A mythological centaur is the top half of a human body on the front of a horse's body. The Tahirians are at least "centauroids" because they have four legs, two arms and a head. Apart from that, Poul Anderson tries to make them sound alien. We are dismayed to read about:
"...two elliptical eyes..." (p. 212)
- but then we read:
"...-presumably eyes -..." (ibid.)
- and also that there is another pair of eyes, large and circular.
Two black and two green with neither whites nor pupils. There are also antennae with clustered cilia.
Of the eyes, the inner black pair might be for day vision, the others for night and peripheral vision. Bones perform the role of teeth. Four small tongues might be chemosensors.
Anderson is trying but he has taken a basically terrestroid organismic form, then changed details like the number of pairs of eyes and tongues.
Until late tomorrow or the day after.
Laters.
(I wanted the cover of a Mike Carey Lucifer comic with a woman centaur but couldn't find it online.)
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I thought the Tahirians more than alien enough to suit me! Moreover, I don't entirely agree with this insistence of yours that non-humans should be incomprehensively alien to us. The mere fact Tahir is a very Terrestrial planet with a breathable atmosphere and a humanly comfortable environment implies many things to me. Some being that I don't think it's hopelessly implausible to think many forms of animal and even intelligent life could evolve there with features and organs similar to what we see on Earth. Parallel evolution, IOW.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I do not insist that non-human beings be incomprehensible.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But you do seem to boggle at the idea non-humans can have similarities, in some ways, to Terrestrial life forms.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We just project heads with two ears, two eyes, a nose, a mouth etc onto fictional aliens. Piersson's Puppeteers would imagine that other intelligent species looked like them.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
While I can imagine some non-human races as "complicated" as Niven's Puppeteers, I don't think it's that likely for many species to be as complex as Anderson's tribodied Didonians. Parallell/analogous evolution is at least as likely as Ymirites with multiple heads.
Ad astra! Sean
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