By request, for those of you who find it difficult to parse the gothic-ish “S”es of the Miesti dialogue:
“Really, Yssala, I don’t like to see you treating them this way. Gentle waves, that is how to keep them content.”
“Sorry. The new ones aren’t as pliable.”
“But no less deserving of your solicitude, Yssala.”
“I apologize, Uuiath.”
Oh, I guess I can also post a link to the part of the story where Aria first mentions she’s from Twilight Rock, way back in Chapter Three. Gosh, that was a long time ago!
Also, I have a book recommendation! I just finished reading the fantasy novel The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. This was easily the best book I’ve read in a while, about a mysterious Victorian-era circus that comes to town, arriving out of nowhere and leaving in the same way, and is only open from dusk to dawn. This story is so well crafted, I have a hard time believing it’s a debut novel. “Enchanting” seems an overused word in book reviews, but here it is perfectly appropriate. Wondrous and wonderful.
I look forward to reading in the comments about any great books you’ve found recently!
It seems that Aria is slowly gathering her wits and her professional job responsibilities back together. It’s interesting that the Miesti don’t realize that she can eavesdrop on them. If the Galaxion ever makes it back to their own space, I’ll bet biohazard suits will be part of the revised First Contact protocols.
I suspect the Miesti’s connection to their slaves (cattle?) may be one-way, and the whole human-to-human mindlink thing we’ve been witnessing may be an unintended side-effect. Plus, I suspect that while Aria and the Rautani know that the Miesti are sentient, the sentiment may not be mutual. After all, we’ve shared Earth with dolphins for millenia and we never knew they had a language until thirty to forty years ago…
If the Miesti don’t think that humans are sentient, then their attitudes towards us will be like ours towards animals, be they wild (the Orehu) or domesticated (the Rautani). We’re clever, but inferior. It would take a special “animal” to make them realize that humans are something more. The native Rautani probably won’t qualify – I gather they see their enslavement as a salvation from their post-apocalyptic state (Aria did observe they were more well-nourished than the Orehu). Nor would the “absorbed” Hiawatha crew – they were IP before, and would have a more “we come in peace/shoot to kill shoot to kill” mentality when it comes to aliens.
Aria, with her training in first contact, may be the only person the Miesti have “absorbed” that could make the Miesti reevaluate our status (imagine our reaction if a cow or a dog was to suddenly speak and greet us politely). Of course, that also depends on how flexible their own mentality is to new ideas…
None of these arguments validates or in any way excuses what the Miesti are doing. I dearly hope they get a VERY painful payback.
Really? How do you feel about the way humans treat the species of our world now? The only difference between what the Miesti are doing to the Humans and what we humans do to other species is that the Miesti are doing it to Humans. ‘Justification’ is only to make oneself comfortable with one’s actions. It is is irrelevant to others.
I don’t think what WE’re doing is justified. So I stand by my position.
Except that animals don’t build artificial buildings, with artificial alloys and composite materials. You’d have to be pretty dense to think animals built the nuclear bombs they threw at them to devastate the world they are on now.
They do build artificial buildings and many can use tools. What is a nuclear bomb, other than a very destructive tool?
A very advanced tool that requires very advanced mathematics and a non-instinctive understanding of physics to build? Is this a serious question? Do you really have a hard time seeing why one species systematically teaching itself to build steel skyscrapers (and all the other things it must teach itself to do that) over just a couple generations is a different category of “tool use” than another species reflexively building the same mud-and-saliva faux-caves over and over and over for millions of generations?
As cool and surprising as it is to discover that chimpanzees and birds and such can do a certain level of sapient puzzle solving, or that, it’s still below the threshold required to bootstrap a species into a technologically advancing society. If the Miesti don’t consider humans sapient, then it’s an ideological judgement, not an empirical one.
(Responding both to this and to CBob’s comment)
I think this would be a good time to note that problem solving =/= self-awareness and consciousness. It’s a useful survival strategy, but not more than that. Going further afield from chimps, dolphins, and birds, I’d note that ants, bees, and termites all have complex societies – complete with architecture – but not self-awareness.
It’s worth noting that races, cultures, and species all have blind-spots due to their natures. We consider technological sophistication to be a sign of intelligence and self-awareness. We also tend to favor intelligent aliens that are like us – i.e. bipedal beings with two arms and hands, with sensory organs in a head, preferably two eyes, two ears, a mouth… This holds true not just in live-action science fiction TV and movies (where admittedly budget limits favor humans-in-funny-clothes-and-makeup) but also in comics, animated shows, and even written fiction. Nonhumanoid aliens that are friendly or neutral are rare.
Those are our blind-spots. What might the blind spots of the Miesti be?
As readers we can only speculate on their evolution, but let’s look at what evidence is present. The Miesti are small, fragile creatures with no manipulatory appendages present. We can surmise their evolutionary ancestors were no more robust. So the capacity to influence large creatures can pose an advantage. The proto-Miesti that can control predators and turn them to defense or labor have a better chance of surviving than the proto-Miesti that can’t. Once the advantage is gained, evolution can refine it – in fact, I bet such control is what drove the Miesti to advanced intelligence. Bottom line is that the Miesti have had up to hundreds of thousands of years of controlling larger creatures and hence the mental connection of “big creature = beast of burden” is probably so ingrained it’s almost instinct.
Now throw in contact with humans. Here are big creatures (beasts of burden) that can build things. What are the Miesti more likely to think, given their background? That humans are their equals? Or that they’ve stumbled onto a new type of advanced beast-of-burden?
