and insist on a perverse interpretation that
demands the conclusion that the author made a careless mistake.
I,
however, will continue to view this as no error or inconsistency at
all; as Piper making a deliberate choice, as well as making a statement
about the difference between the Federation and the Empire.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman
|
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David Sooby
07-07-2015
02:16 UT
|
>> They knew the start point and its distance from the end, and came out with a number. [A very
>> rounded number, but oh well.] From that, we can conclude that if someone said "The Nemesis is
>> five days out of Gram" you could easily conclude where she'd arrive at any given destination.
>> Not unless you knew her speed, you couldn't.
>
> But Valkanhayn did, right there on page 47 of the 1963 Ace version. He knew the Nemesis had left
> Gram, like any good Viking Captain he always knew the current distances to systems, therefore he
> knew exactly how long the voyage had taken.
Thank
you for supporting my point. Yes, he knew exactly how long the other
ship took to make the voyage, even though he wasn't familiar with that
other ship. There are plenty of other instances in SPACE VIKING, too;
instances where someone knows how far another ship has traveled just
from the number of hours since it left port.
And all those
instances point to every ship traveling at exactly the same speed. If
different ships traveled at different speeds, then nobody could know how
long it would take another ship to make a voyage unless they were
familiar with that particular ship, and had an idea of how fast or slow
she was.
Look, there are just two possible interpretations:
1.
Altho historically we know that pirates and raiders had ships with
significantly different speeds, based on their intended tactics -- swift
pursuit by a lightly armed raider, or slower pursuit by a heavily armed
raider -- all the Space Viking ships, even the pinnaces when operating
by themselves, had exactly the same speed.
2. All the ships have the same speed because that's how hyperdrive works.
Which
is more plausible? Which does Occam's Razor prefer; that is, which
requires the least number of assumptions of things not directly stated
in the Canon?
Now, if you want to continue to argue that by some
bizarre chance every ship just -accidentally- has the same speed in the
Space Viking era, even though the speed depends on the mass/power ratio,
you go right ahead. But this is an argumentum ad absurdum. If ships
do not all travel at exactly the same speed in hyperspace, then there is
no rational way to explain (for example) why Prince Simon Bentrick's
trip to Tanith in a ship's pinnace would have taken the exact same
amount of time as a capital ship to make the same trip, in chapter
Marduk-VII of SPACE VIKING. Note Bentrick gave the passage time:
"...when we left Moonbase, but that was five hundred hours ago." So
there's no question the pinnace traveled at the standard speed, matched
by every other starship in the Space Viking era.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
David "Lensman" Sooby
|
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Jackson Russell
07-07-2015
02:09 UT
|
Lensman,
You totally skipped over "and can teach others" part. I
am unaware of any chimpanzee or gorilla that has taught another ape
how to sign. Or even their own offspring. It is not the ability to
learn that I am hanging sapience on, since even dogs can learn rather
clever tricks, but the ability to pass on that knowledge and build on
it. Little Fuzzy taught the forest fire Fuzzies how to make fire. I
have no doubt they could teach others. But lets go a step further. The
Fuzzies can speak. Plain and simple, they can form cogent sentences
and share knowledge. They can even lie in two examples. Name another
animal that can lie for personal gain. Not. A. One. The Fuzzies are
sapient. They form words with assigned meanings to convey ideas. They
have a language all their own, not one taught to them by humans. They
make tools, and tools to make other tools. They are sapient.
What
do they do that would suggest otherwise? Eat raw meat? There was a
football player back in the 70s who did the same thing. Robert St.
Clair, I think. Even if he was a football jock, I am pretty sure he
was sapient.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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David Sooby
07-07-2015
01:44 UT
|
Jackson Russell said:
> The real test of sapience isn't developing the ability to make fire on your own. We are all
> taught by parents/teachers/scout leaders/TV shows how to make fire. Nobody in the last several
> millennia has had to prove that ability from scratch. The real test is, once taught, you have
> the ability to teach others, and they can teach others.
