"She could have been human - almost - had she not been so unhumanly fair. The Lorinyans were what man might be in a million years of upward evolution." (p. 20)
In the Time Patrol timeline, a million years of evolution transform human beings into Danellians.
"Let the native females be! It was Nomad law which needed little enforcement on other planets - who was attracted by something that looked like a caricature of man?" (p. 21)
The Lorinyans are like a perfection of mankind:
slim, graceful, marble-white bodies;
long, silk-like, blued-silver hair, seeming to float above the shoulders and down the back;
on Ilaloa, slender waist and enormous eyes. (CHAPTER V, p. 32)
But extraterrestrial evolution is not going to duplicate, then perfect, humanity. Might there instead be some way that the Lorinyans can fake their appearance, as in "The Queen of Air and Darkness"? After all, Ilaloa comes to infiltrate the Peregrine.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
THE PEREGRINE was first pub. as STAR WAYS in 1956, during Anderson's earlier years as a writer. I have argued that his early phase, which I dated from 1947 to 1958, should be understood as a time when he was trying out many ideas and learning how to write. And that included learning how to write about more convincing non humans. Anderson was much better at that from 1959 onwards.
Ad astra! Sean
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