I was doing some pondering (as I am wont to do), and I started wondering
something. I've noticed a trend in SCience Fiction, and especially amongst Sci
Fi games, that I'd like to address, and I'm going to use the Tuffleyverse, and
what little I know about it, as an example.
So let me get this straight: There are, amongst others, these powers: The FSE
(Human), the NAC (Human), the ESU (Human), the PAU (human), etc., and there
are the KV (KV)... Hmmm....
What I've noticed is that most "Alien" races in Sci Fi are presented as one
homogenous group. The discussion of KV phsychology has been interesting, but I
wonder, would KV analyses of Human Psycchology be as easily undertaken?
Imagine taking specimens from one single culture here on earth, and trying to
form your opinion of the entire species from that. To be sure, there is a
great deal that all humans share in common, but there is also a huge amount of
diversity. Yet with the KV, and other aliens (to be fair), their entire
species has one culture?
It seems to be the major trend in xenofiction - regardless of the Human
timeline presented, whether we've united or split further, no matter how far
we've journeyed into space or no, despite the multitude of cultures,
(Say,
for instance, a ship's crew with a Slavic helmsman, an Asian con officer, an
African communications officer, a Celtic physician and Engineer, and an
American captain... ok, so maybe that's a little exaggerated, but you get my
point), the aliens are always presented as having one culture and society for
their entire race, even if there are diverse political factions or classes
within that culture.
Why? I know the old arguement of a unified culture advancing faster, but
let's look at it from another point of view. A lot of the KV psychology
that's been discussed was a result of evolution, of methods developed for
dealing with the predators back home. OK, but what happens when you've
evolved far enough to not have to worry about ol' mr. T-rex, or the
solar storms, or what have you? Why evolve any further? You've found your
niche in
your environment. The answer can't be individual competition alone -
there are plenty of species on earth where individual members compete with
other individual members, yet they have not built space ships yet (That we
KNOW of....). And in a sentient race, you could expect competition instincts
between INDIVIDUAL members to be resolved by ritualistic competition, trials
of position and duels and such.
OK, so maybe these individual competitions, plus the social aspect of a
species, leads to the tendency to develop alliances, to support other
individuals with the same genetic lineage, or with whom you have social
affinity.
This just supports my point - that these points to trends like
clannishness, tribalism, eventually ethnicism and nationalism. The tendency to
not only compete individually, but to also group together in social groups
that then compete with each other, is what drives development.
In short (I know, too late), once you've conquered your environment, and
other competing species, you have no need to evolve further unless there is
competition to compete with other members of your OWN species. Hence the fact
that the most advanced species on earth is also the most diverse and
factionalized.
So why don't we ever, in our fiction, meet other species with the same
tendencies? I'd love to see a scifiverse where humans meet another race whose
home planet has as many different ethnicities and political divisions as does
Earth.
Good points. The Whole Kra'Vak thing is kind of a weird example though becasue
there is the very little information that Jon has released about them and then
there's a set of givens that many/most who play the Kra'Vak. That they
are
organized into Clans, (Read: Nations/Power blocks) and that they don't
often get a long with each other. In fact if you ever read Rot Hafen, the
Kra'Vak basically pissed away their victory due to some political intrigues
between their own clans.
In the grey day scenario, two KV clans were involved in that operation. While
they worked together (We didn't want a Stuart Murray "screw each other over
type scenario, though those can be fun too), there was some interclan violence
and tensions involved which will play themselves out in the near future.
> Brian Bilderback wrote:
> So let me get this straight: There are, amongst others, these powers:
The
> FSE (Human), the NAC (Human), the ESU (Human), the PAU (human), etc.,
I agree, most are.
But not in the Tuffleyverse. Fortunately for everyone else, the Kra'Vak Clans
spend at least as much time fighting amongst themselves as they do fighting
other species. And the various Phalon factions make them utterly Balkanised.