That's
like arguing that chimpanzees should be considered "sentient" because
it's possible to teach them sign language. In fact, as I recall, some
chimps have mastered a vocabulary of about 200 words, which puts them
rather above Khooghras in the Piperverse. No reasonable person would
use the ability to learn something taught by a smarter species as the
test for sapience! The question isn't whether or not individuals can be
taught a certain skill; the test is whether or not the -species- has
developed the skill or ability on their own. Fuzzies did develop
language on their own, and certainly should be credited with that. They
never developed the ability to create fire on their own, and don't
deserve credit for that.
Of course you can disagree with this
opinion, but I think it's pretty clear that Piper's thinking was along
the same lines as mine. You can argue with me, but all your arguments
won't change what is printed in the Canon.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman
|
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David Johnson
07-06-2015
14:59 UT
|
~
Jackson Russell wrote:
> Tuning took things in a direction Piper never intended (he had
> three books to do so and never did, and I understand he wanted
> Little Fuzzy to be a one-off but was cornered into doing sequels)
> and did a credible job.
Given
Beam's decision to make the Fuzzies poorly suited to the Zarathustran
biosphere I think Tuning's idea of them being ancient arrivals from some
other planet fits quite well (though it does cause difficulties for the
larger Terro-human Future History--but Tuning was tasked with writing a
sequel, not with fitting it into the entire Future History).
> Scalzi's reimagining of Little Fuzzy was annoying, to me at least.
I
was disappointed with Scalzi's effort too. He claimed his purpose was
to "fix" the anachronisms of Beam's early '60s era yarn but all he did
was rewrite the story in a way that will seem similarly anachronistic to
someone reading it in the 2060s. He might instead have worked a bit
harder to rewrite the story in a way which _explained_ the
"anachronisms" within the context of the fictional setting. Of course,
that would have been a more difficult task than simply rewriting the
story using contemporary sensibilities. . . .
> Maybe I should take a stab at a short story and send it to Mr. Carr.
> Is he looking for submissions?
Well, what do you know? It seems you've gotten your wish! :)
Yeek!
David
--
"Do
you know which books to study, and which ones not to bother with? Or
which ones to read first, so that what you read in the others will be
comprehensible to you? That's what they'll give you [at university].
The tools, which you don't have now, for educating yourself." - Bish
Ware (H. Beam Piper), ~Four-Day Planet~
~
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Otherwhen@aol.com
07-06-2015
06:07 UT
|
Hi Jack,
Yes, I must have hundreds of pages of notes, and
relevant posts going all the way back to the first Piper List that
Nathan ran. At times, I do feel as though I'm chasing the Red Queen
down the rabbit hole....
In a way I feel sorry for the
writers working in his universe. They strive to explain the
inconsistencies while adhering to canon (the better ones.) John
Carr must be half crazy from all the back research and following up he
does. Tuning took things in a direction Piper never intended (he
had three books to do so and never did, and I understand he wanted
Little Fuzzy to be a one-off but was cornered into doing sequels) and
did a credible job. I just don't buy into losing fire tech over the
ages. It is the one big advantage they would have had over the
other animals. Scalzi's reimagining of Little Fuzzy was annoying, to
me at least. Diehr (I finally got and read the two books) struggles
to continue the work while adding modern knowledge into the mix. I
think he should get away from the latinized titles, tho'.
I am
working on a new Federation collection titled, "The Rise of the Terran
Federation." I am looking for submissions that expand early (up to 400
A.E.) Federation era history. This collection is open for submissions
from all of those who are on the Piper lists.
Please query me at _Otherwhen@aol.com_ (mailto:Otherwhen@aol.com) before starting your story, as that subject or event may have already been covered.
Best,
John Carr
Maybe I should take a stab at a short story and send it to Mr. Carr. Is he looking for submissions?
Jack
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Otherwhen@aol.com
07-06-2015
04:19 UT
|
Actually, the Freyan inter-fertility had nothing to do with why John W.
