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Chapter 2: Cogito, Ergo Tutti Fruitti
By: Brett Coster
Also: J.D. Giorgis and Gord Sellar
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Introduction:
"Then the hatch swung open to let in the sunshine of another world" (P21)
Surely one of the great exit sentences for a chapter. And one of the reasons
for enjoying really good SciFi, to see something like that.
OK, chapter 2 is now open for discussion.
Title:
The Brin has already stated that the title means "I think, therefore ice
cream" (and I always thought tutti frutti was a fruit salad). In the middle
of page 25 you'll find the phrase (when talking of the phenomenology of the
universe) "I think, therefore I scream" so we're getting 1) a comic chapter
heading, 2) a goddawful pun on philosophy, and 3) a foreboding of what's to
come.
More and more, I think the Brin really is a Tymbrimmi.
Analysis:
Anyway, now Dennis encounters Flasteria, and finds it surprisingly
earthlike. We're all used to that through years of Star Trek away teams and
the Robinson family, but Dennis consciously and repeatedly reminds himself
not to fall into the trap of interpreting the new world in terms of Earth.
But he only really feels it when he is threatened, having found the
dissected robots and mangled zievatron. I think this would be a really
natural reaction.
And he meets his fairy princess, and suffers LAFS (tm) - love at first sight
as all true heroes should. In the Last paragraph of subsection 6 "Dennis
blinked and shook his head to clear it. For a moment, in the glare and
confusion, he had experienced a queer
illusion. It had seemed to him that the prisoner's white cloak had
opened--for a brief, timeless instant--and the starlight had shown him the
sad, forlorn face of a beautiful girl." And then much of subsection 7 is
taken up with the unsettling effect that vision had on him. I class that as
classic symptoms of LAFS.
The opening paragraph reminds me very much of the opening of Niven's "The
Flight of the Horse". My copy of that is buried somewhere in my oldest
daughter's bedroom, so I can't check for sure until Howard Carter
reincarnates.
The loneliness of being the only known human in Flasteria is nicely dealt
with. A bit like Svetz in Flight of the Horse, too, but not nearly as
frantic. Again, not something you're used to seeing the "hero" feeling. That
and the sense of wonder.
The clues to the Practice Effect start building, particularly in the robot's
enhanced vision capabilities and its ability to understand English and
follow orders. And then, during the journey he feels more and more adept
with the equipment. But the penny hasn't dropped yet. And my first read of
this book was too long ago for me to remember at what point I realised what
the Practice Effect was. I think it was in Chapter 3.
And another presage of a future book, perhaps. On page 36 where Dennis, in
hiding, encounters the humanoids and their "eerily silent wagons" , he
considers hovercraft and "Antigravity? Nothing else seemed to fit. But if
that were so, why were they using animal power?
"Could these be descendents of some fallen civilisation, patching their
commerce together with remnants of their forefather's science?" - The idea
was later used in "Uplift War" when Fiben used just such a scheme to gull
Gubru security by emphasising his Earthling incompetence. And in both cases
it's a vivid image.
Notes:
-One thing has bothered me in this chapter. When reviewing the robot's record
of events, on page 26 the robot's "tape was almost his only source of direct
information" yet on page 27 "he slipped the record disk out of the robot and
replaced it" So which is it, a tape or disk? Am I just being pedantic?
-Brett Coster
-At the end of the Chapter 2, I can't help but think that in an early rough
draft Dennis outright calls the pixolet a Tymbrimmi. :) I think he's
got it on the brain....-J.D. Giorgis
-Star Trek may be paradise, but they've given up sports. Dennis Nuel,
however, apparently still watches Monday Night Football, revealed by his
naming a constellation "Cosell the Locquacious" aka "The Announcer" or "The
Color Commentator." -J.D. Giorgis
-"Alfresco" means "out in the open" or "in the open air". There's a whole
section in my stupid _Penguin Book of Vice_ dedicated to quotations about
"Alfresco sex" as a vice. -Gord Sellar
-A reference is made to three explorers "Darwin, Wallace, and Goodall." I
know #1 and #3. Wallace is the parallel discoverer of evolution. I find
Brin's selection of "explorers" here interesting, as these are all really
"scientists" rather than explorers." The typical pantheon of explorers
contains names like Columbus, Magellan, and Armstrong. Indeed, Nuel's
exploits bear a greater resmeblance to the journeys of Lewis and
Clark than any journey Goodall might have made. Any idea why Brin chose
the names that he did? -J.D. Giorgis
-We find yet another Brin assault on the human myth of the
hero. In this case, Dennis's hero of the stars is "Alfresco the Mighty"
wrestling with the giant snake, "Stethoscope." Brin continues: "The
hero's piercing eyes shone unevenly, one red and twinkling, the other
birhgt green and steady." Apparently, in Dennis' modern society heros are
not needed quite like the Greeks needed characters
like Hercules and Orion. -J.D. Giorgis
-UNRESOLVED QUESTION: At the end, Dennis lears that the last green dot was
his robot. This means that the formation has two robots with them. At
first, I thought that perhaps the girl may be a robot, but she was near the
end of the procession, not that middle, and that would only explain one
dot, not two dots, so that is unlikely. In Chapter 3, pixolet
is given a green light also.... The question then, what is the third green
dot? Dennis sees two green dots in the center, and one in the back. The
one in the back is *his*
scout robot. One of the two in the center is pixolet. What's the other?
-J.D. Giorgis
-Brady hints in Chapter 1 that one of the basic Laws of Physics is reversed
here. By now, it should be obvious that that law is The Law of Entropy.
Things in this universe tend towards greater order. -J.D. Giorgis
__________________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ #3527685
"The point of living in a Republic after all, is that we do not live by
majority rule. We live by laws and a variety of isntitutions designed
to check each other." -Andrew Sullivan 01/29/01
