T machines allow contact with many rational species. "Betans" are from an extra-solar planet humanly designated "Beta," not from a planet of the star, Beta Centauri. Their biology and therefore their history is different from ours. Rather than summarize it here, I urge everyone to read it.
The Betans have contact with several races, including humanity, and find that our kind of equality between the sexes is what they are trying to achieve. Other species are not as helpful:
"(For instance, one race, winged, was perpetually migratory, around and around its world. None of its institutions, mores, attitudes, beliefs were adaptable to surface dwellers.)" (p..114)
We remember the Diomedeans.
"Humans, despite every divergence, had a basic likeness..." (ibid.)
However, Betans are not mere surface dwellers. They speak two languages, one in air, the other underwater. Poul Anderson imagines genuine aliens.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
All this is encouraging me to again reread THE AVATAR. Esp. because of how imaginative Anderson was in his speculations about what non-human intelligent races might be like.
Sean
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