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A review by frakalot
A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum
adventurous
funny
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. Shaka, when the walls fell.
This was great. It's told like four guys are sitting around a bar and trying to one-up each other's stories about the biggest fish they nearly caught. Well, rather one of the lads is telling the story and it's all about the strangest aliens he ever saw, which of course get progressively more unbelievable to his pals at the table as his tale goes on. It's quite a lot of fun and I thought the banter was generally giggle worthy.
The tale presents a menagerie of fascinating Martian creatures, varying wildly in intelligence, form and behaviour. One of the creatures we meet is even silicone based which was a very novel idea in 1934.
The fellow delivering this tale makes a lot of assertions about what he saw on his Trek across the Martian desert and his mates are always quick to pull him up on it, by asking him how he knows that what he claims is so. Luckily, our storyteller is equally quick to come back with ~fairly~ reasonable logical deductions.
The creature we learn the most about is called Tweel and is an ostrich-like, intelligent being. The larger portion of this short story focuses on the pair overcoming their communication barriers, (hence my TNG reference at the beginning). Probably my favourite concept in the story was that Tweel's language was not static.
"Our minds simply looked at the world from different viewpoints, and perhaps his viewpoint is as true as ours".
I thought this was impressively self aware in the way it was handled. Although he couldn't quite explain how Tweel was thinking, he could recognise Tweel's intelligence and intent. He would consistently acknowledge that although Tweel's way of interpreting and explaining the world seemed ludicrous to him (and by extension us), our ways were likely equally ridiculous to Tweel. He goes so far as to suggest that Tweel may even possess greater intelligence than we do.
I was super enjoying this so it was disappointing to have to cringe through a few terribly racist lines, (ironically lacking that self-awareness), on the supposed intelligence capacity of so called "primitives". All that these lines serve to do now is remind us of how stupidly ignorant our predecessors could be at times. Almost like they were thinking primitively. Anyway, thankfully this is a short story and it really did only tarnish a few lines of the dialogue.
There's a sequel, which is also short, so I'm off to check that out next.
This was great. It's told like four guys are sitting around a bar and trying to one-up each other's stories about the biggest fish they nearly caught. Well, rather one of the lads is telling the story and it's all about the strangest aliens he ever saw, which of course get progressively more unbelievable to his pals at the table as his tale goes on. It's quite a lot of fun and I thought the banter was generally giggle worthy.
The tale presents a menagerie of fascinating Martian creatures, varying wildly in intelligence, form and behaviour. One of the creatures we meet is even silicone based which was a very novel idea in 1934.
The fellow delivering this tale makes a lot of assertions about what he saw on his Trek across the Martian desert and his mates are always quick to pull him up on it, by asking him how he knows that what he claims is so. Luckily, our storyteller is equally quick to come back with ~fairly~ reasonable logical deductions.
The creature we learn the most about is called Tweel and is an ostrich-like, intelligent being. The larger portion of this short story focuses on the pair overcoming their communication barriers, (hence my TNG reference at the beginning). Probably my favourite concept in the story was that Tweel's language was not static.
"Our minds simply looked at the world from different viewpoints, and perhaps his viewpoint is as true as ours".
I thought this was impressively self aware in the way it was handled. Although he couldn't quite explain how Tweel was thinking, he could recognise Tweel's intelligence and intent. He would consistently acknowledge that although Tweel's way of interpreting and explaining the world seemed ludicrous to him (and by extension us), our ways were likely equally ridiculous to Tweel. He goes so far as to suggest that Tweel may even possess greater intelligence than we do.
I was super enjoying this so it was disappointing to have to cringe through a few terribly racist lines, (ironically lacking that self-awareness), on the supposed intelligence capacity of so called "primitives". All that these lines serve to do now is remind us of how stupidly ignorant our predecessors could be at times. Almost like they were thinking primitively. Anyway, thankfully this is a short story and it really did only tarnish a few lines of the dialogue.
There's a sequel, which is also short, so I'm off to check that out next.