Will an alien resemble any Terrestrial animal? I doubt it. Feline or owl-like aliens reflect our collective lack of imagination, not just that of any individual sf writer. Argens tells us that Valland jocularly compares the natives to kangaroos with webbed feet, bulldog muzzles, mule ears and large eyes. (There have to be variations on just two eyes.) Then Argens reminds us that in his time most human beings have never been on Earth where many animals have become extinct in any case. But Valland was a young adult in the twenty-first century so he remembers kangaroos etc. In other words, Valland's jocular description as reported to his future readers by Argens was there in the text only for the benefit of Poul Anderson's twentieth century readers! A roundabout route to a description that Argens/Anderson in any case plays down:
"In general, though, I don't care what image you develop. What matters about a people is technology, thought, art, the whole pattern of life." (VII, p. 49)
Reading a prose narrative, most of us soon forget whatever physical description was given. However, the appearance of the Azkashi would have to be in our faces all the time in any visual medium.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
This touches on an old disagreement of ours--however different other races will be, physically, from ours, parallel evolution means there will be some resemblances either to our species or other Terrestrial life forms. I believe that has to be so if certain things are going to be done by any intelligent race.
Ad astra! Sean
Well, similar environments breed -some- similarities. OTOH, not necessarily close ones.
Take a look at the flourishing dinosaurian ecology of Earth just before the Chichicub asteroid impact.
It was wildly different -- just for starters, there were animals on land as big as whales!
And that's the -same- evolutionary tree, with some branches pruned, that led to us.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, we can expect some similarities, but not necessarily close ones. Such as the draco-centauroid Wodenites of the Technic stories.
It seems reasonable to think land animals as big and heavy as whales would seem comparatively slow compared to us.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment