Some Facts About Ythrians

The People Of The Wind.

Of course, these "facts" are really fictions but we know what we mean or at least I hope that we do. I once suggested to a University graduate that a good fictional premise for a sequel to The Time Machine could be that Wells wrote a true account that has been mistaken for fiction for all these years because the Time Traveller never returned. What would follow from such a premise? In no time, however, the guy with whom I had shared this idea had got so confused that he asked me, puzzledly, whether I though that The Time Machine was true? If we ask whether it is "true" that in 1984, the world was divided into three states, Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania, that were perpetually at war, then the answer is "yes" provided that it is understood that this entire discussion takes place within the context of the fictional scenario in George Orwell's novel, 1984, and is not about the real world in 1984 AD, a year that had still been in the future when Orwell wrote 1984.

Obvious, we hope. Here is a "fact" about the Ythrians' usually regular sexual cycle. Grief can prematurely initiate female receptivity and fertility. Philippe Rochefort's training video informs him that:

"Doubtless this was originally a provision of nature for rapid replacement of losses. It seems to have brought about a partial fusion of Eros and Thanatos in the Ythrian psyche which makes much of the race's art, and doubtless thought, incomprehensible to man." (IV, p. 44)

I had to google "Eros" and "Thanatos" to get a more exact understanding of these terms as used in psychology. If (i) these principles are partially fused in Ythrian psychology and if (ii) this partial fusion makes much Ythrian thought incomprehensible to humanity, then surely there should be bigger communication problems than we are shown in these narratives? Yet this potential problem is mentioned only in this single sentence. We did see in In Oronesia And The Weathermother, that western Coronans and northern Oronesians would first confer human-to-human and Ythrian-to-Ythrian. Tabitha Falkayn judged that this procedure would initially avoid:

"'...the handicap of differing species.'" (III, p. 30)

Later, the omniscient narrator informs us that:

"...one is tempted to call [Ythrian Planha-speakers] 'Hellenistic.'" (V, p. 53)

However, is this an omniscient narrator if he speaks/writes about "one" being tempted...? Who is this "one"? An omniscient narrator should in no way obtrude into the text. Instead, he should be completely outside of the readers' sight and hearing like the supposed invisible, omnipresent deity. This sentence reads more like one of our many Technic historians and commentators reflecting on his subject-matter.

Lastly, for now, Khruaths, assemblies which any free adult can attend, work for Ythrians because members of that species differ from humanity in the following ways. They are less:

talkative

busybody

easily bullied

crowded

Modern communications spread Khruaths planet- and Domain-wide.

Your blogger needs a food break.