Campbell rejected "When in the Course.." Here, in his rejection letter
to Ken White, he makes his reasons quite clear:
Dear Mr. White:
Piper
has one, long-standing characteristic in his writing that causes
trouble; he personalizes, identifies, all his characters equally. There
are too many spear-carriers being treated as stars, which makes it
hard for the reader to get the hang of the story. Real life man,
indeed, may be this way; but art is not the reproduction of
life—that’s photography of the snap-shot variety—instead it’s
an abstraction from and clarification of life. That’s one fault
here. The second fault present is that the reader winds up with a
vague feeling that nothing much happened. Agreed freely and fully that
it’s not true; a lot did happen. But the feeling can be there. The
problems are made as diffuse as the cast of characters. (That, too, is
true of life…but makes for ineffective art.)
If he had made the
Problem the House of Styphon, then, at a particular period, under
particular circumstances, the reader would sigh, feel “Ah! Now
they’ve licked the problem,” and be able to rest content.
As is…where’s the climax in this story?
Regards,
John W. Campbell, Jr.
I had thought myself that it was the fertility issue, but that was not the sticking point.
John Carr
~
Jackson Russell wrote:
> Actually, "When in the Course-" was indeed intended to be read.
> Campbell (I think) didn't buy the idea of aliens being interfertile
> with humans
I think this is right. Remember, Paula Quinton's Freyan
great-grandmother
was mentioned in ~Uller Uprising~, written several years _before_
"When in the Course--." Apparently, Piper was trying to build on what
may have been an off-hand comment in that earlier yarn.
> I sometimes think he peppered his work with these inconsistencies
> just for giggles. Then again, Piper would do a complete manuscript,
> decide it didn't work, then retype the whole thing from scratch. This
> could easily mess with his memory later on when doing another
> manuscript.
I suspect it was more of the latter rather than deliberate
inconsistencies.
And then, of course, he may have simply changed things from yarn to
yarn to better fit the dramatic purposes of the story at hand--or
merely because he developed a different view of a given concept.
Ptosphes!
David
--
"Do
you know which books to study, and which ones not to bother with? Or
which ones to read first, so that what you read in the others will be
comprehensible to you? That's what they'll give you [at
university]. The tools, which you don't have now, for educating
yourself." - Bish Ware (H. Beam Piper), ~Four-Day Planet~
~
_________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe: http://www.quicktopic.com/42/X/tnfVKeAH3s4T
Start your own topic in 20 seconds: http://www.quicktopic.com |QT
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Jackson Russell
07-06-2015
02:58 UT
|
In a way I feel sorry for the writers working in his universe. They
strive to explain the inconsistencies while adhering to canon (the
better ones.) John Carr must be half crazy from all the back research
and following up he does. Tuning took things in a direction Piper
never intended (he had three books to do so and never did, and I
understand he wanted Little Fuzzy to be a one-off but was cornered into
doing sequels) and did a credible job. I just don't buy into losing
fire tech over the ages. It is the one big advantage they would have
had over the other animals. Scalzi's reimagining of Little Fuzzy was
annoying, to me at least. Diehr (I finally got and read the two books)
struggles to continue the work while adding modern knowledge into the
mix. I think he should get away from the latinized titles, tho'. Maybe
I should take a stab at a short story and send it to Mr. Carr. Is he
looking for submissions?
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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David Johnson
07-06-2015
02:54 UT
|
~
Jonathan Crocker wrote:
> Actually, this exact situation comes up in Space Viking, when the
> Nemesis gets to Tanith for the first time and meets the Space-
> Scourge and Lamia. Harkaman introduces Lord Trask to Spasso
> and Valkanhayn, there's a lot of back and forth, and couple of
> pages later Valkanhayn finally says: "Why, sure you can land, Otto,"
> said Valkanhayn. "I know what it's like to be three thousand hours
> in hyper, myself."
>
> They knew the start point and its distance from the end, and came
> out with a number. [A very rounded number, but oh well.] From
> that, we can conclude that if someone said "The Nemesis is five
> days out of Gram" you could easily conclude where she'd arrive
> at any given destination.
>
> Why? I think Piper was more concerned with story and plot and
> character and development than navigation. And he must have
> been on to something, else we wouldn't be discussing his work
> 50+ years later.