It's not for nothing that they're known as the
Phalon Conglomerate - it's one of the very difficult things when dealing
with the Phalons, you never know whether they're backstabbing you, or it's
another group inimical to the first that's queering the deal.
The Su'Vasku are - well - the Su'Vasku. Forget about trying to
understand them. Fortunately they follow a principle of enlightened
self-interest, and are relatively trustworthy, so can be worked with.
Sometimes.
All will be revealed once FB2 hits the stores. Well, maybe not all. Or even
most. But one of the design considerations for all races was that the defences
should work at least as well on their weapons as on anyone else's, and as far
as can be determined by outsiders, are optimised against their own weapons.
Any additional effect on other species technology is pure serendipity.
> So why don't we ever, in our fiction, meet other species with the same
OK, so my use of the KV was poorly chosen. I must plead ignorance, since my
only exposure to them is from this list.
As for the new FB book, I'm sure I would enjoy it, but don't you think I
should get FT itself first? I only own DS II.
----Original Message Follows----
From: Alan E and Carmel J Brain <aebrain@dynamite.com.au>
Reply-To: gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
To: gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: Re: KV, Humans, and Political Divisions
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 00:47:38 +1000
> Brian Bilderback wrote:
> So let me get this straight: There are, amongst others, these powers:
The
> FSE (Human), the NAC (Human), the ESU (Human), the PAU (human), etc.,
I agree, most are.
But not in the Tuffleyverse. Fortunately for everyone else, the Kra'Vak Clans
spend at least as much time fighting amongst themselves as they do fighting
other species. And the various Phalon factions make them utterly Balkanised.
It's not for nothing that they're known as the
Phalon Conglomerate - it's one of the very difficult things when dealing
with the Phalons, you never know whether they're backstabbing you, or it's
another group inimical to the first that's queering the deal.
The Su'Vasku are - well - the Su'Vasku. Forget about trying to
understand them. Fortunately they follow a principle of enlightened
self-interest, and are relatively trustworthy, so can be worked with.
Sometimes.
All will be revealed once FB2 hits the stores. Well, maybe not all. Or even
most. But one of the design considerations for all races was that the defences
should work at least as well on their weapons as on anyone else's, and as far
as can be determined by outsiders, are optimised against their own weapons.
Any additional effect on other species technology is pure serendipity.
> So why don't we ever, in our fiction, meet other species with the
You should enjoy FB2 by all accounts then. Only 3 weeks to go....
> Brian Bilderback wrote:
Looking from the point of view of, say, a New Guinea tribesman, how much
difference would you notice between a German, an American, and a Swede?
Particularly if you only see their soldiers? Our point of view is going to be
rather farther removed than that, and unless there are visible signs (skin
pigment, say, or obvious and consistent differences in clothing, jewelry,
tattoos, etc), we may not be able to tell one lot from
another--at first.
Right now, with the Kra'Vak, we're still designing the
species. We'll get around to designing the clans shortly--about
a month, I'd say. Why do so many authors in SF neglect this point? Probably
for the same reason you get "forest moons" or "it was raining on Mongo that
morning", or my pet peeve, a "galactic empires" with a few dozen stars. You've
heard of Sturgeon's Law?
Doesn't ring a bell, enlighten me...
----Original Message Follows----
> Doesn't ring a bell, enlighten me...
Sturgeon's Revelation, I think; something to the effect that "90% of
EVERYTHING is crap...."
(I'm sure that someone else will quote it more exactly....)
> At 10:08 AM 3/11/00 PST, you wrote:
Not to fawn and flatter TOO much, but your own game violates that principle.
To be sure, there are a few minor points where a few of the rules have a
little bit of crp CLINGING to them, but the gold underneath remains pure.
Brian B
----Original Message Follows----
From: Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com>
Sturgeon's Revelation, I think; something to the effect that "90% of
EVERYTHING is crap...."
(I'm sure that someone else will quote it more exactly....)
