FOREIGNER: Discussion Post #1, Spoiler Edition

[krait]

If you have discussion points you wish to bring up but which include spoilers, please post them here. Then link your comment in the general post, so those who want to avoid being spoiled can do so!

Comments

delectable tea!

[cheyinka]

So, in Book Two, Section II, there's a line which, knowing Bren's experiences with cuisine, is... well, it's very something:

There was, in their reliance on food from orbit, a most pressing reason to identify grasses, and dissect seeds, and figure out their processes and their chemistry, where it was like Earth's and where it was different: ecologically different, the Guild had said, probably full of toxins, not to meddle with.

But the Guild was going to be wrong on that one, if the results held—God, the tests were looking good, down to the chemical level where it really counted: there were starches and sugars they recognized, no toxins in the seeds that, the Phoenix histories informed them, could be processed and cooked in ways human beings had done for a staple food for thousands of years.

I really, really wonder when the humans first discovered that plant life, animal life, and atevi food and drinks were the All Alkaloids All the Time Channel. Was it the first meal Ian shared with Manadgi? I mean, if Bren had to worry about not being poisoned by accident, Ian didn't even know that there were foods that would be deadly poison rather than delectable tea. (On the other hand, Ian might have tested everything to make sure he could eat it...)

Re: delectable tea!

[feuervogel]

You make me wish I could draw, because that needs to be fan-art-ed.

Re: delectable tea!

[krait]

Me, too! (Someone with fanart skillzz totally needs to draw Ian spitting out a mouthful of tea after scanning the berry it came from!)

I'm guessing that he scanned everything he was offered except perhaps the water, since presumably he would have been involved in the plants/native pollens scan, so maybe he already had an inkling that the local plants sometimes contained Bad Stuff?

Re: delectable tea!

[krait]

That is to say, even if the seeds didn't?

Re: delectable tea!

[cheyinka]

Right, it's possible that the grasses and their seeds are safe, and he'd scan whatever he drank that wasn't water... also, it might have been remembered by Bren if the human to make first contact died of poisonous tea or pickles, now that I think about it. Still, it's an interesting thing to wonder about!

Re: delectable tea!

[pebblerocker]

Doesn't Bren usually choose plain bread, as well as unsauced, unspiced meats, when he's unsure of whether the cook knows how to cater to humans? It could be definite fact that grains are always safe for humans. Or am I remembering wrong and he chooses eggs when unsure?

Re: delectable tea!

[cheyinka]

No, I distinctly remember him telling another human, in one of the newest books, just to eat dry toast, so I think it really is true that grains are safe - it just seems like the biologists are in for a huge surprise when they discover that grains are safe, but some of the most delicious things are poisonous!

Re: delectable tea!

[krait]

I'm pretty sure you're right on all counts -- i.e. he opts for toast if it's available, and leaves sauces off meat, when uncertain.

And/or opts for eggs; though I mostly remember them being mentioned as being alternatives for whatever the kabiu meat of the season is; don't recall whether Bren asks for them, just that he mentions them being an alternative.

It does make sense, sort of - after all, a grain is essentially a seed, i.e. a baby plant and all the nutrients it needs to grow. Baby things might not be able to handle some offensive chemicals, or might need alll the seed-space for their food source, more than they need a protective chemical. (Like how, on our world, you can eat the leaves of a young nettle plant, but an older one will be toxic -- the toxicity increases over time as the plant ages, it's not "inborn" except in the sense that the plant has the genes for making or uptaking that compound.)

Actually. Terran vegetatiom sports a number of examples of toxic plants that have edible fruits or roots -- pretty much every part of a potato except the tuber, for instance, contains the neurotoxin solanine; and while rhubarb stalks are edible, the leaves are not.

[pebblerocker]

(Are we spoiling for just the rest of the first novel here, or the whole series? This comment has to do with the third and fourth books IIRC.)

I note that already, 122 years later, Ian thinks of the planet as "the place Taylor found for them" -- already mythologising Taylor as a great hero, saviour of them all, when from what we saw in the first part it was other people who searched out and chose the best place to head for as an escape; they just pointed Taylor at it and he took them there. Later in the series Taylor becomes even more of a heroic figure, and his children are something like demigods. Interesting that station-builders as well as ship-folk think that way.

[cheyinka]

I didn't pick up on that! That's really interesting, yes - of course with so many people dying or becoming seriously ill from radiation, the story probably couldn't get corrected once it got started...

[krait]

It may even have been extremely convenient for the Pilots' Guild to encourage that version -- after all, if you're placing yourselves in the position of overlords, it's always nice to have a mythic founding figure to point to: "Naturally the Pilots's Guild should be in charge! Don't you believe in the descendents/personal proteges of Taylor The Great? Don't they have precedent and clear credentials for leadership?"

[pebblerocker]

That sounds exactly what they would have done, yes.

[blnchflr]

Do later books divulge how/why they got off-course to begin with?

[feuervogel]

Not as far as I can remember, as far as I've read (not to the current trilogy).

[spaceoperadiva]

The theory in Foreigner prologue is that they collided with some anomaly in hyperspace-- a fold in spacetime or a singularity attached to the binary star they ended up at that sucked them off course to the binary instead of them exiting at the planned exit point. I don't remember, but I don't think that they ever really figure out just what kind of anomaly caused the original accident. They're only sure it wasn't a ship or crew error.