CONVENTION APPEARANCES Miscon 2011, around Memorial Day, Missoula MT, CJ/Jane. Radcon 2011, Feb 14 ca., Red Lion in Pasco Wa, CJ, Jane, OSG. Note:ConDor, San Diego, CA, was a great con, and we may very well go back, if not in 2011, then in 2012. We are also considering Midsouthcon in 2011.
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About the Foreigner series: Spoiler alerts
There is the general spoiler page for general questions.
I’m making this set of pages for more specific questions.
The rule is: do not ask or comment about a book until it has been at least a month in issue. I think that will make everybody happy re spoilers.
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I wonder, if Nand Geigi and Nand Cajeiri both see a future table without strife and mortal competition and recognize a value in such arrangement, than more is changing than the average Ateva would imagine? Hmm, with respect to children, I have recently thought that Bren should be surprised with a child from his not to remote past. A lover prior to Barb, who produces a daughter and doesn’t inform Bren. Maybe a love from his college days? A young lady of Cajeiri’s age group? On a roll, I wondered what would happen if Bren were suddenly provided an heir, and she came to live with him on the mainland. My imagination does wander a bit.
Except Cajeiri was born significantly after Bren hits the mainland so his postulated daughter would likely be more like a teen-ager than nearly 9. Assuming Bren would have neglected to take precautions to that extent which I’d have a hard time believing of him…
Well, his old girlfriend/casual date Sandra Johnson (remember her, from early in the series?) DID have a son named Brent….awfully similar name, to my mind…Obviously not a match for Cajeri, but Damiri is pregnant again…Probably too many years between her next child and any hitherto-unknown child of Bren’s, though.
All this speculation. I’m very deep into the series again. Found myself thinking today, “what does one have to do next weekend?” This can only get more pronounced as I go on.:)
And then we would see Bren develop an ulcer …
Thankfully he’s got over that sort of namby pamby self doubty stuff.
Then again, having a kid might be considered a “Quiet” episode for him… lol
So, to keep it sorta on topic:
CJ, whilst the science from Uptop could enable this sort of thing, what’s your personal opinion on Interspecies cross breeding happening within the Foreigner-verse?
CJ,
Some stupid questions.
(1) Are the Edi and the Gan different races of atevi (like Caucloids and Mongloids are different races of humans)? Or are they simply different clans?
Since the Edi, especially, are the aboriginal people of an archipelago that contained Mospheira it would suggest that at the very least they had very distinct culture and language due to that isolation, right?
Finally on this topic who populates the rest of the archipelago other than Mospheira? If you had to compare Mospheira to an island on Earth how large is it? Greenland? New Guinea? Or smaller like Ireland or Britain?
(2) Are there any maps of the world of the atevi?
Thank you!
They have a racial difference, subtle to human eyes; and their culture and political system is different, hence the difficulty assimilating them into the aishidi’tat. Mospheira is about the size of Britain without Scotland, a little smaller, and without the number of isles—there are some, but none of great size in the north. Crescent Island to the south is about like Corsica.
Hmn, having visited Corsica a number of times I have full respect for how large a “small” island can seem… (it’s very mountainous, with small roads)… so why aren’t there any townships? Or are there, only we have’t heard of them (except the failed development)? Was it too evacuated? I think I remember some reference saying Mospheiran expansion plans had been approved by Tabini (or some committee, lol?) – was it evacuated and then forbidden for humans to use, to create some buffer zone?
(OK, so this should teach me to read further down the thread before asking questions
– the answers are all there, already!)
Wow so Mospheira is the size of England, Wales, and Cornwall combined? Not big. Poor humans!
Are the Edi and Gan the same race, or are they two different races from each other as well as Ragi?
Are all the rest of the aishidi’tat (e.g., Eastern associations) also Ragi in race?
Who lives on Crescent Island? Humans or Atevi?
Thank you so much. I kept putting Deceiver down to sort it out. It appears that the Edi are a nationless enclave within the aishidi’tat – sort of like how many Cornish feel! I haven’t gotten to the end yet so I don’t know if the Dowager’s succeeded in giving them a lordship (the Cornish haven’t gotten their own parliament or recognition as a constituent country either!)
The Edi and Gan look a little different, but do not distinguish themselves as two races, more like two tribes or cultural groups. Crescent Island is arid and not so nice in the main, and it is ceded to humans. And the Ragi as a specific clan are closely culturally connected (to the point of identity) with the Atageini and Kadagidi and Taibeni, but most of all Tabini, head of the Ragi clan, maintains strong ties to the Taibeni, which is a situation the Atageini and Kadagidi detest: the Taibeni they view as rural and rough, sort of country cousins, and Tabini’s adhering most to the Taibeni makes a lot of central Ragi-related clans upset to the point of craziness.
Wasn’t it in the 1800′s that the world lost the last native Cornish speaker?
Interesting. So the Edi and Gan are one race with different cultures. The mainland atevi are another race. So there are two distinct races of Atevi. Humans only really have three so that makes sense.
With respect to the Cornish I’m not sure it ever went fully extinct but it is certainly endangered. There’s been a revival of sorts – there are about 2,000 fully fluent speakers in Cornwall; a good number of them are under 30 raised bilingual so that’s a good thing. With it now being listed as a minority language, used on signs, and I believe taught in schools it’s likely to survive and grow like Irish has and to a lesser extent Welsh and Manx, and to a much, much lesser extent Scots Gaelic and Scots. At least it won’t be like the British language which is completely extinct. Breton survives in Brittany but they were not the same. Neat stuff though.
Are there different local/regional languages in the aishidi’tat? You’d think with the years of isolation before they found each other there’d have been separate languages. And even within the larger regions there probably would have been different languages due to the isolation from each other and difficulty of travel. Surely the Edi and Gan speak a different primary language than the Western Association.
We need a companion book about the Atevi’s world; sort of a Rivan Codex-like thing!
I believe the current population of London itself is in the millions; that’s not even counting the rest of England, nor the rest of the UK. In Foreigner, didn’t Bren tell Cenedi that the population of Mospheira was somewhere in the 400,000 range? So I don’t suppose they’re very crowded; there must be a good bit of wild country on the Island. I’d love to see a map of just Mospheira, but also one of the mainland; I’m not really clear on how big it is.
One of the things I love best about the series is the importance the atevi put on wild places, on the conservation of natural resources, and their insistence on only hunting each creature within a specific season. The idea of appreciating the fact (when eating meat) that you have taken a life, of being cognizant of this during the meal, is very appealing to me.
And this leads me to a question I have been meaning to ask: CJ, what is the state of religion in general among humans on the atevi world? Bren makes reference to God, but organized religion doesn’t seem to play any part in his life (not that he has a lot of time for it!) Just wondering…religion in SF and fantasy is a particular interest of mine.
Some are religious: Bren didn’t have that in his upbringing.
Silverglass,
in Foreigner Bren told Cenedi that the population on Mospheira was just over 4 million.
Ooops, I was undercounting by a factor of ten! Thanks, iminnocent! I didn’t have the book handy to check.