The Zoo Ship

"Hiding Place," see here.

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gorilloids

The zoo ship recalls Superman for three reasons:

(i) he had an alien zoo and Anderson's Captain Torrance refers to "'...Luna City Zoo.'" (p. 572);

(ii) one of Superman's villains collected not individual organisms but miniaturized, bottled, inhabited cities;

(iii) in another story, a spaceship fired a duplication ray at a planetary

surface so that the target organism remained on the planet while an exact duplicate of it appeared inside the spaceship, like a Star Trek transporter that did not disintegrate the original.

Although Poul Anderson's Technic History is better written either than Star Trek or than most Superman scripts, all are sf so that conceptual comparisons are appropriate.

Alien Zoo Ship

Nicholas van Rijn's men have captured an alien zoo ship and want to communicate with its crew who, however, have destroyed all evidence of their identity and are hiding in plain sight among their exhibits. When it is realized that the ship synthesizes food even for the crew, van Rijn comments:

"'...maybe here we find a good new market. And until they learn the situation, we can charge them triple prices.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 578.

Are triple prices, even just temporary ones, ethical? I am not an expert in capitalist "morality." (Despite my sneer quotes, van Rijn, unlike some merchants of the Polesotechnic League, does have morality. He regards nuclear bombardment of a hostile planet as not only economically wasteful but also morally wrong, a guilt that would kill the League.)

Even more interesting are the technicalities of the zoo ship. The crew has emptied the ship of its air although, of course, each "cage" has an internal atmosphere. But is the air in the reserve tanks similar to that in any of the cages? There are no reserve tanks. Instead, an adjustable catalytic manifold renews air and chemosynthesizes losses from a store of inorganic matter. When, as the hiding zoo keepers must hope, van Rijn's men give up and depart, they will open their cage to let out some of its air so that the chemosynthesizer will then fill the ship with their preferred atmosphere. Pretty smart stuff.

Some of the exhibits are clearly just animals, incapable of building a spaceship. For the suspects, the chief engineer has constructed equipment to assess gravity, temperature, illumination, atmospheric composition and pressure etc in each cage but it takes time to translate dial readings into data. Each cage is metered but of course the meters are incomprehensible. Meanwhile, can pure detective work identify the zoo keepers? Van Rijn, who seems merely to eat, drink and idle, also thinks very hard.

Alien Animals

Nicholas van Rijn and his crew, including one Ramanujan and one Altaian, explore an alien zoo ship. They find:

a giant tendrilled shark;

tiny, flying, scaled, glittering reptiles;

tiger-striped, bear-sized, clawed, carnivorous mammals (tiger apes);

red, six-legged, otter-like creatures;

black, faceless, hydrogen-breathing quadrupeds with six ropy arms, two ending in boneless fingers, living under high pressure in triple gravity at seventy below (tentacle centaurs);

snakes living in the same conditions as the tentacle centaurs;

a green, scaled, elephant-sized quadruped with a trunk ending in psuedodactyls (the elephantoid);

large, oxygen-breathing bipeds with sphincters in their necks (gorilloids);

small, helmet-like quadrupeds with tentacles ending in cilia and human-like eyes (helmet beasts);

dark blue, silver-spotted, man-sized, oxygen-breathing caterpillars with two arms and hands, each with no thumbs but six opposable fingers, from a high gravity planet (catterpiggles).

This shows the difficulty of imagining alien animals without comparing them to Terrestrial animals. Superman had an extra-terrestrial zoo in his Fortress of Solitude. As described by Alan Moore, this contained "neonmoths" that shrieked with human voices and sentient puddles that evaporated when overexcited.

This comparison of a Nicholas van Rijn story with a Superman story is not frivolous. Although Superman initiated the new genre of "superheroes," he himself is an sf character who, while flying through space, can encounter interstellar traders like van Rijn or pirates like van Rijn's enemies in this story, the Adderkops.

(How can the Adderkops, having colonized a planet in unknown space a century ago, have increased the number of their warships since then?)

Alien Zoo Ship III

Nicholas van Rijn's current female companion tells Captain Torrance:

"'I'm coming to Earth with you...Freeman Van Rijn has promised me a very good job.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 567.

Torrance thinks, "He always does..." (ibid.)

Van Rijn would neither give a good job to anyone who was incompetent nor make a promise that he was unable to keep but would also be confident of his ability to resolve any contradiction that he had talked himself into. So how would he resolve this one? I do not know, not being van Rijn.

Some covers of Trader To The Stars incorrectly show an elephant. See recent posts. The organism in question is:

a quadruped;
the size of an elephant;
slenderer, indicating a lower gravity;
green and faintly scaled with hair along its back;
armed with a powerful trunk that ends in a ring of strong pseudodactyls but no horns.

Torrance speculates that a one-armed race could accomplish as much as humanity although not as easily. But the elephantoids are not the zoo keepers either...

And, of course, sf writers need to imagine alien animals that cannot be described as looking like Terrestrial organisms.

Alien Zoo Ship II

Occasionally, I comment on the fearsome appearance of some of Poul Anderson's aliens, even though his characters, like Nicholas van Rijn and David Falkayn, regularly do business with such exotic intelligences as readily as they would with fellow human beings.

Here is one of the species in the captured zoo ship:

restless black creatures in dim red light;
stumpy-legged;
quadrupedal;
faceless heads armored in bony material (!);
two sets of three thick, rope-like arms;
two of the arms ending in three boneless fingers/tentacles;
breathing hydrogen under high pressure in triple gravity at seventy below.

