Cherryh's 'Morgaine' Series - science fiction or not? [spoilers, sort of]
GSV Three Minds in a Can
the way through re-reading it, and still not convinced there's anything
'science fictional' about it.
Yes, we have matter transfer gates and laser (?) weapons (well, one) and
spaceships mentioned in the prologue, and nominal aliens (Qual) and real
aliens (in _Fires of Azeroth_).
However the whole thing still reads like Sword & Sorcery to me. The Qual
are just a subspecies of human (they can interbreed and the offspring
are fertile .. that, iirc, is the approved definition of species). None
of the alleged technology is on-screen. The technology we do see is
stuck in the medieval period (and has been for thousands of years,
apparently). We have crossbows, chain mail, and steel(?) swords, shod
horses (ergo blacksmiths) but nobody invented steam engine, much less IC
engines, firearms, electricity, or nuclear power. And this despite the
history/rumour/examples of old technology.
All we ever see are villages/castles .. no towns or cities. No
explanation for why culture has a) regressed and b) got stuck there.
Heck, to the best of my knowledge we never even see a wheeled vehicle,
despite having some great roads.
The whole concept of 'lets send out 100 brave folks to seal the gates'
is pretty un-scientific in the first place. Heck, if we can build gates
and starships and laser hand weapons, let's send =as many as are needed=
(plus 50%), (since it seems to be a matter of life & death), or let's
send a self replicating vN machine.
As for gate technology - it's claimed that the key details necessary to
build one are written on Changeling's blade (readable without an
electron microscope too, one assumes). Right, gates just went from
'technology' to 'magic' in one swift move, unless that's one heck of a
big sword, or unless the starting point is a whole lot different from
the technology we see in the worlds we visit in the first three books.
feel free to explain to me why anyone would shelf this with 'Cyteen',
rather than _Fortress ..._ or _Ealdwood_. 8>.
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Outgoing Msgs are Turing Tested,and indistinguishable from human typing.
Michael S. Schiffer
news:0$TaNkHNAll$EA...@from.is.invalid:
>...
> The whole concept of 'lets send out 100 brave folks to seal the
> gates' is pretty un-scientific in the first place. Heck, if we
> can build gates and starships and laser hand weapons, let's send
> =as many as are needed= (plus 50%), (since it seems to be a
> matter of life & death), or let's send a self replicating vN
> machine.
From other books we know something about Union, the culture that
sent the expedition. They don't have Von Neumann machines. On the
other hand, they probably could have sent a larger number of azi.
How many is the right number, though? They may have had a
guesstimate for the size of the gate network, but unless the gate
they found had a complete system map it's always possible that they
underestimated the size of the job.
Appropriate tape for a suicide mission for azi cut off from Union
and in unforeseeable conditions isn't trivial to create error-free,
either, as _40,000 in Gehenna_ demonstrated in another context.
This might not be an ideal job for azi, period. The people in
charge of the gate discovery and response probably didn't want to
make the gates public knowledge (on the theory that once everyone
in Union-- and shortly thereafter, Alliance and Earth-- knew about
the gates, *someone* would start working on duplicating them). 100
may have been the maximum number of volunteer CITs they could
actually get together out of people with need-to-know.
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
msch...@condor.depaul.edu
Pardoz
<G...@quik.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> Thought it might be worth breaking out into a new thread .. I'm 3/4 of
> the way through re-reading it, and still not convinced there's anything
> 'science fictional' about it.
The breakdown is simple - the Morgaine books are Cherryh's crossover
series, liked both by those who love her SF but not her fantasy and by those
whose tastes run the other way. Those poor deluded souls who think her SF is
wonderful but her fantasy sucks enjoy the books, thus they classify the
Morgaine novels with her SF. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers who
can't stand her SF but enjoy her fantasy classify them, correctly, as
fantasy. Clear now?
--
Kill the Shrub to reply.
Jon Meltzer
news:0$TaNkHNAll$EA...@from.is.invalid...
> However the whole thing still reads like Sword & Sorcery to me. The Qual
> are just a subspecies of human (they can interbreed and the offspring
> are fertile .. that, iirc, is the approved definition of species). None
> of the alleged technology is on-screen.
Well, we see the whole thing through Vanye's eyes; and he's a medieval
period guy. All of Morgaine's tech is magic to him.
> The technology we do see is
> stuck in the medieval period (and has been for thousands of years,
> apparently).
Yeah, I also don't get this. The medieval stuff worked for book 1, but are
we expected to believe that the Gates only lead to medieval worlds?
Michael S. Schiffer
news:Xns941CBC84...@130.133.1.4:
> "Jon Meltzer" <jonOSPA...@mindspring.com> wrote in
> news:JWClb.12820$W16....@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net:
>...
>> Yeah, I also don't get this. The medieval stuff worked for book
>> 1, but are we expected to believe that the Gates only lead to
>> medieval worlds?
> Maybe the high-tech Gate worlds decided they didn't want so many
> immigrants and refugees and asylum seekers from low-tech Gate
> worlds and sealed their Gates themselves?
Or they heard that there was a monomaniac with a tuned singularity
(disguised as a sword for tax purposes) running around the gate
network and disrupting it, and told their gate firewall software not
to accept any transmissions from the affected subnets till the
problem was known to be solved.