I
agree that Beam's primary focus was storytelling not canon consistency
but I do wonder if he wasn't signalling something else about the Viking
era in the way that every ship is assumed to travel at the same speed
(of about one light-year per hour). Beam's consistent in this whether
it's a new ship like the ~Nemesis~ or the ~Enterprise~ or an older,
less-well-maintained ship like the ~Space Scourge~ (or any of the other
Space Viking ships travelling about the Old Federation). It also seems
to be the speed at which the Royal Markdukan Navy ships travel,
suggesting that there is an odd sort of uniformity in hyperdrive
technology in the Viking era.
What would account for this oddity
is a certain sort of technological stagnation in the Viking era, with
both the Sword Worlds and the "civilized worlds" of the Old Federation
just managing to maintain a certain level of hyperdrive capability.
This is not an era of innovation or technological advancement (look at
the way the idea of hiding a hypership underwater surprises the
Mardukans and even seems to be new for the Space Vikings/Sword
Worlders).
So, perhaps the uniformity of hyperdrive speeds in the Viking era _was_ an element of Beam's storytelling.
Jumping!
David
--
"We
talk glibly about ten to the hundredth power, but emotionally we still
count, 'One, Two, Three, Many.'" - Otto Harkaman (H. Beam Piper), ~Space
Viking~
~
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David Johnson
07-06-2015
02:42 UT
|
~
Jackson Russell wrote:
> Actually, "When in the Course-" was indeed intended to be read.
> Campbell (I think) didn't buy the idea of aliens being interfertile
> with humans
I
think this is right. Remember, Paula Quinton's Freyan
great-grandmother was mentioned in ~Uller Uprising~, written several
years _before_ "When in the Course--." Apparently, Piper was trying to
build on what may have been an off-hand comment in that earlier yarn.
> I sometimes think he peppered his work with these inconsistencies
> just for giggles. Then again, Piper would do a complete manuscript,
> decide it didn't work, then retype the whole thing from scratch. This
> could easily mess with his memory later on when doing another
> manuscript.
I
suspect it was more of the latter rather than deliberate
inconsistencies. And then, of course, he may have simply changed things
from yarn to yarn to better fit the dramatic purposes of the story at
hand--or merely because he developed a different view of a given
concept.
Ptosphes!
David
--
"Do you know which
books to study, and which ones not to bother with? Or which ones to
read first, so that what you read in the others will be comprehensible
to you? That's what they'll give you [at university]. The tools, which
you don't have now, for educating yourself." - Bish Ware (H. Beam
Piper), ~Four-Day Planet~
~
|
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David Johnson
07-06-2015
02:20 UT
|
~
Jackson Russell wrote:
> And yes, I think different ships would move at different rates,
> though I think it is more a matter of maintenance than design by
> that time. Not everybody can afford to keep their ships at the
> same level of performance,
Sure,
there will be speed variations due to differences in hyperdrive care
but I would also expect that there will be differences in speed for
different "classes" of ships produced--or operating--in the same era.
Then
again, this might not hold in the Viking era where technology generally
may have stagnated, with the Sword Worlds and the "civilized worlds" of
the Old Federation maintaining some maximum capability from Federation
times, without having had any ability to innovate much improvement.
Jumping!
David
--
"A
girl can punch any kind of a button a man can, and a lot of them know
what buttons to punch, and why." - Conn Maxwell (H. Beam Piper),
~Junkyard Planet~
~
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Jonathan Crocker
07-04-2015
15:50 UT
|
>> They knew the start point and its distance from the end, and came out with a number. [A very
>> rounded number, but oh well.] From that, we can conclude that if someone said "The Nemesis is
>> five days out of Gram" you could easily conclude where she'd arrive at any given destination.
>Not unless you knew her speed, you couldn't.
But
Valkanhayn did, right there on page 47 of the 1963 Ace version. He
knew the Nemesis had left Gram, like any good Viking Captain he always
knew the current distances to systems, therefore he knew exactly how
long the voyage had taken.
