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| Kifish Biology; we never learned | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 9 2008, 08:44 PM (795 Views) | |
| Sandor | Mar 12 2008, 04:10 AM Post #16 |
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Hello, associates of mine. I was just browsing and ran across this topic. It did manage to produce some thoughts even at the late hour as I'm contemplating setting the alarm for 5 am (it's midnight DST): We do have some clues buried in the text: Skukkuk's food. They did reproduce while aboard the Pride, so there may be some clues in the language that CJC chose to describe this (whether the term mating was ever used, for instance). I did get the feeling that there were intentional parallels between their behavior and the kif. OK, now I can sleep :) - Sandor |
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| Chanor-ji | Mar 25 2008, 04:49 PM Post #17 |
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Kel Julian: I'm glad you started this topic. Like somebody said earlier, the kif are an example of the Goddess's ability to create aliens that are truly alien. The regul in the Faded Sun trilogy are another. A species with a childhood of indeterminate sex whose adult sex is determined (not consciously) by the sex of an immediate superior, and whose collective wisdom and response to external stimuli is aquired in adulthood and is fixed and unchangable. I'd dearly love to read more about the kif: their culture, their place of origin, their mating and gestation habits, pretty much everything. For example: why is it neccessary for the Dinner to be served alive? The kif apparently have few qualms about killing other kif; is this because they breed like rabbits and resources are few on their native planet so it's neccessary to thin the population, leaving only the fittest to reproduce? I'd also like to find out more about the knn, the tca and the chi. |
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| Kel Julian | Mar 25 2008, 05:04 PM Post #18 |
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Knnn
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One of the most interesting features of alien creation is concepts of right and wrong. Take Skukkuk. He reacts to dead meat as though he's being abused, because by his lights, he is. He reacts about how we'd react if someone offered us only live rats to eat. Some would kill them and force them down, others would simply be too sicked out and just go on a hunger strike. Niven's Man-Kzin Wars (a good deal for Niven, I think; he created the universe and gets to boss it around, other non-Elf Sternberg people do the work to keep it on the marketing radar) has an example. In one case the humans have a kzin (in case some aren't familiar, kzinti are a felinoid race like hani but much larger, and with marginally sentient females and unpredictably dangerous males, kind of like my high school graduating class) under restraint for interrogation. They subject the kzin to sensory deprivation: a blindfold, plugged ears, no way to smell, nothing to taste, etc. The being goes crazy. Now, this same kzin would be perfectly willing to disembowel and eat a human being--and doesn't reckon that an atrocity. Sensory deprivation, however, the kzin considers incredible torture. He'd rather have someone running hot needles through his flesh. |
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8:45 AM Jul 11