Aycharaych regards death as a completion so maybe he regards Chereionite history as complete and thinks that it would be inappropriate to revive it? Some people dislike sequels. Maybe he wants to keep the appreciation of the Chereionite heritage to himself? Imagine someone who has preserved the complete works of Shakespeare and who loves rereading them but does not want to share them with anyone else. Maybe cloned Chereionites would not live up to their heritage, in his opinion? These are plausible scenarios.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
It does seem odd, once Stirling made his suggestion, why Aycharaych apparently did not try to prevent his race from becoming extinct thru cloning himself. Or did he thing there was no point in doing that if there were no FEMALE Chereionites to enable the race to survive by the ordinary means of sexual reproduction? But it seems likely there would be genetic material from females of his race that would be available for Aycharaych to use.
All of your suggestions here seem plausible to me.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But surely a clone from a male organism can be altered to make it female?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I don't know, but I don't think it would be that easy, off the top of my head.
Ad astra! Sean
The level of genetic technology available would make recreating complete organisms from the (surely abundant) stored genetic records quite simple.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
If, of course, there was stored genetic material of the Chereionites. That granted, I am sure there was an ample supply of female Chereionite genetic material.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul, as a fellow major Poul fan I've enjoyed reading your blog over the years. Thanx for maintaining it!
As I recall, the first specific reference to genetic engineering in the League/Empire sequence was in the The Sharing of the Flesh (it was also central to the last book Anderson wrote in the League/Empire sequence, The Game of Empire).
I don't blame Anderson for the oversight. When Sharing was written genetic engineering was a neat concept that no one had any inkling how to do (except by traditional breeding methods). Besides, these are just stories.
There are other "glaring" examples of this "oversight", too. The fundamental personal tension in Starfog revolves around the protagonist's inability to have children with a Kirkasant woman, even though they love each other.
Genetic engineering would have been able to fix that, presumably. Then again, why didn't they think of adopting, or host mothering, or doing what Beowulf Shaeffer and Sharrol did in Niven's Known Space series, asking a friend for help :)?
Mark,
Thank you. I sometimes wonder who these people are that read the blog.
Paul.
Kaor, Mr. Olbert!
Nice to see a new "voice" here. Hope this gets uploaded.
I think the earliest story Anderson wrote that we see anything like genetic engineering being mentioned was ENSIGN FLANDRY (1966), when Commander Abrams was astonished to be told by the Merseian spy he captured, Dwyr the Hook, that his war injuries could not be healed. Abrams replied that was not true, because undamaged tissue from Dwyr would be used as genetic material for cloning new limbs and organs for him--or at least should have been done.
ENSIGN FLANDRY has to be one of the earliest SF stories where cloning was used or mentioned--so early the word "cloning" was barely known!
Ad astra! Sean
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