I can come up a bunch of possible
rationales for this, but in the end it doesn't matter. Piper wrote it,
he had his reasons for including that, and it's sitting there on the
page.
|
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Jackson Russell
07-04-2015
13:26 UT
|
The real test of sapience isn't developing the ability to make fire on
your own. We are all taught by parents/teachers/scout leaders/TV shows
how to make fire. Nobody in the last several millennia has had to
prove that ability from scratch. The real test is, once taught, you
have the ability to teach others, and they can teach others. Little
Fuzzy was taught how to make fire by Jack and the school at Hoksu
Mitto. Little Fuzzy in turn taught the Forest Fire Fuzzies how to make
fire (a little too well, as it turned out.) I defy anybody to name
one person who was raised without a fire building culture who figured
out how to make fire for himself since our knuckle-dragging ancestors
figured it out. As for speaking, the Fuzzies already had a language of
over 500 words. the humans simply couldn't hear it as it was pitched
in the ultra sonic range. So, unless something caused the Fuzzies to
lose fire making tech between Jack Holloway's time and their
rediscovery in the Empire era, this IS a discontinuity.
A
parallel to this would be an African bushman, denied a proper education
in Africa (as we would see it) getting schooled in England, then going
back to Africa and sharing what he learned. Since we are working in a
literary world, I call on Mowgli and Tarzan. Neither of which ever
"discovered" how to make fire on their own, yet both were certainly
sapient. Tuning's Fuzzies (as expanded on by Ardeth Mayhar) were a
space going race who lost fire building tech over the centuries. Nah, I
don't by that, either, but the point is valid; the Fuzzies were
sapient from the start despite losing the tech.
And Judge
Pendarvis was quite correct in pointing out that while the talk and
build fire rule was a quick way of determining sapience, the lack of
either ability was not proof positive of a lack of sapience.
So there!
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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David Sooby
07-04-2015
05:30 UT
|
Jackson Russell said:
> Actually, "When in the Course-" was indeed intended to be read. Campbell (I think) didn't buy
> the idea of aliens being interfertile with humans (pre- Star Trek era, y'know) and suggested
> Piper change it to Paratime, which is where we got Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen.
Well,
you have a point that when Piper wrote "When in the Course--", he
intended it to be read by the public. But his plans changed. At no
point in any story written later does anyone mention anything about
mass/power ratio having anything to do with hyperspace travel. I submit
I've presented compelling evidence that Piper used different
assumptions in SPACE VIKING. At least, -I- find it compelling, and I
haven't yet seen anyone arguing for a different interpretation directly
address the point about time spent in hyperspace being used by everybody
as a yardstick for distance traveled by a starship. All I've seen is
posts ignoring the point or trying to handwave it away; trying to
dismiss it as if it's not strong evidence.
> Piper created many discontinuities in his books; Fuzzies adjudged Sapient in the 7th century
> AE, then again some 1500 years later by the Emperor being a prime example.
It
puzzles me that Piper fans keep bringing this up as if it's a
contradiction. The text clearly states that Fuzzies almost qualify as
sentient under the Empire's "talk and build a fire rule". This is
correct; Fuzzies can talk, but they didn't develop the ability to build a
fire on their own; they need help in the form of human-supplied tech to
enable them to do it.
There's no contradiction there. There -is-
an indication that the Empire isn't as liberal in its definition of
"sentient" than the Federation was. And that, too, is likely Piper
making a comment on the differences between a young, growing
interstellar society (the Federation) vs an older one with an entrenched
value system (the Empire).
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman
|
|
David Sooby
07-04-2015
05:14 UT
|
Jonathan Crocker said:
> They knew the start point and its distance from the end, and came out with a number. [A very
> rounded number, but oh well.] From that, we can conclude that if someone said "The Nemesis is
> five days out of Gram" you could easily conclude where she'd arrive at any given destination.
Not
unless you knew her speed, you couldn't. And if the speed is variable,
dependent on the mass/power ratio, then obviously you can't. It's not
like every ship is gonna carry a data file containing the speed of every
ship in space!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman
|
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Jonathan Crocker
07-04-2015
00:56 UT
|
I'm not going to stipulate that Piper never intended for me to read
"When In the Course", sorry. [Yes, I'm paraphrasing Lone Star Planet
there] He wrote it, and submitted it for publication, it's not his
fault the editor didn't like it.
