Lalith Vipulananthan wrote: > There's also Stephen Baxter's wooly mammoth stories. Ok, they > aren't quite elephants but they're close enough. Not that I've > actually read them or anything. Has anyone on Brin-L read these?
I have. I particularly like the mammoth oral history stories, which retell the natural history of the mammals in the form of legends. The names of the legendary figures are modified versions of the biological names of the orders/classes/genera of their ancestors. The legends are fun, but they mark the novels as fantasy. How do the mammoths know that much about their ancestors? I can easily imagine mammoths having a language and oral history, based on the size of their brains, and the complexity researchers have found in the subsonic rumbles of elephants. But, could the first mammals have had enough brainpower to tell these stories to each other? Race memory, maybe? The overall theme of the books is the relationship between humans (known as the Lost) and mammoths. Eventually, I think we do manage to redeem ourselves a little in the eyes of the mammoths. Anyway, how can anyone resist the idea of Mammoths on Mars? :-) ______________________________________________________________________ Steve Sloan ......... Huntsville, Alabama =========> [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brin-L list pages ....................... http://www.sloan3d.com/brinl Chmeee's POV-Ray Objects ............... http://www.sloan3d.com/chmeee 3D and Drawing Galleries .................. http://www.sloansteady.com Software ................ Science Fiction, Science, and Computer Links Science fiction scans ......................... http://www.sloan3d.com