GSV Three Minds in a Can
the wonderful person Pardoz <par...@io.georgewbush.com.invalid> said
Nope .. I personally like her ScF, I like _Ealdwood_, 'quite like'
Morgaine, think 'Fortress(es)' is/are suspiciously close to EFP, and
entirely dislike _Rusalka_ (et al). So for me it fell down the crack
between her ScF and her best (IMO) _Ealdwood_ fantasy.
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
r.r...@thevine.net
<jonOSPA...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> The technology we do see is
>> stuck in the medieval period (and has been for thousands of years,
>> apparently).
>
>Yeah, I also don't get this. The medieval stuff worked for book 1, but are
>we expected to believe that the Gates only lead to medieval worlds?
>
Well, it's possible.
1. We deal mainly with the humans on the planets. It's quite
possible that the qual deliberately kept human tech levels low.
2. Most of the qual seem to have lost the ability to understand the
Gates, most likely as a result of the Gate paradox cataclysm. If most
of their society was centered around Gate-tech, this could result in
some severe regression.
3. An off-shoot of 2. It's possible that the more technical the
society was, the more it was affected by the cataclysm. So, we'd be
left with high-tech worlds where all civilization was destroyed, and
low-tech worlds where it survived in some form.
All idle speculation on my part.
As to the series being ScF or not... it's complicated. If you asked
me to classify it, I'd put it in ScF, with the caveat that there is a
distinct fantasy feel to it. If, however, a stranger walked up to me,
said he liked ScF, and asked me to recommend a Cherryh book, this
isn't the first one that I would recommend, because of the fantasy
feel.
Rebecca
Adam Canning
says...
> GSV Three Minds in a Can <G...@quik.clara.co.uk> wrote in
> news:0$TaNkHNAll$EA...@from.is.invalid:
> > As for gate technology - it's claimed that the key details necessary
> > to build one are written on Changeling's blade (readable without an
> > electron microscope too, one assumes). Right, gates just went from
> > 'technology' to 'magic' in one swift move, unless that's one heck of a
> > big sword, or unless the starting point is a whole lot different from
>
> Or one heck of a tiny font.
>
> > the technology we see in the worlds we visit in the first three books.
>
> Or unless the instructions are basically "there are gate Seeds* stored
> in the handle, here's how you take the handle apart."
Or being a large transparant object it has an interactive holographic
display built in.
--
Adam
Damien Sullivan
>Yes, we have matter transfer gates and laser (?) weapons (well, one) and
>spaceships mentioned in the prologue, and nominal aliens (Qual) and real
>aliens (in _Fires of Azeroth_).
Qhal, not Qual. How seriously can I take a review which can't spell the name
right while the author is reading the books?
On the other hand, what real aliens? Everyone I remember in _Fires_ was qhal,
though of different social castes. Now, _Exile's Gate_ has someone alleged to
be more alien than the qhal, though in what looks like a qhal body. But who
knows.
Morgaine also has a healing spray, if I recall correctly. Certainly a
high-tech medikit.
The "matter transfer" gates are of course more than that. They play with time
as well as space, which is after all the whole problem.
It's more than spaceships mentioned in the prologue. _Union_ is mentioned,
which means the whole thing is happening in Cherryh's core science fiction
universe.
>However the whole thing still reads like Sword & Sorcery to me. The Qual
I think that was kind of the point. It's a veneer of S&S but with tech
underpinnings. What's lovely about it is how it makes more sense than most
similar fantasy. Changeling is a Stormbringer -- a treacherously dangerous
runed broadsword -- which makes sense. Yes, we wonder how much information
can fit in the runes, but they're not arbitrary magic runes, but deadly
information. The standard Dark Lord's evil twisted creatures turn out to be
alien animals Hjemur has been sucking in randomly. *That* was a deft touch.
>are fertile .. that, iirc, is the approved definition of species). None
>of the alleged technology is on-screen. The technology we do see is
>stuck in the medieval period (and has been for thousands of years,
The qhal in later books do have Gate technology, at least. The arrhendin know
what they're doing, for example.
>All we ever see are villages/castles .. no towns or cities. No
>explanation for why culture has a) regressed and b) got stuck there.
a) Did you read the prologue? There was a huge cataclysm rending qhal
society. Details are unspecified, but when you're talking about rifts in
causality that's probably just as well.
b) Progress doesn't happen magically. People have to work on it. Populations
seem to be small, which puts a big crimp on progress under the best of
conditions. It's possible they have strong fatalist/defeatist mentalities, as
a result of the cataclysm, which would hamper progress. The qhal seem like
they were decadent already anyway, perhaps relying on human slaves, certainly
not doing much work themselves. For their part, the humans we see associate
tech with soul-stealing qhal magic. This might have been encouraged by the
qhal before the cataclysm. The ruling qhal of Azeroth seem pretty
conservative -- they've found a stable point and don't to rock it. And I
think larger human societies beyond the guarded forests are mentioned, but
never seen -- who knows what they're like.
Also, the first two worlds we see have suffered further problems of their own.
The peoples of Ivrel lost a good part of their rulers and population and
suffered further depradations in the century before we meet Vanye. The
missing population went on to disrupt Shiuan, which seemed to be having major
geological problems of its own anyway.