Jon (GZG)
> ______________________________________________________
> The Su'Vasku are - well - the Su'Vasku. Forget about trying to
I've always believed the Sa'Vasku should be completely incomprehensible to
humanity ie we don't know why they do the things they do. One day, they'll pop
up and blow a colony out of existence; the next, they'll help a human ship
crippled by pirates to reach safety. Why? Who knows? We can't communicate with
them, they either can't or wont communicate with us, and they are truly, truly
alien.
Remember: the moment we start giving traits we recognise to aliens, they stop
being truly alien. The Kra'Vak, for example, are really men in rubber
suits - sure they react differently, but they have traits that humans
understand. This is not necessarily a bad thing - I think the Kra'Vak
are developed very well and are good aliens. However I think beyond game
mechanics, very little should be written about the Sa'Vasku except what we
think we know: they're very, very old, they appear to live in space (we've
never seen a foot soldier, unless the Not-Bugs are considered to be
them) and they are a race like none other that humanity has met.
This, I feel, keeps them truly alien.
> J Sadler wrote:
> I've always believed the Sa'Vasku should be completely
the >next, they'll help a human ship crippled by pirates to reach safety. Why?
>Who knows? We can't communicate with them, they either can't or >wont
communicate with us, and they are truly, truly alien.
We may not be able to communicate with them, but they certainly are
able, and sometimes willing, to communicate with us - eg, by kidnapping
entire spaceships (eg., the UNSC McCaffrey) and "programming" one of its
crewmembers with a message, then release a life pod with that crew
member within detection range of a human ship :-/
> Remember: the moment we start giving traits we recognise to aliens,
The moment we start giving traits we recognize to aliens, we start deluding
ourselves...
> The Kra'Vak, for example, are really men in rubber
And they have other traits that we *don't* understand. The problem is
that we (the players/authors) *also* don't understand those traits, and
therefore are unable to describe them either in text or in game mechanics...
Regards,
Read Foreigner, by C.J. Cherryh, you'd probably like it. Definately not your
typical aliens. And definately not one large group. The whole story is about
the first contact between humans and a radically different culture. In deed,
the differences are very subtle, but cause huge problems when human beings
started to apply human feelings and emotions to a culture that lacks them.
Jade Tseng
[quoted original message omitted]
Thanks, sounds like a good read.
----Original Message Follows----
From: "Conchart@geotec.net" <conchart@geotec.net>
Reply-To: gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
Read Foreigner, by C.J. Cherryh, you'd probably like it. Definately not your
typical aliens. And definately not one large group. The whole story is about
the first contact between humans and a radically different culture. In deed,
the differences are very subtle, but cause huge problems when human beings
started to apply human feelings and emotions to a culture that lacks them.
> Not to fawn and flatter TOO much, but your own game violates that
Thanks! ;-)
Jon (GZG)
> Brian B
With reference to Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is...")
> Not to fawn and flatter TOO much, but [Full Thrust] violates
It's not 90% of "each thing", it's 90% of "everything". Grimes Orkshop is, in
a sense, helping the rest of the industry stay gold, by sucking up unto itself
as much as possible of the 90%.
Thanks, I see your semantic point. LOL I guess that since I've never, as a
player/consumer of gaming products, been sucked up by them (Ok, I've
bought a few of their epic scale figures, but only to represent units in OTHER
games), I can cling to the hope that I am personally fairly crap free
(although none of us is 100% so....)
G'day Brian,
I haven't read a lot of science fiction, but some of it at least probably
comes from the "they all look Greek to me syndrome". People in the northern
hemisphere mix up Aussie and NZ accents and attitudes quite regularly, In
fact how many non-Aussies could identify the differences in culture
between Aussie states, I know I'd be pushing it up hill to identify much
beyond steretypes for US states say. In a first contact I'm sure we'd see them
as one big group, but the real measure of worth (of the fiction) would be what
is revealed further down the track about the cultures, religions etc etc
that follow - maybe many writers just don't get that far.