These "octopus horses" or "tentacle centaurs" turn out not to be intelligent but suppose they had done? Would you, wearing an armored, heated spacesuit, of course, walk up to such a creature, shake his hand and offer him a business deal? Well, you would not necessarily shake his hand. First, you would have to research which kind of gesture would be expected or appropriate and indeed safe...

The captain asks:

"'Are they the only ones who like that kind of weather?'"
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2011), p. 579 -

- to which the chief engineer, giving him "...a sharp look...," responds:

"'I see what you are getting at, skipper.'" (ibid.)

I do not see what he is getting at. Anderson's texts do not have many such moments when we have to guess or deduce what his characters are driving at. The chief engineer has found three other cubicles with the same kind of environment but their occupants are obvious animals like snakes. Van Rijn's current female companion suggests that the crew would not take animals from home with them but van Rijn replies that his yacht has a cat and parrots, also that many planets have similar conditions.

The plot thickens.

Brains

"Hiding Place."

Nicholas van Rijn, Captain Torrance and the crew of the Hebe G.B. search for intelligent beings hiding among the animals in the alien zoo ship. The gorilloids seem to have limited cranial capacity. When van Rijn suggests that they might have brains not in their heads but in their bellies, Torrance replies that some people do. This is equivalent to Captain Torres in "Margin of Profit" acknowledging that van Rijn has guts.

Torrance goes on to expound empirically what some now argue speculatively, that animals keep their brains near their principal sense organs which are usually at the top. Otherwise, neural paths would become too long. Larry Niven's Puppeteers have their brain in their body with one eye and one mouth with malleable lips also serving as fingers at the end of each arm-neck.

Torrance adds that a smaller brain will not mean less intelligence if the neurons are more efficient but how do neurons work? They fire electrically and interact chemically but how does this cause either consciousness or intelligence? We judge whether an organism is conscious, then whether it is intelligent, by observing not its neurons but its behavior. If behavior includes exchange of signals, then we ask whether signals have become symbols, i.e., language, i.e., intelligent communication.

Inside The Zoo Ship

"Hiding Place," see here.

There has been combox discussion of social homogenization on future Earth. While examining the zoo ship, chief engineer Yamamura turns "...a patient brown face..." (p.578) toward van Rijn.

Van Rijn says:

"'Even to a union organizer, obvious this ship was never made by fishes or birds.'" (p. 579)

He negotiates with intelligent union organizers but feels obliged to denigrate them in conversation.

One of the kinds of alien animals has "...faceless heads..." (ibid.)

Which would be more intimidating? An ugly, frightening face or a faceless head?

That is all for this breakfast time. I will visit Ketlan for lunch and we will watch an episode of American Gods.

Alien Animals II

See here.

By a process of elimination and by some positive inferences, Nicholas van Rijn deduces that the helmet beasts insert their cilia into the gorilloids' sphincters and that the two organisms thus linked form a single intelligence. These beings hid in their own zoo by separating into their two symbiotes. One positive clue was cabins with bunks for both: niches for gorilloids and cubbyholes for helmets.

In true future history style, these beings are appropriately referred to centuries later when Dominic Flandry encounters tripartite symbiotes. Flandry does not at this point refer to Nicholas van Rijn but does reveal that the planet of the Togru-Kon-Tanakh, the bipartite beings, is called Vanrijn! - which we had not known before.

Today has been taken up with a Catholic funeral and its aftermath. One friend of the deceased attended wearing his Jewish skullcap. I will shortly return to the same Community Center to meet two other sf fans and expect some of the family from the funeral still to be present. The deceased had had 13 children, 35 grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren.

A next project for this blog might be to reread and post about The Man Who Counts. I will also be reading for the first time the second Modesty Blaise novel, to be discussed on Comics Appreciation. Life continues to be a blast.

Emotional Parasites

In Smallville: Rush, a Kryptonian parasite gives human beings a "rush" in order to feed off their adrenaline and this recalls a telepathic emotional parasite in which Dominic Flandry novel?

There is another parallel. The Kryptonian parasites are from a planet whose inhabitants have superior physical powers whereas the "lucks" in the Flandry novel are from the planet Chereion whose inhabitants have superior mental powers. Also, Siegel's and Shuster's first conceptualization of Superman was as a mentally powerful villain, not a physically powerful hero.

I find more parallels as I post about them. The alien menagerie in the van Rijn story, "Hiding Place," recalls the extraterrestrial zoo in Superman's Fortress of Solitude. Superman was originally an sf character but became the first superhero. Poul Anderson's Jack Havig is a superhero with the power of time travel which enables him to win fights by doubling back through time and appearing beside himself several times simultaneously.

Again Alien Animals

(Is that Jeri Kofoed standing on the elephantoid's left horn - even though the elephantoid in the story does not have horns?)

"Hiding Place."

See also:

The Zoo Ship and its links;
Aliens in Anderson and Niven.
Eliminations
Brains

Van Rijn hypothesizes that the aliens might have brains in their bellies and Torrance murmurs that some people do before presenting the standard argument for minimum distance between brain and principal sense organs at the top of the body.

Larry Niven did us all a favor by arguing that the brain can be better protected at the center of the body and that an eye at the top of each of two long necks/throats would provide adjustable binocular vision but even his Puppeteers can be described by comparing them to Terrestrial organisms. I expect that extraterrestrial organisms do exist and that they look like nothing on Earth.