"Rax placed itself before [Djana]. She had no way of reading expressions on that face."
-CHAPTER THREE, p. 215.
Nor have we since the face has not been described to us! All we have been told is that Rax's "...lumpy gray body..." walks on "...four thin legs..." (p. 213), that it has two tentacles and that the head at the middle of this body is about level with Djana's waist. Rax sounds like a Reardonite in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History although the latter has four tentacles and petals for a head. The only Reardonite that we see is called Smokesmith and he is completely different in character from Rax - opposite, in fact.
My points here are:
imagine the confrontation between Djana and Rax on screen;
film-makers would have carte blanche to give Rax any kind of face that they could imagine.
We would want a film to be both faithful and imaginative.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But Rax's face should not be too human looking, aside from obviously having eyes and some kind of mouth, nose, hearing orifices.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Eyes, mouth, nose, ears: it might be too terrocentric to assume that these organs have to be gathered together in the same part of the body.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Except I think it makes sense to keep such organs near the brain, so information from these organs will quickly reach it.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Near the brain but not necessarily near each other but we really don't know. I expect genuine discoveries to confound expectations in all kinds of ways. Larry Niven was right to construct the Puppeteers but he acknowledged that the other ET's in Known Space were more or less humanoid. Imagine Puppeteer sf: a galaxy full of Puppeteer lookalikes!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, we have to expect surprises as well as, possibly, unexpected similarities. Plus Anderson was more imaginative than Niven in speculating about non-human races. Humanoids, varied kinds of centauroids, flying species, races linking two or three "parts," both oxygen and non-oxygen breathing races, etc. And weird multiple headed Ymirites!
Ad astra! Sean
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