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You will be as disappointed as I am that just putting very interesting and amazing stuff in the surroundings of a story doesn’t always persuade characters to take advantage. Things you will not be seeing in the book, despite my earnest endeavors and a lot of research and backstory work: a mammoth hunt, harnessing caribou/reindeer for transportation of anything, Irish elk shaking those tremendous antlers, or the terrifying attack of a pack of dire wolves.
Sorry. Blame the characters, not me. They kept looking back at me saying “Are you CRAZY? I’M not going out there with that thing. Never seen anything like it; don’t know what it is or how fast it can go, but I can see it has TEETH. Big ones. And I don’t think this peashooter will deal with it.”
Yes, but…it would be exciting and interesting to see how you postmodern spacefaring characters deal with creatures of legend, I said, framing it as a great adventure within an adventure. I continued in that line for awhile, and pretty soon the whole cast were standing around me like actors around a director who had just suggested dousing them all in a mysterious liquid and then throwing matches to see if it would burn. Eyes rolled. Feet tapped. Their gazes went from incredulous to steely determination. Ky, my reliable lightning rod character, adventurer, and so on, said “No.” But– “No. How I deal with things like that is by not doing something stupid.” You’ve done stupid things before, I muttered. “Not that stupid. Enemies with space torpedoes, giant lasers, explosive mines, sure. Hand to hand in spacesuits, not the smartest thing I ever did, but it saved my people. These things: no. ” But it’s MY BOOK, I argued. “Fine. Get another cast. Get a cast of idiots. We. Are. Not. Doing. That.” Grace added the postscript. “It would be stupid, and we are not stupid people. You gave us brains; you can’t make us do stupid.” Then they all turned their backs on me.
I looked over at the reserves, the lovely creatures waiting their turn to hold center stage. The woolly mammoths shook their great heads at me, slowly, sadly, and lumbered around, letting their trunks draw lines in the snow as they trundled away. The Irish elk made an un-elklike sound of disgust, stamped a hoof down hard and stalked off looking incensed. The caribou snorted and then took off at their slightly humorous high stepping gait. The dire wolves ran out their tongues and grinned, all those teeth showing. Then the alpha raised a leg and marked the spot, and trotted off. They all did. The small things disappeared into the snow and the foxes (who had kept a careful distance from the dire wolves fled in the opposite direction. The bears weren’t there, but they were hibernating.
Another book, I thought. There would have to be another book. But these won’t be in it, because…well…they just won’t. As they disappeared into a convenient fall of snow (the writer has to have some excuse to quit fighting the inevitable) other ideas appeared.
Comment by Butterwaffle — October 21, 2015 @ 5:57 am
What about humods with bear arms? 🙂
Comment by elizabeth — October 21, 2015 @ 6:58 am
I’d have to think of a reason why someone made that particular modification…bear arms on a human would unbalance a human body, for instance. Most of the more visible humods have modifications intended for a specific use: sensory enhancements to extend their senses, an extra forearm and hand to increase the grasping ability to multiple tools or controls at once, a tentacle instead of a hand, ability to secrete useful compounds, specific modifications for environments most could not live in, etc. What would bear arms be good enough for that it’d be worthwhile to make humans who had them?
Have you read my story “Chameleons” in the anthology The New Space Opera 2? I put some interesting humods in that one. That story’s in the same universe (but distant from) the Vatta books.
Comment by Wickersham's Conscience — October 21, 2015 @ 9:11 am
Some years ago, I watched grizzly bears in Denali National Park eating eskimo potatoes, a long, thin root. The work was delicate, involving finding the roots by scent, digging, careful excavation of the root from the mat of vegetation, shaking the dirt of the root and then eating the root. It was astonishing to see the delicate work from those massive omnivores.
Documentation: https://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/please-bear-with-wc/
I mention this because we tend to assume bears don’t have delicate, manual (pawular?) dexterity. The assumption is false. Humans with bear arms might not be a sacrifice at all.
Of course, giving bears human arms would be wrong. We don’t want grizzlies to bear arms…
Comment by Jazzlet — October 21, 2015 @ 8:03 pm
…groan.
Caribou would have been fun. I can see not wanting to mess with a mammoth or an irish elk, they are big and dire wolves are terrifying, but caribou? Shame on you Ky!