Also, the worlds we see seem to advance socially if not technologically. At
least on the qhal side -- we go from one body stealer to a caste of half-qhal
to a healthy qhal-human symbiosis to a qhal-dominant ruled by Someone in the
end.
Also, if you pull the high-tech rug from beneath a high-tech society, I think
achieving medieval level is doing pretty well. It's not as if transistors and
LEDs degrade naturally to windmills and candles. Maybe the qhal never had an
SCA.
>Heck, to the best of my knowledge we never even see a wheeled vehicle,
>despite having some great roads.
That would be odd, if true. Although it's not as if we ever see a lot of what
passes for the productive parts of the societies.
>The whole concept of 'lets send out 100 brave folks to seal the gates'
>is pretty un-scientific in the first place. Heck, if we can build gates
>and starships and laser hand weapons, let's send =as many as are needed=
>(plus 50%), (since it seems to be a matter of life & death), or let's
>send a self replicating vN machine.
As someone said, Union doesn't have vN machines. Or, actually, it does --
they're called "people". Morgaine's companions might not have been 1st
generation themselves, and she's not. As also noted, finding volunteers for a
one-way mission might be hard, and it's not something you can use draftees
for.
>feel free to explain to me why anyone would shelf this with 'Cyteen',
>rather than _Fortress ..._ or _Ealdwood_. 8>.
Because it's based on the exploration of the consequences of a science
fictional concept. Most people would call a book where ubiquitous nanotech
allowed magic-spell like effects to be science fiction. Hell, virtual reality
or cyberspace -- in "True Names" the Other Plane was explicitly designed to
seem magical. Why not call it fantasy?
Pern and the Pliocene Saga get called SF more often than not, although I'm
sure there's disagreement, and they're both at least as abusive as the
Morgaine Saga.
-xx- Damien X-)
r.r...@thevine.net
(Damien Sullivan) wrote:
>GSV Three Minds in a Can <G...@quik.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>Yes, we have matter transfer gates and laser (?) weapons (well, one) and
>>spaceships mentioned in the prologue, and nominal aliens (Qual) and real
>>aliens (in _Fires of Azeroth_).
>
>Qhal, not Qual. How seriously can I take a review which can't spell the name
>right while the author is reading the books?
The name is not spelled consistently through the books. Qujal for the
first two books, and qhal for the last two. "Qual" is a much more
common English construction that would sound the same. Linguistic
drift, I presume.
>
>On the other hand, what real aliens? Everyone I remember in _Fires_ was qhal,
>though of different social castes. Now, _Exile's Gate_ has someone alleged to
>be more alien than the qhal, though in what looks like a qhal body. But who
>knows.
>
Then you are apparently forgetting the harilim, the strange dark
beings of the woods.
>Morgaine also has a healing spray, if I recall correctly. Certainly a
>high-tech medikit.
>
>The "matter transfer" gates are of course more than that. They play with time
>as well as space, which is after all the whole problem.
>
>It's more than spaceships mentioned in the prologue. _Union_ is mentioned,
>which means the whole thing is happening in Cherryh's core science fiction
>universe.
>
However, it's a throw-away line, and the Morgaine books were published
before the Union books were. So it's not at all sure that the Union
mentioned in that bit is the same as what eventually became the Union
that was published. Look at the changes from "Threads of Time" to the
Morgaine books, and you will see that author's view of their universe
grows and changes, sometimes radically.
In other words, I am not sure that Cherryh's Union universe existed at
the time that she wrote the Morgaine books, and, if it did exist, I do
not know if it existed in the incarnation that we see in the
Union/Alliance books. There doesn't really seem to be much overlap
between the Morgain books and the Union books.
>
>>Heck, to the best of my knowledge we never even see a wheeled vehicle,
>>despite having some great roads.
>
>That would be odd, if true. Although it's not as if we ever see a lot of what
>passes for the productive parts of the societies.
>
I believe that wheel ruts are mentioned in _Fires_. It's what leads
Morgaine and Vanye to the human village.
And we really must keep in mind that qhal didn't build the Gates, and
humans haven't built them. These are definitely ancient tech, and
thus not necessarily easily understood. Having them suddenly go
unstable could have serious consequences for a society that knows how
to use them, but not how to build or repair them.
Rebecca
Ken Vale
>r.r...@thevine.net wrote in news:3f9b1aa9...@news.thevine.net:
>
>
>
>>On Sat, 25 Oct 2003 22:10:34 +0000 (UTC), pho...@ugcs.caltech.edu
>>(Damien Sullivan) wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>GSV Three Minds in a Can <G...@quik.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Yes, we have matter transfer gates and laser (?) weapons (well, one)
>>>>and spaceships mentioned in the prologue, and nominal aliens (Qual)
>>>>and real aliens (in _Fires of Azeroth_).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Qhal, not Qual. How seriously can I take a review which can't spell
>>>the name right while the author is reading the books?
>>>
>>>
>>The name is not spelled consistently through the books. Qujal for the
>>first two books, and qhal for the last two. "Qual" is a much more
>>
>>
>
>More like qujal for the 1st, khal for the 2nd, khal and qhal for the 3rd,
>and qhal for the 4th.