Anyways just my 2 razoos
Beth
Howdy Y'all back, Beth....
I see what you mean, and from the response I've received so far, I'd have to
say that my complaint is still valid about a lot of sci fi, but NOT the KV.
As for your points about us Americans and Aussie vs. NZ accents, I must plead
guilty, though I am learning. Similarly, I've met very few Aussies or Kiwis
who could tell an American from a Canadian very easily, especially if the
American was from say, Michigan or Minnesota or Wisconsin or the Dakotas, and
if the Canadian was from southern Ontario or BC or anywhere
near the US border, yet we have a fairly easy time making those distinctions.
Your point is well made.
> As for your points about us Americans and Aussie vs. NZ
Further, not only can we tell a Canadian from an American, we distinguish
between, for example, a damyankee and a Southerner. And if you have
experience, you can distinguish accents from smaller areas. In the job I just
left, our customers came from Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia,
West Virginia, Tennessee, and Alabama. I could often tell by the accent what
state, and sometimes what part of the state, a caller was from.
> Brian wrote:
One my more embarrassing moments was thinking my friend's accent was Canadian,
when in fact, he was Ukrainian.
I'm not sure if this means I'm rude or not, but when I talk to people who
have markedly foreign accents, I often ask them about them - I find
accents fascinating, and love to meet people from other places and talk to
them about their countries. Just last weekend I found myself in a Comic store
in L.A. discussing James Bond with a group of teenagers from Hungary. This, of
course, all causes my beloved wife no end of embarassment. (I still love her,
she has the cutest Minnesota accent. That seems to be appropriate to the convo
too somehow.)
> At 6:38 PM +1300 3/13/00, Andrew Martin wrote:
I used to be able to identify (some) German regional accents, this lead to a
bit of confusion with a lady from Ireland whom I could have sworn was from
somewhere near Munich... Also note, a Hebraic accent sounds Germanic, but DO
NOT make that mistake.
> Brian B. wrote:
/...Similarly, I've met very few Aussies or/
/Kiwis who could tell an American from a Canadian very easily,
especially if/
/the American was from say, Michigan or Minnesota or Wisconsin or the/
/Dakotas, and if the Canadian was from southern Ontario or BC or
anywhere/
/near the US border.../
90% of Canadians live within 50 km of the border!
In a message dated 3/12/00 9:39:57 PM Central Standard Time,
> laserlight@quixnet.net writes:
<< >As for your points about us Americans and Aussie vs. NZ accents, I must
> plead guilty, though I am learning. Similarly, I've met very
Further, not only can we tell a Canadian from an American, we distinguish
between, for example, a damyankee and a Southerner. And if you have
experience, you can distinguish accents from smaller areas. In the job I just
left, our customers came from Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia,
West Virginia, Tennessee, and Alabama. I could often tell by the accent what
state, and sometimes what part of the state, a caller was from.
> [quoted text omitted]
In Texas, you can often tell from what part of the state a person was from by
their accents, West Texans have a thicker accent, East Texans often have a
little Louisiana in their accent, those from the southern areas of Texas, near
the border, often have a spanish lilt to their phrasing, etc. This is not
unusual, as I've seen this in many other parts of the US as well.
John
> ...Similarly, I've met very few Aussies or
> 90% of Canadians live within 50 km of the border!
Yeah, but those Esquimaux who make up the other 10% are easy to distinguish...
Laserlight, I think that, perhaps, you are an exception.
> From your post, it seems that you have had a fair ammount of time to
John, While this is true, it would take even longer to identify the changes as
they grew more subtle.
In both cases, the hearer has had time to destinguish the differences. Compare
them against individual diferention. Discover the patterns. Add geographical
knowledge, based on inquiry or information provided. Also, in both instances,
this was done with a known language. This language analysis was not done on
encrypted signals. And, the individuals were following Human logic and speach
patterns.