Note that I’m not saying this attitude is *right* – simply that the Miesti, like us, are more than likely to rely on assumptions and their own version of “common sense” than make an intuitive leap that goes against hundreds of thousands of years of experience. Like us, such assumptions can lead them down paths they would never imagine themselves travelling down.
” I’d note that ants, bees, and termites all have complex societies – complete with architecture – but not self-awareness.”
I wonder how we can tell whether ants, bees and termites are self-aware or not. It’s not as if we can ask them.
While other species do not build tools and structures as sophisticated as ours, they do build and use them. They also are capable of learning language, combining words in novel ways to express what they are thinking and understanding abstract concepts.
It is pretty clear that “sapience” is not a hard line but a continuum. The Miesti might draw the line in a different place than we do.
More likely still, they may draw it in a different way. What you are describing is looking at what we do with our hands as indirect evidence of what we can do with our minds. I can certainly imagine that a telepathic species with no effective hands might be more inclined for direct rather than indirect measurement of mind power, judging mental ability by what the mind can do directly. What is built may not figure into the calculations at all.
So the Miesti are not as nasty as we thought last week…
Maybe not -but I can’t help being reminded of the Masters in John Christopher’s Tripods trilogy. Just because some Miesti are nicer than others doesn’t mean some of them are actually good. Though at least the Miesti don’t need to cloriform the planet.
Hear hear. Nice slave masters don’t make them something else than slave masters.
Guessing that with telepathy(?), they’ve never had much need for written languages until recent decades?
Telepathy might make *spoken* language unnecessary, but I don’t see how it would have any effect on *written* language. The purpose of writing is to a) help in remembering things, and b) allow you to pass on messages to others when you’re not around. Telepathy wouldn’t help with either of those purposes (well, long-distance telepathy might *help* with the latter, but we haven’t seen any evidence the Miesti are capable of that).
Dwight Williams said
“Guessing that with telepathy(?), they’ve never had much need for written languages until recent decades?”
It all depends on how the specific telepathy works. If it works on an individual-to-individual basis, yes, media recording and cpmmunications are still necessary. However, if telepathy can create an accessible cloud-based shared-memory resource, then eventually recorded communication may be unnecessary. I suspect a cloud-based storage media may need alternative storage and periodic verification to ensure that cloud-memory information does not degrade too badly. (If the cloud-memory used MY memory, information would degrade rather quickly!)
Given that we’re talking about butterflies, it’s not inconceivable that their cloud-based storage is actually based on using clouds for storage.
Ever the diligent professional. If she decides to interact back, though, will the Miesti consider it “fighting” back? Stay tuned!
This is getting very interesting!
I’m guessing they’re using the locals, but providing a service in return, but not a voluntary one. Imperialism ho!
(I’m guessing they didn’t provoke the war, but it could be either way.)
Tara said:
“I look forward to reading in the comments about any great books you’ve found recently!”
Well, since you asked …..
If you are looking for fantasy recommendations, I strongly recommend the Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud. The trilogy been around for over 10 years but I just recently found it through rather strong (i.e. insistent “have you read it yet, whattayaMEAN you haven’t read it yet, you will SO love it”) recommendations from family and friends. If you are unfamiliar with the trilogy, it is set in an alternate universe where magic is a given and actually has a reasonable premise and rules. No, not Harry Potter, it is a darker, cynical and more worldweary version. It is (mostly) told from the point of view (annotated with rambling non-sequitur remarks and snarky observations) of the Demon/Most Honored and Magnificent Djinni Bartimeaus.
This is a very popular work so you may find it in your local library.
That’s an excellent series! Bartimaeus is such a great character. I also enjoyed the fourth book in the trilogy (so to speak), The Ring of Solomon.
Thanks for the Miesti script. Galaxion is a great joy for me again, instead of leaving my eyes fatigued.
Dance your cares away, worries for another day, let the music play, down on Twilight Rock
Hah! Now I’m going to be stuck spending the next week imagining the TR economy made up of the TR equivalent of Fraggles, Doozers, and Gorgs.
Dear Nephew Gobo,
Today, while exploring Outer Space, I happened upon a large fraggle-cave inside a giant snail.
All the Silly Creatures were excited because they were trying to jump for the first time in their lives! I’ve always found jumping to be very easy, but these Silly Creatures didn’t know the first thing about jumping! In fact, when the time finally came, they all sat down and tied themselves to their chairs!
Needless to say, they weren’t able to jump at all, and they were all very confused!
I guess jumping in Outer Space can be pretty complicated, but I think I prefer the Fraggle way of doing things, don’t you?
– Love Traveling Aria
Heeheehee! You made my day!
I sense an imminent influx of Fraggle-themed fanart. (I hope, I hope, I hope!)
I first found this through Felicia Day’s video blog post awhile back, but The Night Circus was written by one of the people that works on the browser game Fallen London. Imagine if 18th century London was taken to the very shores of Hell, but left otherwise intact… If you liked that book, then this is something similar in free bite-sized chunks of choose your own story!
http://www.fallenlondon.com
And I agree that we totally need Fraggle Galaxion in the worst way. I’m seeing it in my head and really wishing I could draw Zandarin Fraggle now…
I like the quote at the top of that link. I’m not sure I really believe that New York Times said the game had “Flavour”.
I recommend a book called Trapped by James Alan Gardner. It takes place in the future where there is now magic and the iPhones as well as the power grid are broken. Or if that isn’t your cup of tea the try Chindi by Jack McDevitt. It’s a very good exploration story about space.
Aw, I misread your comment, I was hoping it was about a future where there is “Magic and iPhones”. A book where smartphones are used for spell-casting would have really intrigued me.