>
It depends on who is talking in the books and the language they are
speaking, since the book is written in English (not whatever languages
of the authors imagination) it is an attempt by the author to add a bit
of linguistic/cultural flavour to the books. Vanye and his brother call
them "qujal" in the language of Andur-Kursh in the first book; also in
the first book in the Union prolog they are called "qhal". In the second
book we see from one of Vanye's conversation with Jhirun that the
language she speaks is a decendent dialect of Andur-Kursh so as part of
the language drift it shifted to "khal" though an argument could be made
that it is a dirivitive of the mixing of the andur-Kursh language and
the Qhal language spoken by the halflings (qhal-human half-breeds). In
the last two books Vanye has switched to speaking in the Qhal language,
so my guess would be that this is the correct spelling.
Ken
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Damien Sullivan <pho...@ugcs.caltech.edu> said
>GSV Three Minds in a Can <G...@quik.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>Yes, we have matter transfer gates and laser (?) weapons (well, one) and
>>spaceships mentioned in the prologue, and nominal aliens (Qual) and real
>>aliens (in _Fires of Azeroth_).
>
>Qhal, not Qual. How seriously can I take a review which can't spell the name
>right while the author is reading the books?
It was rather late at night when I typed, but yeah, me bad. I don't
think I ever claimed it was a review though, so please don't confuse me
with a reviewer. You'll also have noted that the spelling varies
enormously through space and time, so maybe I'm using the local variant.
8>.
>On the other hand, what real aliens? Everyone I remember in _Fires_ was qhal,
>though of different social castes. Now, _Exile's Gate_ has someone alleged to
>be more alien than the qhal, though in what looks like a qhal body. But who
>knows.
You missed the Harilim in _Fires_ then, and although we never get a
close look it appears they are native life forms.
>
>Morgaine also has a healing spray, if I recall correctly. Certainly a
>high-tech medikit.
>
>The "matter transfer" gates are of course more than that. They play with time
>as well as space, which is after all the whole problem.
>
>It's more than spaceships mentioned in the prologue. _Union_ is mentioned,
>which means the whole thing is happening in Cherryh's core science fiction
>universe.
Not necessarily, since afaik that universe didn't even exist then (i.e.
she hadn't started writing it, or at least I don't believe any was
published, when she wrote _Gate_). There can be a whole lot of things
called 'Union'., all completely unrelated.
<snip>
>>All we ever see are villages/castles .. no towns or cities. No
>>explanation for why culture has a) regressed and b) got stuck there.
>
>a) Did you read the prologue?
Yep, sure did. In every volume so far.
>b) Progress doesn't happen magically. People have to work on it. Populations
>seem to be small,
Yep, but no explanation of why.
<snip>
>>The whole concept of 'lets send out 100 brave folks to seal the gates'
>>is pretty un-scientific in the first place. Heck, if we can build gates
>>and starships and laser hand weapons, let's send =as many as are needed=
>>(plus 50%), (since it seems to be a matter of life & death), or let's
>>send a self replicating vN machine.
>
>As someone said, Union doesn't have vN machines. Or, actually, it does --
>they're called "people".
Actually they're call 'AZI', if you want to insist this is the same
'Union' as the Alliance/Union universe. And there's no trouble at all
turning out 40k of them, all programmed to storm and shutdown gates.
>>feel free to explain to me why anyone would shelf this with 'Cyteen',
>>rather than _Fortress ..._ or _Ealdwood_. 8>.
>
>Because it's based on the exploration of the consequences of a science
>fictional concept.
I'm not convinced (still) that the Gates and Gate technology are
'science fictional' any more than they are 'fantastical'. <Morgaine> may
know enough of the rules and working to understand it as science, but
from the viewpoint of the reader it is magic - unpredictable. It's still
not clear to me whether there is even any point turning a gate off,
given that it once existed presumably you can still gate back into the
past through it (when it 'was open') and screw up causality again ..
those are the sort of 'minor technical details' that I'd expect to have
available in ScF, rather than fantasy (actually I'd probably expect them
in fantasy too .. "why can't we just hammer the One Ring flat
Gandalf"?!)
>Pern and the Pliocene Saga get called SF more often than not, although I'm
>sure there's disagreement, and they're both at least as abusive as the
>Morgaine Saga.
I have then both shelved as 'Science fantasy' too (not much obvious
science involved in either of them).
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Ken Vale
>> On the other hand, what real aliens? Everyone I remember in _Fires_
>> was qhal,
>> though of different social castes. Now, _Exile's Gate_ has someone
>> alleged to
>> be more alien than the qhal, though in what looks like a qhal body.
>> But who
>> knows.
>
>
> You missed the Harilim in _Fires_ then, and although we never get a
> close look it appears they are native life forms.
Not really, Morgaine calls them "Haril" and says "Only once have I
seen the like." Which to me implies that they exist on at least one
other world.
>>> feel free to explain to me why anyone would shelf this with 'Cyteen',
>>> rather than _Fortress ..._ or _Ealdwood_. 8>.
>>
>>
>> Because it's based on the exploration of the consequences of a science
>> fictional concept.
>
>
> I'm not convinced (still) that the Gates and Gate technology are
> 'science fictional' any more than they are 'fantastical'. <Morgaine>
> may know enough of the rules and working to understand it as science,
> but from the viewpoint of the reader it is magic - unpredictable. It's
> still not clear to me whether there is even any point turning a gate
> off, given that it once existed presumably you can still gate back
> into the past through it (when it 'was open') and screw up causality
> again .. those are the sort of 'minor technical details' that I'd
> expect to have available in ScF, rather than fantasy (actually I'd
> probably expect them in fantasy too .. "why can't we just hammer the
> One Ring flat Gandalf"?!)
Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,
Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
This novel serries is at the point where when we look at it we can't be
sure one way or the other. However, I would suggest that for a more
accurate answer you could just ask the author (would the author not have
a say if the book is sold as Science Fiction or Fantasy...).
Ken
GSV Three Minds in a Can
r.r...@thevine.net said
<snip>
>And we really must keep in mind that qhal didn't build the Gates, and
>humans haven't built them. These are definitely ancient tech, and
>thus not necessarily easily understood. Having them suddenly go
>unstable could have serious consequences for a society that knows how
>to use them, but not how to build or repair them.
Actually it's stated somewhere that the Qhal/Quhal/Qual (whatever) =did=
build them, they just didn't =invent= them. There is a statement
somewhere (probably in one of the prologues) to the effect that they
travelled somewhere by spaceship, and then set up a gate(s). Changeling
also (though I find it hard to believe) contains the necessary info
(written on the blade) to build one.
It isn't clear whether humans ever built them .. I get the impression
'not'.
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
r.r...@thevine.net
<G...@quik.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>It's still
>not clear to me whether there is even any point turning a gate off,
>given that it once existed presumably you can still gate back into the
>past through it (when it 'was open') and screw up causality again ..
>those are the sort of 'minor technical details' that I'd expect to have
>available in ScF, rather than fantasy (actually I'd probably expect them
>in fantasy too .. "why can't we just hammer the One Ring flat
>Gandalf"?!)
Morgaine lives in fear of someone doing just that. That's why her
goal is to go close _all_ of them, because once she's done that, then
things will be safe. I think... that does assume that a new race
can't find one on their planet and figure out how to turn it back on.
Rebecca
r.r...@thevine.net
wrote:
>Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,
>Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
>
>This novel serries is at the point where when we look at it we can't be
>sure one way or the other. However, I would suggest that for a more
>accurate answer you could just ask the author (would the author not have
>a say if the book is sold as Science Fiction or Fantasy...).
>Ken
And the closest we can get to that is in the intro to "Threads of
Time", in _Visible Light_:
"Your first book was about timetravel."
"_Gate of Ivrel_".
"It was like a fantasy."
"Or science fiction -- depends on whose viewpoint you take. I wander
over that dividing line now and again. ..."
Rebecca
Michael S. Schiffer
news:7grpK2Eh76m$EA...@from.is.invalid:
> Bitstring <bnescq$1rb$1...@naig.caltech.edu>, from the wonderful
> person Damien Sullivan <pho...@ugcs.caltech.edu> said
>...
>>As someone said, Union doesn't have vN machines. Or, actually,
>>it does -- they're called "people".
> Actually they're call 'AZI', if you want to insist this is the
> same 'Union' as the Alliance/Union universe. And there's no
> trouble at all turning out 40k of them, all programmed to storm
> and shutdown gates.
Because the fire-and-forget method worked out so well with Gehenna.
:-) (To some extent it did, but only because the military's goal
was to create complexities for Alliance to deal with. If your goal
is chaos, it's not that hard to achieve.)
IIRC, that was also done by the military without the knowledge of
most of Reseune (let alone the Union Science Bureau), which Ari I
allowed to go through for her own purposes. The same reasons that
Reseune and the Science Bureau wouldn't normally permit a Gehenna
would probably have applied to using such a plan for gate-closing.
A point made repeatedly in _Cyteen_ is that tape doesn't make for a
lot of flexibility of thought compared to CITs, even for top-level
azi. Sending azi (without tape-making facilities, and with a
strong possibility that all the qualified supervisors along might
die off) to be cut off from all contact with Union is an
interesting sociogenesis project, but it's not portrayed as a good
way to achieve a specific outcome.
Damien Sullivan
>Bitstring <bnescq$1rb$1...@naig.caltech.edu>, from the wonderful person
>Damien Sullivan <pho...@ugcs.caltech.edu> said
>>GSV Three Minds in a Can <G...@quik.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>with a reviewer. You'll also have noted that the spelling varies
>enormously through space and time, so maybe I'm using the local variant.
That's been pointed out. I re-read the books somewhat recently, but I
apparently don't remember everything myself. I'd forgotten they shift around.
But someone used the 4th books spelling as evidence (Vanye's speaking qhalish
(qhalin?) by then and that should be definitive. It's also the spelling used
in the prologue up front; the fact that Andur-Kursh uses qujal can thus be
immediately blamed on linguistic drift.
>You missed the Harilim in _Fires_ then, and although we never get a
Ooh, I did forget about those.
>close look it appears they are native life forms.
And it doesn't matter if Morgaine has seen them before and they're not native;
they're still apparently intelligent and a lot different than humans/qhal.
Even if they're some Earth primate species dumped into the past and evolved
upward so that they're not 100% alien they're still not human.
>Not necessarily, since afaik that universe didn't even exist then (i.e.
>she hadn't started writing it, or at least I don't believe any was
I didn't know that. On the other hand, Union ScienceBureau seems diagnostic.
