Campbell's XTs (was: <knock/> <knock/> Is this thing on?<screeeech/>) David Johnson 13 Dec 2020 20:20 UTC
Andrew Long wrote: >> Jeff Zeitlin wrote: >> >> Question before the house: Consider the SF that you've read: Which >> aliens do you feel are the best examples of what John W. Campbell said >> he wanted in aliens, and how would you describe them in e.g., a >> Contact! article in the old JTAS? >> >> (Campbell is said to have demanded of his authors, "Show me an alien >> that thinks _as good as_ a man, or _better than_ a man, but not _like_ >> a man.”) > > I’m sure that there must be many more that my age-challeneged brain is slipping over now (Poul and Gordy would have had some; Isaac and Arthur not so much) Anderson did this again and again in his Technic future history works. The Ymirites, whose interstellar society intermingles with that of the Terran Empire--because they prefer to colonize Jovian planets and have no interest in terrestrial worlds. The caterpillarite, morph-sexual, hydrogen-breathing, high-gravity Baburites act in ways humans can barely make sense of. More than once Anderson portrayed "symbiotic" beings, two or more organism which weren't fully sentient until they had combined together: the zoo-keeping Eskers of "Hiding Place" and the pseudo-goose-rhinoceros-ape Didonians of ~The Rebel Worlds~. Even extraterrestrials which can live closely with humans--the reptilian Merseians, the avian Ythrians, the lupine Ardazirho (who likely inspired Traveller's Vargr)--often think and live in very different ways from humans. Cheers, David -- "People who don't fear death make wicked opponents," - Dominic Flandry (Poul Anderson), ~The Rebel Worlds~