I agree, the more that we learn about the Kra'Vak, the more we will be able to
distinguish between clans, regions, professions, etc. However, we are not at
that point in the timeline, yet. At this point, most of the Kra'Vak that we
would have heard, would have been coded or encrypted transmissions. Open
chanel communication would have been in Kra'Vak milspeak (not normal
language). The teams from Rot Hafen (or similar ground confrontations), may
have a better idea of this, as well as experts who have studied live Kra'Vak
prisoners [if any].
My guess, however, is that it will take YEARS to piece together even pidgin
Kra'Vak, let alone to start to distinguish differences between the regional
dialects. All this is not to say that the Kra'Vak are homogoneous. They are
not. Just that it will take some time for humanity to discover the
differences.
-----
Brian Bell bkb@beol.net
-----
> -----Original Message-----
[quoted original message omitted]
> On 11-Mar-00 at 01:59, Brian Bilderback (bbilderback@hotmail.com) wrote:
> In short (I know, too late), once you've conquered your environment,
This is one of the biggest myths I have seen. Think about the Neanderthal
versus Cro-magnon. The archaelogists claim that it didn't need to be
warfare that wiped out the Neanderthals, a 1% advantage over the course
of 800-1000 years was enough. Do you know for sure that there isn't
some group of humans who has a 1% advantage over the rest of the human race
such that they will absorb the rest of us? And then there could be some
subgroup or minor mutation...
We can't "conquer" our environment any more than we can conquer ourselves.
About all we seem to be able to do is to destroy our environment, much like a
bacteria culture in a petri dish.
> So why don't we ever, in our fiction, meet other species with the same
> tendencies? I'd love to see a scifiverse where humans meet another
You need to read some of the fiction Los has produced. That looked pretty
factionalized and politicaly divided.
> On 11-Mar-00 at 18:02, J Sadler (jsadler@earthling.net) wrote:
Just because we can understand some of their behaviours does not make them any
less alien. I understand cats and dogs, they are definately not human. Once
you analyze how the biology works and how the groups are organized there are
some givens prompted by evolution. The genetic material will attempt to
increase itself. There will be competition. Survival of, if not the
individual, the clan, and thus the species will be of primary importance.
These are all things I can understand and will be things common to all
species, wether sentient or not, wether they evolved on earth or not.
I am intentionally leaving out "manufactured" species.
G'day Roger,
> This is one of the biggest myths I have seen. Think about the
I think the numbers on that are getting higher (2% over 1000s of years, but
given geological time its a quibble) - stems mostly from their differing
attitudes to resource management and how that impacted upon infant mortality
rates as far as I remember.
> Do you know for sure that there isn't
Let alone genetic engineering which may well lead to another homo species
based purely on the economics of the whole thing.
> We can't "conquer" our environment any more than we can conquer
Which may well lead to a new dominant species in itself. From an ecosystem
point of view, all those places we've trashed (Black Sea etc) work just fine,
they just don't work the way they used to and in such a way that is profitable
or comfortable (or even necessarily habitable) for us.
Better get back to work
Beth
> Laserlight,
Well, yes, I've been in sales or related fields for roughly 12
years--not that it took me that long to learn accents. But my
point was that you can pick up more differences with more
study--an Aussie would have no chance of picking up the
difference between a Raleigh drawl and an Asheville twang at first, but after
listening for a few years he could. Similarly, the KV may look like a
monolithic socieety to us right now, but as we learn more about them we'll
begin to see the segments of their society. In about a month, say.
So you're agreeing with me. As is only reasonable... : - )
In a message dated 3/14/00 6:04:53 AM Central Standard Time,
> Brian_Bell@dscc.dla.mil writes:
<< John,
While this is true, it would take even longer to identify the changes as they
grew more subtle.
> [quoted text omitted]
Well, there is nothing subtle about a West Texas accent...<GRIN>
John