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Vernor Vinge's Deepness in the Sky features an alien race which, because they evolved from genetically engineered spiderlike creatures, have an interesting cond
by phaedrus 7y ago
Vernor Vinge's Deepness in the Sky features an alien race which, because they evolved from genetically engineered spiderlike creatures, have an interesting condition: in addition to many eyes their retinas also have a fantastic range of spectrum response from infrared to ultraviolet, so that their visual input feed exceeds their visual processing capability.
The hack is that their visual cortex is multiplexed in a way that certain colors or color combinations might be interpreted as feeling like seeing "plaid" or "tartan" even though the color is solid.
- EvanAnderson 7y ago(This is unrelated to the article, but given that Vinge is one of my favorite authors I couldn't resist replying to this.) It's been a few years since I read "Deepness", but I don't recall that the Spiders were ever referred-to as genetically-engineered. I'll definitely look into that. re: the perception of color - I took that to be the Focused translators' interpretation of the spiders' vision, rather than a literal description of the spiders' cognitive process. I've always read the portions of the book that take place on the spiders' world as being a narrative created by the translators, in which the incomprehensibly-alien spiders are made more "relate-able" by analogizing alien concepts with human concepts.
- Roboprog 7y agoThe on-off system itself was believed to be artificial in the story, which might imply that the residents were also. Speculation on top of fiction:-)