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?
3 comments:
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.
A Pierson's Puppeteer can be easily described by comparing it to other animal forms but the Puppeteers were imagined by Niven.
Same 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!
Heck, I have sometimes had that difficulty trying to describe objects we had both seen to another person! Or vice versa.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment