Sunday, 19 November 2023

Apparitions II

Of course there was not going to be an apparition on Lokon (see Apparitions) because "The Sharing of Flesh" is sf, not fantasy. However, Poul Anderson accurately describes a bereaved state of mind that can project apparitions. On Nike, commoners think that a warlord dead three hundred years still walks the ruins of his "cave" (castle). Stories told on Nike could include apparitions.

Ydwyr, a Merseian in A Circus of Hells, has studied paranormal phenomena among primitive races so I checked whether he had investigated any of their attempts to communicate with their dead but I had been thinking of an alien in a Larry Niven story:

"'When I thought to talk to their ghosts, there was nothing, though I used their own techniques.'"
-Larry Niven, "Cautionary Tales" IN Niven, Convergent Series (New York, 1979), pp. 177-181 AT p. 180. 

Maybe ghosts only speak with living members of their own species?

We have mentioned more than once that Dominic Flandry asks his murdered fiancee for a sign.

Contact with the dead is possible in the goetic universe which, like the Technic History timeline, has access to the Old Phoenix.
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4 comments:

  1. DaveShoup2MD19 November 2023 at 21:06


    "Fictional extraterrestrial sophont cultures and the concept of the afterlife," by Shackley?

    Could be interesting reading. ;)

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  2. Sean M. Brooks20 November 2023 at 04:09

    Kaor, Paul!

    Of course! I would expect humans on planets they colonized to eventually have their own ghosts stories.

    Ad astra! Sean

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  3. DaveShoup2MD21 November 2023 at 21:33


    And as Anderson suggested in one of the Rustum-verse stories, intelligent aliens might find a way to take advantage of that reality. ;)

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  4. Sean M. Brooks22 November 2023 at 17:58

    Kaor, Dave!

    Ah, thinking of how aliens manipulated human legends in "The Queen of Air and Darkness"!

    Ad astra! Sean

    ReplyDelete