Earlier there was the posting:
>It
would be like someone in our era asking "How long will it be until the
/Marie Celeste/ makes port?", and someone else >answering "She's five
days out of Liverpool." Well, how does that answer the question?
Without knowing how fast the /Marie >Celeste/ can cruise, that still
leaves us clueless about when she would be expected to reach her
intended destination.
Actually, this exact situation comes up in
Space Viking, when the Nemesis gets to Tanith for the first time and
meets the Space-Scourge and Lamia. Harkaman introduces Lord Trask to
Spasso and Valkanhayn, there's a lot of back and forth, and couple of
pages later Valkanhayn finally says: "Why, sure you can land, Otto,"
said Valkanhayn. "I know what it's like to be three thousand hours in
hyper, myself."
They knew the start point and its distance from
the end, and came out with a number. [A very rounded number, but oh
well.] From that, we can conclude that if someone said "The Nemesis is
five days out of Gram" you could easily conclude where she'd arrive at
any given destination.
Why? I think Piper was more concerned
with story and plot and character and development than navigation. And
he must have been on to something, else we wouldn't be discussing his
work 50+ years later.
"Yeek!" - Little Fuzzy
|
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Jackson Russell
07-03-2015
14:15 UT
|
Actually, "When in the Course-" was indeed intended to be read.
Campbell (I think) didn't buy the idea of aliens being interfertile
with humans (pre- Star Trek era, y'know) and suggested Piper change it
to Paratime, which is where we got Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. Piper
created many discontinuities in his books; Fuzzies adjudged Sapient in
the 7th century AE, then again some 1500 years later by the Emperor
being a prime example. One of the women in Uller Uprising was human
with a Freyan grandmother, possibly the offspring to be mentioned at
the end of WITC-. I sometimes think he peppered his work with these
inconsistencies just for giggles. Then again, Piper would do a
complete manuscript, decide it didn't work, then retype the whole thing
from scratch. This could easily mess with his memory later on when
doing another manuscript. We need some more writers in here to weigh
in on this.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
|
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David Sooby
07-03-2015
13:39 UT
|
Jonathan Crocker wrote:
> But I don't have to re-invent the wheel to prove that it's technically possible for "different
> ships travel at different hyperspace speeds in the same era", it's right there in black type
> on the page in Piper's story. I'm not ignoring any elephants, horses, or Freyan oukry.
I
presume you're talking about "When in the Course--". But Piper never
intended for you to see that in print. He completely re-wrote that
story, moving it to a different universe-- Paratime. It seems
unreasonable to me to point to a story dredged up from a trunk (at least
metaphorically) after the author's death, and say "See! What Piper
wrote is right there in black and white!" Yeah, but again you're
ignoring the evidence Piper used different assumptions when later
writing stories set in the Piperverse. What's in SPACE VIKING should
certainly trump what's in "When in the Course--", because Piper -did-
intend for you to read SPACE VIKING.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman
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Jackson Russell
07-03-2015
02:51 UT
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In Little Fuzzy's time travel speed is around six and a half hours per
light year. In Space Viking's time, travel time is down to a little
over an hour per light year. So, yes, speed has increased over the
centuries. And yes, I think different ships would move at different
rates, though I think it is more a matter of maintenance than design by
that time. Not everybody can afford to keep their ships at the same
level of performance, or even afford the same amount of fuel to keep it
going. One assumes that a ship traveling at X speed will use less
fuel than the ship traveling at X+1.
Jack
< replied-to message removed by QT >
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Jonathan Crocker
07-03-2015
01:22 UT
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David "Lensman" Sooby wrote:
>Seems to me everyone arguing
that ships don't travel at a fixed speed is ducking the elephant in the
room, here. If you want to >make a convincing argument that different
ships travel at different hyperspace speeds in the same era, then
address the point. >Find a way around the elephant in the room --
don't just ignore it.
Um, okay, I think we're not talking about
the same thing. I was discussing how the speed had increased over time.
I think we've gone down a couple of other sidings since then, the
conversation has drifted a bit.
