"His forebodings could not very well be put in human terms. A man carries half the sex of his race, Theor only a third. He was an individual, with his own personality, and he was self-aware, but both to a lesser degree than the typical Homo Sapiens. What troubled him was not so much fear of being hurt as a sense of wrongness. That which had happened and that which was going to happen should not, and shook him on a purely biological level."
-Poul Anderson, Three Worlds To Conquer (London, 1966), Chapter 5, pp. 37-38.
"The wrongness of the day, the disorientation, bit into him."
-op. cit., Chapter 8, p. 57.
On pp. 37-38, the omniscient narrator addresses the reader. This narrator knows and contrasts Jovian and human feelings. P. 57 gives us just Theor's point of view.
"Theo -" means "God." "Or" is "gold" in French. Thus: "God of Gold" or "Golden God"?
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Here, pending a currently hypothetical rereading of THREE WORLDS TO CONQUER, I don't think I can agree with Anderson. Even allowing for the complexities caused by a species using three sexes to reproduce, I don't think Theor would have a lesser degree of intelligence and self awareness than most humans. I would THINK any being which was intelligent and self aware would be like you and I. But I might well be wrong, there could be races like what we see described here. We simply don't know!
I don't think Anderson "Theo" ("God") or "or" ("gold") in mind when he coined "Theor." He was simply trying to think of names that might be plausible for the Jovians of his story. Mere chance, IOW, that this name resembled "Theo" and "Or."
Sean
Paul and Sean:
Speaking of "mere chance" and "Theor," I recalled abruptly that one of the people with whom I played the "Dungeons and Dragons" game in the late '70s ran a character by that name. I don't remember anything about that Theor except his name ... and that I THINK he was a wizard.
Kaor, DAVID!
And it's possible your old role playing game buddy was a fan of PA, and took "Theor" from THREE WORLDS TO CONQUER!
Sean
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