Comment by elizabeth — October 21, 2015 @ 10:38 pm
Wickersham’s Conscience: You’re right that we often think of animals as clumsy and crude in fine-motor stuff when they’re not. My first horse could take a pear from which I’d cut a core–and then put into the core a crushes tablet of Bute mixed with honey–and then replace a plug of pear–in his mouth…mumble it around, extract the plug (which he tucked into his cheek with his tongue…suck out and then spit out the Bute-laden honey, and then eat the pear and the plug. All while giving me That Look.
He picked pears neatly out of a tree, and (since he liked the taste) engulfed a tree branch with his mouth and then “skinned” all the leaves off it without breaking the bark of the tree. With agile lips, he could move away those bits of greenery he didn’t want and get exactly the leaves of a specific grass he did want.
Comment by Butterwaffle — October 21, 2015 @ 11:11 pm
Heh, mostly I was playing on the “right to bear arms”:
http://6.media.bustedtees.cvcdn.com/f/-/bustedtees.08ccfa2f-d314-453a-89d4-7384be18.gif
But I do like the idea of ursine-inspired humods. Bears are great diggers and climbers (I once saw a cub run straight up a tree about as fast as I jog on flat ground near the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir) and have even been known to carry crates of ammunition in battle:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wojtek-the-bear-aileen-orr/1110929006?ean=9781841588452#productInfoTabs
. Hibernation is fascinating and might come in useful in terraforming – the same situation as in “Chameleons.” And bear strength would be useful in high gravity. One might wish for opposable thumbs. But if Ky has met humods with four arms (and I imagine a pun about forearms is lurking about), why not have a bear-like torso, some sturdy-but-longer-than-bear-legs, and a set of human arms for detail work?
Comment by Butterwaffle — October 22, 2015 @ 12:03 am
Thanks for the grizzly+eskimo potato pictures, Wickersham’s Conscience. You seem mighty close to the bear… or is it a nice telephoto lense?
Comment by elizabeth — October 22, 2015 @ 7:37 am
WC: Meant to compliment your pictures, not rattle on about my horse, but the roofer came. Fast exit. Anyway–the bear pictures are fascinating. I don’t find smelling something underground that odd, since around here armadillos smell beetle grubs underground and dig them out (making little conical holes exactly the right size for a human to catch their toe or heel in when walking in the dark.) But the ability to make a *small* hole with those taloned paws–that’s amazing.
Comment by Wickersham's Conscience — October 22, 2015 @ 2:31 pm
@Bufferwaffle: Big glass – a 700mm telephoto lens, from a bus window. The National Park Service doesn’t want people near bears, especially bears with cubs.
Comment by Daniel Glover — October 22, 2015 @ 3:24 pm
… nor buffalo or bison, but visitors to Yellowstone don’t always heed that message. Been charged by one (on the other side of a strong fence) while minding my own business. They can be ornery.
@Elizabeth: Sigh. You had done all that work with figuring out what terraforming might look like too.
Comment by Berry — October 22, 2015 @ 4:21 pm
Reminds me of Avon in Blake’s Seven:
Vila: Why don’t you go?
Avon: You are expendable.
Vila: And you’re not?
Avon: No, I am not. I am not expendable, I’m not stupid, and I’m not going.
Comment by Margaret — October 26, 2015 @ 12:35 am
@ Berry: I was thinking of that quote, but did not recall its origin. Thanks for the reminder.
Comment by Jonathan Schor — October 30, 2015 @ 11:31 am
In thinking about this, I am sure that the mammoth being hunted might have some objections – likewise was the bear or the harnessed caribou to have top billing. Their agents will have a few words to say.
Comment by Daniel Glover — October 30, 2015 @ 2:15 pm
Jonathan,
I’m wondering if they were going to get their time to shine in confrontation with the red shirts. But if the blue shirts complained no limelight for them.
Comment by Jonathan Schor — October 31, 2015 @ 6:08 am
I mean really – the attack of the dire wolves. In the end Ky will escape and the dire wolves go hungry. If I were a dire wolf I would rather go to a nice restaurant.
I realize that if the wolves eat well then the story might come to a rather abrupt end.
Happy Halloween Everyone.
Comment by Cindy — November 6, 2015 @ 7:19 pm
Ah well, even their refusal made for a fun story…