Obviously ships of any sort on a
planet are different beasts that half-mile-diameter ships working
through hyperspace. And it makes sense that there's a minimum cut-off
point somewhere, where it is no longer cost effective to have ships
under a minimum size.
But I don't have to re-invent the wheel
to prove that it's technically possible for "different ships travel at
different hyperspace speeds in the same era", it's right there in black
type on the page in Piper's story. I'm not ignoring any elephants,
horses, or Freyan oukry.
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David Sooby
07-02-2015
10:45 UT
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Jonathan Crocker said:
> ...you could argue that all of the Viking ships were of the same 'vintage', as opposed to old
> Stellex and newer Voortrekker; or that none of the Viking ships were in as bad a state as the
> Stellex - even the Space-Scourge had been fixed up by combined crews before the first joint
> raid with Nemesis.
Isn't
that like arguing that in any historical era, ships should all have had
the same speed? But of course they didn't. In the age of sail, many
(most?) pirates used small, fast ships, while a smaller number used
larger heavily armed ships with lots of cargo room. And in the modern
era, there certainly are significant differences in speeds of
ocean-going ships, even in naval vessels.
In the Piperverse, if
the hyperspace speed of a ship depended on the mass/power ratio, then
we'd see courier and "mail" ships which were faster than anything else,
and they'd be carrying mail and very little else. We'd also see large
bulk cargo ships which were slower than anything else.
But of
course we see no such ships. With every ship traveling at the same rate
of speed, you might as well have any ship going in the right direction
carry mail -- which is exactly what we see happen in Piperverse stories.
And while they may indeed have bulk cargo freighters, since we see
references to ships carrying foodstuffs and petrochemicals, there's no
indication in any story other than "When in the Course--" that any
freighter, no matter how large or small, travels slower than any other
ship.
> [Lensman said:]
>
>> "When in the Course--" also states that a ship's speed is dependent on, or partly dependent on,
>> the mass/power ratio, which >indicates that different ships have different hyperspace speeds.
>
> Which makes sense in the context of that story, where Stellex was so old and worn the prior
> owners couldn't get her insured. It implied the Voortrekker was newer and not one step from
> the scrap heap.
You have a good argument here, but another passage in the story says:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The /Voortrekker/'s faster than any of these Pan-Federation freighters..."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--"When in the Course--" (FEDERATION p. 282)
I
really don't get why Piper fans don't accept as definitive, the point
about Piperverse characters using the number of (hundreds of) hours in
hyperspace as a yardstick for distance traveled by a ship. It would be
like someone in our era asking "How long will it be until the /Marie
Celeste/ makes port?", and someone else answering "She's five days out
of Liverpool." Well, how does that answer the question? Without knowing
how fast the /Marie Celeste/ can cruise, that still leaves us clueless
about when she would be expected to reach her intended destination.
Seems
to me everyone arguing that ships don't travel at a fixed speed is
ducking the elephant in the room, here. If you want to make a
convincing argument that different ships travel at different hyperspace
speeds in the same era, then address the point. Find a way around the
elephant in the room -- don't just ignore it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman
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Jonathan Crocker
07-02-2015
04:28 UT
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David "Lensman" Sooby wrote: >"When in the Course--" also
states that a ship's speed is dependent on, or partly dependent on, the
mass/power ratio, which >indicates that different ships have
different hyperspace speeds. Which makes sense in the context of
that story, where Stellex was so old and worn the prior owners couldn't
get her insured. It implied the Voortrekker was newer and not one step
from the scrap heap. >This is pretty strongly contradicted in
every other Piperverse story, in which ships are stated to have a fixed
hyperspace speed. I don't know about 'strongly' contradicted, in
the above example there was a direct contrast between two ships, and I
don't know of any other stories that were directly comparing speed and
range of different ships. >Note that in SPACE VIKING they
consistently use the number of hours a ship has been in hyperspace as
the measure of how far it >has traveled. It seems quite clear to me
that it wouldn't be the standard yardstick if some ships were faster
than others. True, but you could argue that all of the Viking
ships were of the same 'vintage', as opposed to old Stellex and newer
Voortrekker; or that none of the Viking ships were in as bad a state as
the Stellex - even the Space-Scourge had been fixed up by combined crews
before the first joint raid with Nemesis. Or it could be a bit
of both - in "When In The Course" when we first meet the Federation
people, there's a line about "Luther Smith looked at Margaret Hale, the
hyperdrive engineer; she'd told him just how many more jumps her
Dillinghams were good for." In a bad analogy, the Stellex had an old
weak tires they were nursing along, taking it slow, and preying they
didn't have a blowout. Hope everyone had a good Canada Day, and have a Happy 4th this weekend! Edited 07-02-2015 04:29
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David Johnson
07-01-2015
03:46 UT
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~
Mark Moeser wrote:
> Another factor in the travel time might be intermediate
> stops, or portions of "bad space" that would have to
> be avoided (akin to shoals, shallows and lee-shores
> in sailing ship times). Possibly places of high radiation
> or thick dust clouds that would cause excessive wear to
> death hazards to ships.
