OFF: Solaris

[Eric Siegerman]

On Thu, Jan 09, 2003 at 04:24:14PM +0000, M Holmes wrote:
> My solution was to have a
> human protagonist who is a detective, be called in to solve a murder on
> the alien planet.

Ender Wiggin, in Orson Scott Card's "Speaker for the Dead".

> He'd be unable to understand the alien thinking, but
> would be able, in a Holmesian way, to work it out, and thus solve the
> murder.

Well if you wrote it, it would perforce be Holmesian :-)

> So what I need is some peculiar breeding cycle of some organism which
> could be logically extrapolated through similar reasoning into an
> emotion in a sentient being which would be peculiar to understand but
> which could be rationally arrived at by examining the life cyycle or
> evolutionary history of the organism.

Some possibilities:
 - Check out the title essay in Lewis Thomas's "The Medusa and the
   Snail".

 - There are insects, of course, but those have been rather done to
   death.  In this sort of way, though?  I don't know.

   Joe Haldeman brushed up against this in "The Forever War" -- I
   can't remember now whether the Taurans really are insects, but
   they certainly set priorities in a way I can imagine insects
   doing.

   So, for that matter, did Card in "Ender's Game".  (Poor Ender
   does keep getting himself written into these situations...)

 - How about parthenogenesis?  Relatedness would be binary --
   everyone else would be either your twin/clone (100% shared
   DNA), or completely unrelated (some smaller species-wide
   shared baseline, but no greater than the rest of your
   non-twins).  And thus, no gradations of loyalty.  The many
   biologically-based loyalties/conflicts we manage to find in
   family, clan, race, sex, etc., would be reduced to just one,
   but an even more powerful one than most humans ever know --
   you and your many twins vs. the rest of the species.  Like the
   Montague/Capulet feud on *serious* steroids.

   (Reasoning: It's been observed that our notions of family
   loyalty -- children, parents, siblings, and down through more
   distant relatives, clan, tribe -- correlate remarkably closely
   with amount of shared DNA -- children & parents 50%, siblings
   25% I think, grandchildren, aunts & uncles & cousins rather
   less, and so on.  A couple doesn't have greater-than-baseline
   shared DNA -- that incest-taboo thing :-) -- but your
   childrens' other parent has a greater genetic stake than
   anyone else in the kids' survival and future procreation, and
   so presumably rides on the coattails of the 50% of DNA you
   share with the kids...)

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        erics at telepres.com
|  |  /
Just Say No to the "faceless cannonfodder" stereotype.
        - http://www.ainurin.net/ (an Orc site)