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Bartholomewcm
bear cub
Username: Bartholomewcm
Post Number: 53
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2003 - 3:25 pm: |     |
If there was ever an EC-friendly sf writer, Simak is it. Newspaperman in Minneapolis for years, almost as durable as Williamson. Extensively published Before Campbell, re-entered the fields after WWII with stories and novels in "rustic" settings (soutwestern Wisconsin often). Multi-award-winner with "The Big Front Yard" and Way Station, both about aliens taking earthlings into their confidence as part of a galactic network. Dog-lovers take note of City, series of stories about the evolving relationship between man and canine. |
Pine
storyteller
Username: Pine
Post Number: 143
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2003 - 3:53 pm: | |
To the point that the canines can take over and have a culture of their own, devoid of humans (except for in the form of memories). |
Cavebear
gatherer
Username: Cavebear
Post Number: 144
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2003 - 11:34 pm: | |
If you like stories about animal evolution/intelligence, try 'Breed To Come' by Andre Norton. David Brin also focuses on that.
Last night I played a blank tape at full blast. The mime next door went nuts. |
Cavebear
gatherer
Username: Cavebear
Post Number: 145
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2003 - 11:38 pm: | |
I recall some veteran sci-fi writer mentioning that some sci-fi fan named Clifford Simak had completely deconstructed one of his (the veteran's) stories and that Simak was completely correct.
Last night I played a blank tape at full blast. The mime next door went nuts. |
Annie
storyteller
Username: Annie
Post Number: 248
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, October 12, 2003 - 1:35 am: | |
Simak is pretty good.  I liked his Time Is The Simplest Thing, Destiny Doll, First He Died, Shakespeare's Planet and many others.
Haven't read City yet, but other books about animals becoming intelligent are VanVogt's The Battle of Forever and Cordainer's Instumentality books, with excellent characters such as C'Mell and T'Ruth. Also specifically for dogs, Roger Zelazny wrote of genetically modified dogs with limited intelligence called muties (dunno why he picked that name, they could talk) in his book The Dream Master, and wasn't there also some writer who also wrote of such dogs only called them Calebs? |
Cavebear
gatherer
Username: Cavebear
Post Number: 146
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, October 12, 2003 - 1:43 am: | |
Muties would be Mutations, I suppose.
Last night I played a blank tape at full blast. The mime next door went nuts. |
Annie
storyteller
Username: Annie
Post Number: 250
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, October 12, 2003 - 1:47 am: | |
Oh. Right. Thanks. |
Thalion
storyteller
Username: Thalion
Post Number: 309
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 10:29 am: | |
Didn't Heinlein call the 'enhanced' animals, like dogs and mules, Calebs? Not certain, but the term does ring a bell. Heinlein does use or mention those 'enhanced' animals. In Time enough for love, in Starship troopers, and in Friday.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they pass by - Douglas Adams |
Bartholomewcm
gatherer
Username: Bartholomewcm
Post Number: 58
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 2:48 pm: | |
The ultimate "enhanced animal" work is Olaf Stapledon's Sirius, about an intelligent sheepdog (almost a redundancy there, if you've ever had one). |
Annie
storyteller
Username: Annie
Post Number: 254
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, October 16, 2003 - 12:02 am: | |
Didn't read that yet, Mike.
Thal - that's right! Heinlein's Starship Troopers is the book where I remembered Calebs being mentioned. Becoming half of a Caleb-Human pair was one of the army carreer options offered to the protagonist upon enlisting. The Calebs were genetically enhanced dogs that worked closely with their human partners in a sort of K-9 Corps. I don't know if the term was used for any other enhanced animal besides dogs, but I would find that hard to imagine, since Caleb - or rather, Kelev - means "dog" in Hebrew. |
Bartholomewcm
gatherer
Username: Bartholomewcm
Post Number: 67
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, October 16, 2003 - 12:52 am: | |
posted: The Calebs were genetically enhanced dogs that worked closely with their human partners
--Interesting similarity to Cordwiner Smith's "The Game of Rat and Dragon," in which the human race is at war with "Dragons," so called because that is how men perceive them from the spaceships in which they fight them with bursts of intense light called "pinlighting." They are aided by specially-trained felines who fight in football-sized ships that are released at the start of battle. The cats see the dragons as rats. The story is a lead-in to the Underpeople (animal-derived humanoids, such as "Lost C'mell" Era of Smith's Lords of the Instrumentality future history.
Advisory: Reading Sirius is a major undertaking. |
Annie
storyteller
Username: Annie
Post Number: 266
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, October 19, 2003 - 11:30 am: | |
Similar, Mike, but in Rat and Dragon any of the human group could pair up with any of the cats for a mission, while the Caleb-Human pairs were so close that if the human died the Caleb was euthanized and if the Caleb died the human needed intensive psychiatric rehabilitation.
This, in turn, reminds me of a short story named Equinoctial by John Varley, in which humans lived in space with genetically engineered, intelligent "survival suits" called Symbs (symbiotes). |
Bartholomewcm
gatherer
Username: Bartholomewcm
Post Number: 80
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 20, 2003 - 6:48 pm: | |
Exactly, Annie. VERY surprised you didn't cite McCaffrey's Dragonriders too. |
Annie
storyteller
Username: Annie
Post Number: 269
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 20, 2003 - 11:10 pm: | |
That's because I only read two Pern stories so far - both about Lessa, accidentally. I liked them ok. The rest of the series is on my to-read list, but not very high up for now. |
Bartholomewcm
hunter
Username: Bartholomewcm
Post Number: 282
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, July 18, 2004 - 2:47 pm: | |
Kindofan annex to the ISM thread here. As mentioned in the first post, this year's site was in southwestern Wisconsin, which was Simak's stomping grounds and the background for many of his stories. Fascinating country, plenty of topography, very scenic, but by no means hard-edged, even the places with dominating rock outcroppings. A real sense of peace in the remote areas. Almost like the dune country, except the hills stay where they are. Easy to see where the flavor of his writing comes from.
To die will be an awfully big adventure.
--Sir James Barrie |
Annie
storyteller
Username: Annie
Post Number: 860
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, July 18, 2004 - 8:34 pm: | |
Ah, so this is the thread where we listed some books/stories about humans with symbiotes! I've been trying to remember. Just read Hal Clement's 'Needle' - a very good juvenile, and definitely worth adding to that list. |
Prehistorical Fiction, SF and Fantasy