See At First Sight.
Sometimes an sf writer must describe a natural or artificial environment containing completely unfamiliar shapes. Peter Nordbo sees an orbiting sixteen-kilometer-wide sphere encrusted with shapes like:
half a dodecahedron;
three bent concentric helices;
curving dendritic masts or antennae;
less (!) recognizable shapes.
The sphere has been eroded by dust, meteoroids and cosmic rays.
OK. I accept that as a description of an object that I have never seen before. I would not be able to glance at that, look away, then describe it accurately. In a high tech alien civilization, we would not know what we were seeing.
Right now, I have:
the computer screen in my foreground;
a TV showing changing news scenes in the background;
muted sound from the TV;
an electric light switched on to my left;
beyond the light, a window showing houses across the street;
piles of books on the floor and settee.
How would a temporally displaced caveman describe that?
It's often difficult to "see" an object that's truly unfamilar. Read explorer's descriptions of new animals, for example -- they're often very misleading, as they try to refer to more familiar sights.
ReplyDeleteA Pierson's Puppeteer can be easily described by comparing it to other animal forms but the Puppeteers were imagined by Niven.
ReplyDeleteSame goes for Dan Dare's old pet, Stripey:
size of a cat or dog;
colors of a zebra;
shape of a tuskless elephant.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
ReplyDeleteHeck, I have sometimes had that difficulty trying to describe objects we had both seen to another person! Or vice versa.
Ad astra! Sean