Certainly the intention of an SF setting was free. "Advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic" at two levels here, actually: qhal to Union (or
to the readers; Changeling proves the strike team at least learned to
use Gate tech) and any technology to the benighted humans.
>>b) Progress doesn't happen magically. People have to work on it.
>>Populations seem to be small,
>
>Yep, but no explanation of why.
They could have been small to begin with (Stargate SG-1 syndrome; populations
gather around Gates). Or they fall because of the cataclysm and then have low
tech to deal with a hostile world. Given they have medieval tech the
population growth rate isn't that high. And, in the case of Andur-Kursh we
get the idea humans have in fact spread; Vanye urges Morgaine to go south,
away from those who know of her. But IIRC those sounded like wandering tribes
or something.
At any rate, I still think that while lack of progress over really large time
scales is indeed characteristic of fantasy, it's not clear the Morgain time
scales have been so long. Most of our history was spent going from primitive
to slightly-less-primitive, and it's not clear the Morgaine humans really do
have much advantage of "knowing it can be done" -- primitive humans kept in
fear of the qhal -- and have other disadvantages.
>Actually they're call 'AZI', if you want to insist this is the same
>'Union' as the Alliance/Union universe. And there's no trouble at all
>turning out 40k of them, all programmed to storm and shutdown gates.
No, they're not very flexible or creative, and the Alphas who are are
delicate. This is CIT-work if anything is. Some azis could have been sent
out initially, but they'd be hard to reproduce.
>I'm not convinced (still) that the Gates and Gate technology are
>'science fictional' any more than they are 'fantastical'. <Morgaine> may
>know enough of the rules and working to understand it as science, but
>from the viewpoint of the reader it is magic - unpredictable. It's still
I'll grant it is magic tech, and the abilities of the Gates to move minds (!)
and heal bodies seems arbitrary or not entirely related to the basic Gateness.
Moving minds is even worse -- moving souls around? Hammering the brain into
different forms? Enk.
>not clear to me whether there is even any point turning a gate off,
>given that it once existed presumably you can still gate back into the
>past through it (when it 'was open') and screw up causality again ..
It's why she wants to get them all. But the whole thing is a desperate
venture, I think. The best idea Union could come up with, and once the strike
team had closed the initial gates, the last one it could use. The hope is
that all the gates can be closed before someone backtimes again, and at least
they do have the strong hope that the qhal aren't casually backtiming, due
exactly to fears of cataclysms. They seem to know the qhal *didn't* use the
Gates to mess with causality... until one of them did.
One last thing I'd like to note: part of the feeling of fantasy seems to come
from the low tech and small populations, which I abstract as feelings of
claustrophobia and helplessness. But that's characteristic of almost all
Cherryh, fantasy or SF. Degrees vary, but individuals or small populations
huddling in the (possibly metaphorical) dark characterizes the population of
Gehenna, the later Alliance bases on Gehenna, Cherryh space stations
everywhere, Ari II's childhood, Serpent's Reach (not so small in population,
but still with a strong feeling of "at the mercy of stronger and uncaring
powers"), etc. Fear and ignorance characterizes Cherryh characters in much
the same way that it doesn't characterize a Culture vessel. The Chanur books
are a bit of an exception, in that the Hani can at least run around a lot at
will. And among fantasy Tristen is an exception (not fearful, if ignorant),
though none of the alleged towns show up on a map, which is just forest and
political boundaries...
-xx- Damien X-)
r.r...@thevine.net
(Damien Sullivan) wrote:
>GSV Three Minds in a Can <G...@quik.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>>Bitstring <bnescq$1rb$1...@naig.caltech.edu>, from the wonderful person
>>Damien Sullivan <pho...@ugcs.caltech.edu> said
>>>GSV Three Minds in a Can <G...@quik.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>with a reviewer. You'll also have noted that the spelling varies
>>enormously through space and time, so maybe I'm using the local variant.
>
>That's been pointed out. I re-read the books somewhat recently, but I
>apparently don't remember everything myself. I'd forgotten they shift around.
>
>But someone used the 4th books spelling as evidence (Vanye's speaking qhalish
>(qhalin?) by then and that should be definitive. It's also the spelling used
>in the prologue up front; the fact that Andur-Kursh uses qujal can thus be
>immediately blamed on linguistic drift.
>
While Vanye may speak qhalin, that doesn't necessarily mean that qhal
is the correct spelling. For example, I have seen at least three
versions of "Qadhafi" (with a kh, a q, and occasionally with a g),
because the proper way of spelling it is in Arabic. Any
representation of it in the Roman alphabet is an attempt to reproduce
sounds, and depends entirely on the ear of the person doing the
writing. Eventually you get a consensus that this/these particular
combination of letters is meant to represent this person's name, but
that isn't the same as saying it's a definitive spelling. We know
that Vanye speaks qhalin, we don't know if he writes it.
>>You missed the Harilim in _Fires_ then, and although we never get a
>
>Ooh, I did forget about those.
>
>>close look it appears they are native life forms.
>
>And it doesn't matter if Morgaine has seen them before and they're not native;
>they're still apparently intelligent and a lot different than humans/qhal.
>
>Even if they're some Earth primate species dumped into the past and evolved
>upward so that they're not 100% alien they're still not human.
