Sunday 23 June 2024

Quadrupeds On Ships

Closing this evening with a truly obscure textual parallel - 

A quadrupedal Ishtarian discusses sailing ships with a human being:

"'...in spite of arrangements like bosun's chairs and ankle hooks, the crews cannot get about aloft as readily as you.'"
-Fire Time, XXI, p. 211.

A young centaur recounts what happened when she ran away to sea:

"I saw many things on that first voyage. My first two-legs, for instance.
"All the ships of the folk employ them because we can't climb. I was fascinated and repelled by their ungainly shapes, their strange flexibility."
-Mike Carey, Lucifer: The Divine Comedy (New York, 2003), p. 76, panel 3, captions 1-2.

So that is how we look to them. Writers like Poul Anderson and Mike Carey look at us through alien eyes.

4 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

That's correct, mentioning something I never thought of before, quadrupeds/centauroids simply won't be able to do some things two legged races can do with ease. Ythrians, unlike humans, not being able to swim is another example of how bodily forms can come with different advantages or disadvantages.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Well, you could have a six-limbed climber, if all the limbs had grasping appenages.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Of course but not a horse.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

But the quadrupeds we see in Anderson's stories: Wodenites, Donarrians, Ishtarians, are not like that. Their legs are used more like horses. Also, I think evolution would make most quadrupeds too big and heavy to climb around the rigging of ships.

I really don't think six limbed centauroids are likely to evolve with all those limbs having fingers and thumbs.

Ad astra! Sean