I
like the idea--it reminds me of Traveller's Imperium campaign's "Great
Rift" (or Flandry's "Hunters from the Sky Cave")--but I don't think
these sorts of impediments can account for the several times there is an
order of magnitude of difference in hyperspace speeds in a given
Terro-human Future History yarn. If they did, you would expect to hear
about them at least a bit in the narrative.
Jumping!
David
--
"A
girl can punch any kind of a button a man can, and a lot of them know
what buttons to punch, and why." - Conn Maxwell (H. Beam Piper),
~Junkyard Planet~
~
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David "Lensman" Sooby
07-01-2015
03:06 UT
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Mark said:
> Another factor in the travel time might be intermediate stops, or portions of "bad space" that
> would have to be avoided (akin to shoals, shallows and lee-shores in sailing ship times).
> Possibly places of high radiation or thick dust clouds that would cause excessive wear to death
> hazards to ships.
I'm
pretty sure you'll find nothing in the Canon to suggest there is any
matter or mass at all present in hyperspace, including the existence of
dust or dust clouds. Nor will you find any reference to a ship having
to detour around any obstacle or rough patch in hyperspace. Indeed, the
only time they worry about that is when exiting hyperspace; the worry
is that if they emerge too close to a large mass present in mormal
space, it will bounce them some distance away. Note that even in such a
case, there's no indication it will damage the ship or the hyperdrive.
Apparently the only downside is wasted time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman
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MMoeser237@aol.com
07-01-2015
02:03 UT
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Another factor in the travel time might be intermediate stops, or
portions of "bad space" that would have to be avoided (akin to shoals,
shallows and lee-shores in sailing ship times). Possibly places of
high radiation or thick dust clouds that would cause excessive wear to
death hazards to ships.
Mark
In a message dated 6/29/2015 11:56:13 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, qtopic-42-tnfVKeAH3s4T@quicktopic.com writes:
Hyperspace Speeds in the Early Federation Era
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David Johnson
07-01-2015
00:47 UT
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~
Jackson Russell wrote:
> That was addressed in Little Fuzzy. In that era,
> six months travel, objectively, time was three
> weeks subjectively in hyperspace. I have no
> idea if that is affected by the speed at which
> the ship travels through hyperspace.
Actually,
that was ~Uller Uprising~: "Well, it takes six months for a ship to go
between here and Nif. . . . Because of the hyperdrive effects, the
experienced time of the voyage, inside the ship, is of the order of
three weeks."
Or maybe ~Four-Day Planet~: "Belsher's been on the
ship with Murell for six months. Well, call it three; everything
speeds up about double in hyperspace."
Beam threw in
relativistic time dilation effects on several different occasions, but
in most instances he was pretty clear on drawing the distinction between
the internal time experience of the traveler and the external time
experience of those awaiting the arrival--or anticipating the
departure--of a hypership.
Bottom line is, we won't find much "help" here, but fortunately we don't get that much added confusions.
Jumping!
David
--
"We
talk glibly about ten to the hundredth power, but emotionally we still
count, 'One, Two, Three, Many.'" - Otto Harkaman (H. Beam Piper), ~Space
Viking~
~
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