Also, the title reminds me of a McSweeney's story from a few years back -- can't remember the author -- but the POV character is the non-Muslim half of an animal husbandry team (I think she's Hindu) that keeps pigs and cows in an orbital station. I forget the mechanics exactly, but she's required to care for the pigs, and her (male) Muslim (& caucasian American) partner cares for the "clean" and high-status dairy cows. Somehow the pigs and cows are part of a commensal system, I forget how this works exactly, but if the pigs die off the whole system fails, and if the cows die off, the system is just financially non-viable. The summary makes the potential metaphors much more obvious than the story does. Will dig up reference if I can find the time.
On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 6:59 AM, Eric Scoles <[email protected]> wrote: > > Living right now, it's hard to imagine anyone having the degree of vision > required to put something like this into action. The best we've been able > to manage so far is a 10,000 year clock. > > Anyway, this idea reminds me of 2 stories or story-cycles: > > First (probably most obvious) is Blish's "seedling stars" cycle, which > basically involved re-engineering humans to suit the environment on the > target world. It seems as though 'what is essential to humanness' was a > really big question at the time. (I believe Fred Pohl's _Man Plus_ dates to > about the same period.) There, though, there's active engineering, not > evolution. > > Second, it brings to mind the '90s Sterling story "Taklamakan", and I'm > torn to talk about it because the relation is a bit of a spoiler, but what > the heck, it comes a third of the way through. The Chinese build fake > "Generation Ships" in a cavern under the Taklamakan desert, and create > environments inside them with artificial social and material pressures on > the inhabitants, for reasons that aren't entirely clear (to the POV > character -- who, incidentally, also has a walk-on in "Bicycle Repair Man") > but probably in part involve harvesting new technology from them. Of course > the inhabitants know nothing of their true situation, and the cavern is > patrolled by highly adaptive and dangerous robots to prevent any escapees > from getting back into their "ships" or out to the world above. > > Sitting here it occurs to me that the Sterling story could be construed as > being in part about absence of long-term vision. They can pull off a fake > trip to another star for immediate purposes, but it doesn't seem to occur > to anyone to try the real thing. > > > On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 6:26 PM, Donald McCarthy <[email protected]> wrote: > >> The evolution of miles long generation ship could be manipulated to match >> conditions on the target world. If it takes thousands of years to get their >> genetic tinkering and controlled environmental changes could be implemented >> to allow the animals - or people for that matter - to survive in a world >> quit a bit different from earth. >> >> On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 9:03 PM, David Ennocenti < >> [email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Sounds like the Damon Knight's Twilight Zone story "To serve man." >>> >>> On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 1:37 PM, Alicia Henn <[email protected]> >>> wrote: >>> > The New York Times invited readers to write them a paragraph about >>> whether >>> > eating meat was ethical. Interestingly, an argument was made that the >>> > survival of animals in the future depends on their tastiness. >>> > >>> > "...like it or not, when we render this planet uninhabitable, we’re >>> going to >>> > have to move to another, and the only thing that’s going to make >>> anyone let >>> > animals into the spaceship is the chance to eat them." >>> > >>> > >>> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/magazine/the-winner-of-our-contest-on-the-ethics-of-eating-meat.html?src=recg >>> > >>> > Is anyone out there writing space opera? Are there food animals on >>> board >>> > your ship? >>> > >>> > Alicia >>> > >>> > -- >>> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups >>> > "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. >>> > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >>> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>> > [email protected]. >>> > For more options, visit this group at >>> > http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en. >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> David Ennocenti >>> 9 West Crest Drive >>> Rochester, NY 14606 >>> 585-426-2348 >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. >>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>> [email protected]. >>> For more options, visit this group at >>> http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en. >>> >>> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> [email protected]. >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en. >> > > > > -- > -- > eric scoles | [email protected] > > -- -- eric scoles | [email protected] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en.