>
They're definitely alien. Their joints work wrong, with knees that
bend backwards if I recall correctly.
Rebecca
how...@brazee.net
On 26-Oct-2003, r.r...@thevine.net wrote:
> While Vanye may speak qhalin, that doesn't necessarily mean that qhal
> is the correct spelling. For example, I have seen at least three
> versions of "Qadhafi" (with a kh, a q, and occasionally with a g),
> because the proper way of spelling it is in Arabic. Any
> representation of it in the Roman alphabet is an attempt to reproduce
> sounds, and depends entirely on the ear of the person doing the
> writing. Eventually you get a consensus that this/these particular
> combination of letters is meant to represent this person's name, but
> that isn't the same as saying it's a definitive spelling. We know
> that Vanye speaks qhalin, we don't know if he writes it.
Anybody know why the Western spelling of Chinese places changed? A lot of
these make even less sense than the old ways. Why didn't they go phonetic?
Ken Vale
r.r...@thevine.net wrote:
Actually he does read qhalin, it is one of the thing Morgaine
teaches him (read/write/speak Qhal, Use/Destroy Gates). At one point in
the 3rd book he reads a map written in Qhal that Morgaine has made.
Ken
Michael S. Schiffer
And even more questionably, that no one in all of spacetime will
invent them independently. The fact that none of those gates
"currently" exist in human space doesn't much matter, since the
Gates allow changes to the past (that being why they're so
dangerous).
So Morgaine finishes her quest successfully, and "then" at some
point the Sharrh or the Hani or some undiscovered species in the
year 10,000,000 develops the theory and practice of spacetime
gates, and next thing you know Earth is a nature preserve and the
were-to-be-Union stars are all controlled by spacefaring calibans.
Though if Niven's Law of Time Travel (approximately "If time travel
and changing the past are possible in a universe, it will
eventually reach a stable state in which no time machines are
invented in that universe") is true, then maybe Morgaine can hope
that stamping out the Gates will allow something like the current
iteration of reality to be the persistent, time-travel-free one.
r.r...@thevine.net
wrote:
>
>
It's impossible for me to prove or disprove what Vanye reads.
However, the bits of qhalin that we know that he can read, such as the
map, may be more recognition than reading. For example, show me a map
of the US, and I can tell you what the states are without having them
labelled. Tell me that XCVieo = the sound "Texas", and I will be able
to confidently point to that on a map and tell you what it is, but
that's not the same as reading it. And when she shows him how to work
the Gates, it seems to be a lot of repetition, more than reading any
of the instructions. Do this until that green light comes on, then
flip the switch here. That sort of thing.
Then again, I'm not the person who got upset about using the spelling
qual. Given my druthers, I'd go with that or khal, because, to be
honest, I can't figure out how to pronounce qhal without having it
sound like qual.
Rebecca
Lawrence Watt-Evans
>Sayeth how...@brazee.net <how...@brazee.net>:
>>
>> Anybody know why the Western spelling of Chinese places changed? A lot of
>> these make even less sense than the old ways. Why didn't they go phonetic?
It _is_ phonetic, or close to it. Their sounds don't correspond to
our letters.
>You mean like Peking -> Beijing? It's an change of the
>transliteration system in an attempt to have a more consistent
>phonetic mapping.
>
>Since Chinese phonemes aren't the same as English phonemes, it's
>hard to have a consistent mapping. Plus, of course, there's tone.
And there's also the detail that the Wade-Giles system that was
standard for a hundred years or so was based on Cantonese
pronunciation, and the Pinyin system in use now is based on Mandarin.
Cantonese and Mandarin are different languages, not mutually
intelligible, that are written with the same characters -- since they
do have identical grammar, this works. A line of characters in
Chinese will say the same thing in Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese,
and a dozen other languages and dialects, while being pronounced very
differently in each of them.
Michael S. Schiffer
>...
> Then again, I'm not the person who got upset about using the
> spelling qual. Given my druthers, I'd go with that or khal,
> because, to be honest, I can't figure out how to pronounce qhal
> without having it sound like qual.
Interesting-- my problem is distinguishing it from "khal" (which I
pronounce as if it were "chal" with a German or Scottish "ch"-- a
throat-clearing variation on "h", more or less. :-) ). I've seen
"q" alone representing what appears to be a "k" sound from further
back in the throat in some languages (e.g., "Qatar"). So I go back
and forth between pronouncing "qhal" as "kal" or "chal", more or less
at random. Though not "qual"-- without a u, I wouldn't think to do
it that way. (Which isn't to say that Cherryh wouldn't-- for all I
know, "qual" is correct.)
Jim Battista
news:Xns942136BE...@130.133.1.4:
> sharkey <sha...@zoic.org> wrote in
> news:slrnbpp2do....@killjoy.zoic.org:
>
>> Sayeth how...@brazee.net <how...@brazee.net>:
>>>
>>> Anybody know why the Western spelling of Chinese places
>>> changed? A lot of these make even less sense than the old
>>> ways. Why didn't they go phonetic?
>>
>> You mean like Peking -> Beijing? It's an change of the
>> transliteration system in an attempt to have a more consistent
>> phonetic mapping.
