Can sea-dwellers colonize off-planet? In Poul Anderson's
The Fleet Of Stars, the Keiki Moana, metamorphic intelligent seals, propose to terraform the interior of Deimos, then the surface of Mars, then go out-system, using the Life Mother technology that has already been developed out-system. At astronomical expense, they will use metals from the asteroids and ices and organics from the comets for terraforming. Merely staying in the Pacific has become meaningless because of cybercosmic dominance on Earth. I question this last proposition but agree with spreading different kinds of life and civilization off-planet.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The Sea People of Starkad, whom we see in ENSIGN FLANDRY, would make more plausible oceanic colonists, IMO. They evolved naturally to intelligence, and thru a long enough period of time to develop true arms and hands. Which means they did not need the clumsy prosthetics of the Keiki Moana we see in the HARVEST books.
And I agree with the Keiki Moana and those humans who thought likewise in resenting the smothering dominance of the cybercosm on Earth.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
And indeed the Starkadians do become extra-planetary colonists of necessity.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And it would be intriguing to see if any of these Starkadian Sea People colonists/exiles on Imhotep ever built space ships filled with water!
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
I've even wondered if many of the more restless Tigeries of Starkad/Imhotep enlisted in the Imperial Navy or Marines! After all, the oxygills enabling Tigeries to breath a human type atmosphere would make that possible.
Ad astra! Sean
The basic problem is that water is -heavy-. A spaceship filled with it would be very mass-ive indeed!
That would only be possible if the technology had few limits on energy generation.
We need anti-gravity.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: You are right, and I think I did have that heaviness of water in the back of my mind as one of the difficulties an oceanic intelligent race would have in space traveling. I thought it would be interesting if we saw some of the Sea People of Starkad/Imhotep having space ships of their own. Off hand, I can't think of any SF writers experimenting with ideas like that.
Paul: I agree, and I hope a real anti-gravity analogous to that of Technic Civilization is invented.
Ad astra! Sean
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