"'Never said that. Hm-m-m...make a good yarn, wouldn't it?'
"'No. Because it's an absurdity. Simply ask yourself how nourishment would pass from the axle bone to the cells of the disc...'"
-Poul Anderson, "Wings of Victory" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. 3-22 AT p. 7.
Webner lacks imagination. First, absurdities do make good yarns. Secondly, they are about to meet intelligent flying animals which he also argues are impossible.
However, one man's ideas is another man's story element. I remembered, and Aileen has confirmed, that there are wheeled organisms on a parallel Earth in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, Volume III, The Amber Spyglass.
Watching His Dark Materials has made me think of rereading it. This clinches it.
4 comments:
It's not impossible -- I can imagine a juvenile stage of the organism growing the wheels like teeth, and then the structure breaking free to rotate on its axis as dead tissue, like hair or finger-nails.
It's not likely, but evolution takes bizarre paths sometimes -- it's a random process, after all.
It's not impossible -- I can imagine a juvenile stage of the organism growing the wheels like teeth, and then the structure breaking free to rotate on its axis as dead tissue, like hair or finger-nails.
It's not likely, but evolution takes bizarre paths sometimes -- it's a random process, after all.
I have been thinking about how it might happen - without any knowledge of biology.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, Webner lacked imagination. His problem was of being too rigidly attached to "general rules" and forgetting to keep in mind there will always be some EXCEPTIONS to those general rules.
So, yes, there are strong reasons why intelligent flying races will be very rare. But factors and circumstances can come together in ways that sometimes allow such races to evolve, as we see on Diomedes and Ythri.
Ad astra! Sean
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