Most Wodenites are "...primitive hunters..." (p. 414) Few leave their planet. Adzel's memories of home are not of a civilization:
wide prairies of Zatlakh;
hoof beats like earthquakes;
wind from ghost-blue mountains on the horizon;
night time fires beneath the aurora;
old songs, dances and kinship. (p. 417)
Adzel has done well to adjust so completely to a technological civilization.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And one reason why Adzel and many other Wodenites adapted so well to a high tech society was because they were so much more naturally CALMER than many other races.
Sean
During the 1950's, an Australian mission landed a light airplane near an uncontacted village in central New Guinea. The locals were so isolated that they didn't even have any metal tools or weapons traded through intermediaries, and of course they thought the airplane was magic.
Less than two days later, the "big man" of the village offered them a large number of pigs (the local currency) if he'd fly them over a neighboring village with which his clan had a feud, so he could drop rocks on their heads.
Here's a man of the Neolithic... and he independently reinvents the concept of "strategic bombing" by himself, only a few days after being exposed to the reality of flight.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
And THAT pretty much sweeps away dreamy notions a la Rousseau about "noble savages." (Snorts)
Sean
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