Verilon wrote:This is true, however, (I haven't read in a long time) it was only images, not real messages, right?
Not images so much as experiences - experiences that contained all of the thoughts and feelings of the buggers. These experiences were the source of the book "Hive Queen". Given that they were transmitted by the unhatched pupa of a bugger queen, and given that even before their planet was destroyed, they were probing his innermost thoughts, it is reasonable to assume that they would have been able to transmit those experiences to him earlier. They, being complete experiences, would have contained far more data than simple linguistic communication, and thus would have enabled diplomacy.
How do experiences lead to diplomacy? I am getting what you are saying in the rest of the paragraph, but am not sure I understand this statement.
Verilon wrote:When did Ender realize that the bugger queen was the bugger queen?
I'm not sure what you mean by this. If you mean when did Ender realize that the buggers were a hive mind where only the queens had independent thoughts, that would be when Mazer Rackham told him. If you mean when did he realize that it was the bugger queen that had been mind-fucking him, that would be at the very end of the book, when he finds the unhatched pupa of the last remaining bugger.
I meant, he found the pupa in the game. I wondered when he realized the pupa was the queen. Thanks for clarifying that.
Verilon wrote:How do experiences lead to diplomacy? I am getting what you are saying in the rest of the paragraph, but am not sure I understand this statement.
Normally, if you are talking to another person, all you know is what they are saying to you. What you don't know is what they are really thinking, what is being said betwwen the lines, or even if they are telling the truth. On the other hand, if you can literally experience what they are going through, and vice versa, then you immediately have a perfect understanding of both sides of the problem, making solving it much easier.
data_link has resigned from the board after proving himself to be a relentless strawman-using asshole in this thread and being too much of a pussy to deal with the inevitable flames. Buh-bye.
Verilon wrote:How do experiences lead to diplomacy? I am getting what you are saying in the rest of the paragraph, but am not sure I understand this statement.
Normally, if you are talking to another person, all you know is what they are saying to you. What you don't know is what they are really thinking, what is being said betwwen the lines, or even if they are telling the truth. On the other hand, if you can literally experience what they are going through, and vice versa, then you immediately have a perfect understanding of both sides of the problem, making solving it much easier.
True, but on the other hand, if you don't have words that can define these things, then it is one big mass of incoherency.
FaxModem1 wrote:From meteors to aliens to black holes to ancient monsters, Earth always is the target of invasion and whatnot, why do we never see Earth invading aliens?
Because it's easier to portray the Earthmen as the good guys if they have to overcome this incredible challenge (read: the invasion of the Earth.) Earthpeople would be unsympathetic characters if they were going out and subjugating other people (this is why the Empire is cast as the bad guys.)
Of course if you want to portray them in an unsypathetic bad-guy sort of light, then yes you make Earth the badass conquerers. Otherwise Earth must always be on the recieving end.
::Quickly hides the Sci-Fi Writing Guide behind my back.::
verilon wrote:Aside from Star Wars, it could be that non-Earth worlds are interesting to create, and people want something familiar, rather than soemthing foreign.
People who want something familiar won't be reading SF. Media sci-fi is another story but that's pretty much the ass-end wasteland of the futuristic fiction genre.
The frequency of earth invasion stories likely has a lot to do with ingrained paranoia and xenophobia in certain segments of the market. Huge numbers of Real Americans (i.e. the Azeron types who make up the majority of the US population) tend to believe that the entire world is 'out to get the us:' it's simply beyond their comprehension that any group of aliens could show up and want to do anything other than subjugate God's America into some kind of alien socialist facist paradise.
It's not my place in life to make people happy. Don't talk to me unless you're prepared to watch me slaughter cows you hold sacred. Don't talk to me unless you're prepared to have your basic assumptions challenged. If you want bunnies in light, talk to someone else.
It's easier to get a readership to empathize with a human or human-esque main character. So Earth being the place for humans mostly it is easier to write about Earth in a sci-fi situation. Invasion being an easy plot device.
The answer is deceptively simple. If I refer to the tome of rational sci-fi wisdom that is Duke Nukem, it is simple- we have the best chicks. And no one steals our chicks ... and lives.