>>
>> Since Chinese phonemes aren't the same as English phonemes, it's
>> hard to have a consistent mapping. Plus, of course, there's
>> tone.
>
> The version I heard is that Wade-Giles transliteration is phonetic
> for Cantonese and Pinyin transliteration is phonetic for Mandarin.
As near as I can tell, the Wade-Giles system was simply stoopid (or at
least so needlessly complex as to go round the corner into stoopid).
Tao was meant to be pronounced as dao, -- if you'd wanted to say tao,
you'd have written t'ao.
As near as I can tell googling around, we were always supposed to
pronounce the written Peking as bay-jing or bay-ging.
Some of the changes -- like Guangxhou(?) instead of Canton -- are I
think the equivalent of going from Cologne to Koln mixed with the shift
to pinyin transliteration.
--
Jim Battista
A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.
GSV Three Minds in a Can
wonderful person Michael S. Schiffer <msch...@condor.depaul.edu> said
My spelling checker certainly seems to think so .. Q apparently has to
be followed by U or the universe ends .. 8>.
--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Steve Coltrin
> My spelling checker certainly seems to think so .. Q apparently has to
> be followed by U or the universe ends .. 8>.
That may be the _real_ reason calamity befell the qhal.
--
Steve Coltrin spco...@omcl.org WWVBF?
"Whoever wrote it has a brain disorder, and should write more." - Ay Eye
how...@brazee.net
On 26-Oct-2003, sharkey <sha...@zoic.org> wrote:
> > Anybody know why the Western spelling of Chinese places changed? A
> > lot of
> > these make even less sense than the old ways. Why didn't they go
> > phonetic?
>
> You mean like Peking -> Beijing? It's an change of the
> transliteration system in an attempt to have a more consistent
> phonetic mapping.
>
> Since Chinese phonemes aren't the same as English phonemes, it's
> hard to have a consistent mapping. Plus, of course, there's tone.
Here's some of what I mean:
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0307/feature3/
Why do they spell something pronounced chin as qin? It's not as though
they have a long tradition of spelling it that way, someone familiar with
our alphabet decided to use it but change the phonetics. The advantage of
doing this is not obvious at all.
how...@brazee.net
On 27-Oct-2003, Omixochitl <Omixoch...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The version I heard is that Wade-Giles transliteration is phonetic for
> Cantonese and Pinyin transliteration is phonetic for Mandarin.
That makes sense. How do Cantonese and Mandarins pronounce Qin?
So the change in spelling is a political thing with the Mandarin speakers
expressing their dominance over the Cantonese speakers?
sharkey
>
> And there's also the detail that the Wade-Giles system that was
> standard for a hundred years or so was based on Cantonese
> pronunciation, and the Pinyin system in use now is based on Mandarin.
Aha! There's the explanation. I wondered how W-G managed to
be so totally crap at Mandarin.
When I was in Taipei a couple of years back, they had done a
great job of providing transliterated street signs and so on
all over the city. Unfortunately, they were part-way through
a program of updating all the street signs from W-G to Pinyin.
Thankfully, I had two maps :-)
-----sharks
r.r...@thevine.net
<msch...@condor.depaul.edu> wrote:
I decided to grab the graphic novel, because it has a pronunciation
guide. Here's what it says:
qhal = khal, with the kh being the German/Scottish ch
Qujal = kih-YAHL
Chya = Ch'Yah (all one syllable, just sneeze!) [Not my note... that's
what it says in the guide.]
Myya = m'YAH
Nhi = n'HEE
Reseune = re-ZUOON
And last but not least... ilin = EE-lin
All of which goes to convince me that Ms. Cherryh and I have very
different approaches to pronunciation. Everyone knows that it should
be Il-in (like illing, without the final g). Plus, my preferred
approach is to emphasize first syllables, and to pronounce the ys as
es. Which does make Chya come out like Chia, but that's the breaks.
Rebecca
Rebecca
Lawrence Watt-Evans
>Here's some of what I mean:
>http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0307/feature3/
>
>Why do they spell something pronounced chin as qin?
Why not? CH has no standard pronunciation -- consider "chamois,"
"chitin," etc. Q doesn't, either, but it's shorter.
Remember, they want a transliteration for _all_ languages using the
Latin alphabet, not just English.
And in fact, Chinese has two different phonemes that sound more or
less like "ch" to English-speakers, and sometimes it's important to
distinguish between them, so they use CH for one and Q for the other.
And the two "sh" sounds get SH and X. (X was usually HS in
Wade-Giles.)
Once you get used to the Q = ch, X = hs, and the use of -e for a
terminal schwa, it's really pretty straightforward, and far more
phonetically accurate than Wade-Giles.
They did drop W as part of diphthongs in favor of U, which I'm not
crazy about.
> It's not as though
>they have a long tradition of spelling it that way, someone familiar with
>our alphabet decided to use it but change the phonetics. The advantage of
>doing this is not obvious at all.
Pinyin is closer to how it's actually pronounced now; Wade-Giles was
based not merely on Cantonese, but on _19th-century_ Cantonese, and
after a century of ferocious upheaval and conquest, the language has
changed some. There's no phonetic spelling to impede drift, after
all.
Of course, if they really wanted to be accurate they'd need to find
some way to distinguish all the vowels that don't correspond to
anything in the Latin alphabet, and they haven't.