Martian Meanings

Late at night, tired, I found it easy to post about the Divine, a pet subject after all. However, meanwhile, I was finding SM Stirling's Martians difficult to read and think about. That is not a complaint! Who wants to read only texts that are easy? However...

One of them thinks:

"...I must keep in mind that death from another's volition is possible at any point on one's personal world-line."

-SM Stirling, In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings (New York, March 2008), CHAPTER ONE, p. 40.

He means that he must remember that someone can kill him at any time but why express it like that? Because he is a Martian human being, of course.

What is not acceptable, as Bob Shaw said at an sf event years ago, is to describe incomprehensible speech and actions and then to explain it all by the phrase: "Alien motivations!" But the authors that we discuss here do not see fit to conduct themselves like that. Shaw in particular said that it was a point of honour for him to explain everything.

These Martians make their kind of sense and it is our job as readers to understand it, even if not tonight.