OFF: Solaris

[Jill Strobridge]

Sheri S. Tepper's book "Grass" comes close to this.   A planet
apparently unaffected by a plague, a human population apparently totally
integrated into a strange alien environment, an apparently benign system
of three different alien species co-existing together in an increasingly
complex biological interaction and the reason why the planet "Grass"
appears untouched by the plague.   A calm, ordered way of life that
grows more and more sinister as the story progresses and yet, at the
end, isn't sinister at all - just alien.

If you haven't read it yet, you should!
jill
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Jill Strobridge <jill at theta-orionis.freeserve.co.uk>
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----- Original Message -----
From: "M Holmes" <fofp at HOLYROOD.ED.AC.UK>
To: <BOC-L at LISTSERV.SPC.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 4:24 PM
Subject: Re: OFF: Solaris


> Guido Vacano writes:
>
> > Erm, do molecular biologists qualify? :-) Even if your question is
> > rooted in more "traditional" biology, I might be able to help.
>
> OK, a game open to all anyway.
>
> The idea was to set a story on a planet of aliens who were in some way
> actually alien rather than just eggheaded or brutish humans. The
> difficulty is of course how to set a narrative where some of the
> characters can't be understood by the reader. My solution was to have
a
> human protagonist who is a detective, be called in to solve a murder
on
> the alien planet. He'd be unable to understand the alien thinking, but
> would be able, in a Holmesian way, to work it out, and thus solve the
> murder.
>
> Which is where biology, and evolutionary psychology come in.  Humans
> have male sexual jealousy, according to the evolutionary
psychologists,
> because the plumbing and methodology of mating means that males can't
be
> certain of paternity, and thus might waste considerable resources
> raising a child not genetically theirs (human cuckoldry rate seems to
be
> running at 15% to 25% though cheap DNA tests might well change this).
> The incest taboo comes from the dangers of double-recessive genes,
> difficulties of sexual behaviour between siblings when child-rearing
and
> other problems which need to be circumvented.  So the basic idea of
> evolutionary psychology is that emotions develop from some
> economic/logistic problem in the organism's environment or life cycle.
>
> So what I need is some peculiar breeding cycle of some organism which
> could be logically extrapolated through similar reasoning into an
> emotion in a sentient being which would be peculiar to understand but
> which could be rationally arrived at by examining the life cyycle or
> evolutionary history of the organism. It'd of course help if there
were
> some logical reason to keep it secret from others or other species
(our
> protagonism) a la incest and if it were clearly to be strong enough to
> be a motive for murder.
>
> Over to you....
>
> FoFP
>