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It's quite a fun read but I don't understand why the author chose the word "meat". I mean, if for those aliens human biology is so weird and foreign, how could

by simias 12y ago

It's quite a fun read but I don't understand why the author chose the word "meat". I mean, if for those aliens human biology is so weird and foreign, how could they have a concept of meat? Or meat flaps? That seems to imply that they're familiar with non-sentient meat, but what would that be? And if those aliens are so different from us they probably don't have the same concept of food as we have, so it wouldn't make a lot of sense to single out "meat" at all. The story works better for me if I replace "meat" with, say, "carbon blob" or something like that. I still the humour still works out and it's a less culturally-loaded phrase.

xyzzyz 12y ago
I think the idea is that they have plenty of contact with meat-based living forms, but none of them are intelligent or sentient.
- bencollier49 12y ago
  But those would blow air through their flaps, though, right?
torrent-of-ions 12y ago
The aliens don't speak English. I imagine the author chose the word meat in the translation into English for effect.
Dn_Ab 12y ago
I think once the aliens got past the whole meat thing they'd find much common ground as fellow bigoted beings.
mechanical_fish 12y ago
It's a story about squick. The aliens aren't merely having trouble grasping the concept. They are revolted by the concept. Indeed, as you've noticed, their revulsion appears to be the thing which prevents them from getting the picture. It's not as if they haven't seen meat. They've even seen intelligent creatures that are almost entirely meat. That's all part of the joke. If these aliens could get past their squick they'd be clever enough to understand squishy brains, but they can't.
bigtunacan 12y ago
I saw your post this morning and it reminded me of the "To The Reader" opening of Nightfall by Isaac Asimov & Robert Silverberg. So now that I'm home I pulled it off my dead tree shelf for you :) "Kalgash is an alien world and it is not our intention to have you think that it is identical to Earth, even though we depict its people as speaking a language that you can understand, and using terms that are familiar to you. Those words should be understood as mere equivalents of alien terms--that is, a conventional set of equivalents of the same sort that a writer of novels uses when he has foreign characters speaking with each other in their own language but nevertheless transcribes their words in the language of the reader. So when the people of Kalgash speak of 'miles,' or 'hands,' or 'cars,' or 'computers,' they mean their own units of distance, their own grasping-organs, their own ground-transportation devices, their own invormation-processing machines, etc. The computers used on Kalgash are not necessarily compatible with the ones used in New York or London or Stockholm, and the 'mile' that we use in this book is not necessarily the American unit of 5,280 feet. But it seemed simpler and more desirable to use these familiar terms in describing events on this wholly alien world than it would have been to invent a long series of wholly Kalgashian terms. In other words, we could have told you that one of our characters paused to strap on his quonglishes before setting out on a walk of seven vorks along the main gleebish of his native znoob, and everything might have seemed ever so much more thoroughly alien. But it would also have been ever so much more difficult to make sense out of what we were saying, and that did not seem useful."

by simias 12y ago

xyzzyz 12y ago

I think the idea is that they have plenty of contact with meat-based living forms, but none of them are intelligent or sentient.

bencollier49 12y ago
But those would blow air through their flaps, though, right?

torrent-of-ions 12y ago

The aliens don't speak English. I imagine the author chose the word meat in the translation into English for effect.

Dn_Ab 12y ago

I think once the aliens got past the whole meat thing they'd find much common ground as fellow bigoted beings.

mechanical_fish 12y ago

It's a story about squick. The aliens aren't merely having trouble grasping the concept. They are revolted by the concept. Indeed, as you've noticed, their revulsion appears to be the thing which prevents them from getting the picture. It's not as if they haven't seen meat. They've even seen intelligent creatures that are almost entirely meat. That's all part of the joke. If these aliens could get past their squick they'd be clever enough to understand squishy brains, but they can't.

bigtunacan 12y ago

I saw your post this morning and it reminded me of the "To The Reader" opening of Nightfall by Isaac Asimov & Robert Silverberg. So now that I'm home I pulled it off my dead tree shelf for you :) "Kalgash is an alien world and it is not our intention to have you think that it is identical to Earth, even though we depict its people as speaking a language that you can understand, and using terms that are familiar to you. Those words should be understood as mere equivalents of alien terms--that is, a conventional set of equivalents of the same sort that a writer of novels uses when he has foreign characters speaking with each other in their own language but nevertheless transcribes their words in the language of the reader. So when the people of Kalgash speak of 'miles,' or 'hands,' or 'cars,' or 'computers,' they mean their own units of distance, their own grasping-organs, their own ground-transportation devices, their own invormation-processing machines, etc. The computers used on Kalgash are not necessarily compatible with the ones used in New York or London or Stockholm, and the 'mile' that we use in this book is not necessarily the American unit of 5,280 feet. But it seemed simpler and more desirable to use these familiar terms in describing events on this wholly alien world than it would have been to invent a long series of wholly Kalgashian terms. In other words, we could have told you that one of our characters paused to strap on his quonglishes before setting out on a walk of seven vorks along the main gleebish of his native znoob, and everything might have seemed ever so much more thoroughly alien. But it would also have been ever so much more difficult to make sense out of what we were saying, and that did not seem useful."