"'Chee Lan!' [Adzel] boomed in Anglic. 'What a splendid surprise. Come in, my dear, come in.'" (p. 39)
This is flawless English language dialogue. We imagine a man saying it. But Adzel is a Wodenite speaking Anglic. What is it like for a member of his species to experience and express enjoyment at meeting a former colleague of yet another species? And how many intelligent species will both eat and speak through a mouth under a single nose or snout under two eyes with an ear at each side of a head? Most sf aliens are Terrocentric.
Quick breakfast post. Much other activity here.
13 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I believe it's reasonable to think it's possible many non-human intelligent races will have analogous senses and organs similar to what humans have. Esp. if they evolved on roughly terrestroid planets with oxy/nitrogen atmospheres. I don't share this insistence you seem to place on total incomprehensibility.
Of course Adzel and Chee Lan would use Anglic, if that was the most convenient language they knew.
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Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Well, of course Adzel and Chee Lan would have to converse in Anglic but their using a human language would not be as easy and straightforward a matter as two human beings using that same language. They are not just equivalent to two human minds in differently shaped bodies. Their very brain structures and neural interactions (or equivalents) are bound to be different. An sf writer has to convey alienness, not just effortless communication. In fact, communication is often far from effortless even between two human beings! Let alone when species A and species B converse in a language of species C.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I can only partly agree, because you are overlooking an important point: Adzel and Chee Lan were not using Anglic as a recently learned language. We are supposed to assume they had been familiar with Anglic, and using it for many years.
Moreover, this insistence you place on difficulties would intolerably slow down the action seen in the story. You should also remember how, centuries later, THE REBEL WORLDS includes a page discussing how Flandry was trained at the Imperial Intelligence academy in the methods needed by agents for learning as quickly as possible non-human languages.
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Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I am well aware that they have been using Anglic for years but their way of using it should reflect their different mentalities.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And we do see that sometimes, as with the Merseians.
Ad astra! Sean
I think one of Poul's Technic stories remarks that aliens often seem like caricatures to humans... and that the reverse is true as well.
As to physical forms, there are limits to variation imposed by material factors. We could have three eyes, I suppose, but that would introduce a further complicating factor in our neural networks. Two are enough for depth perception, for example.
An introduction in THE TROUBLE TWISTERS.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that's why I find the argument for "incomprehensibility" unconvincing.
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Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
And I am not sure that there is an argument for "incomprehensibility." Only for difficulty.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I don't deny there will be difficulty, even great difficulty, in mutually alien races learning to communicate with each other, that's a given. I simply think you seem to lean a bit too far in the direction of "incomprehensibility."
One good SF story touching on such issues is H. Beam Piper's "Omnilingual."
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Ad astra! Sean
I don't.
Note that we all live in the same material universe and have to deal with the same physical laws.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Good, despite me getting the reverse impression.
Mr. Stirling: That too is a given, one I agree with.
Hope this uploads.
Ad astra! Sean
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