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.
NO SPOILER: Just the titles in order for easy reference.
* Foreigner (1994) — Locus SF Award nominee, 1995
* Invader (1995) — Locus SF Award nominee, 1996
* Inheritor (1996)
* Precursor (1999)
* Defender (2001) — Locus SF Award nominee, 2002
* Explorer (2003)
* Destroyer (2005)
* Pretender (2006)
* Deliverer (2007)
* Conspirator (2009)
* Deceiver (May 2010)
* Intruder (2011)
(CJ, please edit as/when needed!)
Thank you, Walt: I’m trying to straighten out my files, and I have two titles which never appear. I may actually use one of them, but it doesn’t seem I’ve used them yet. You’re a great help!
Good idea, dividing things up by universe, and listing what belongs in there at the top.
I do get confused with the one-word titles (especially when they start with the same letter), though it is an indication that the book belongs in this series. Perhaps, by the time this series goes digital, they can be subtitled as Foreigner series no.#.
I’ve been wondering at the rate of plant growth in hyperspace. Bren started the voyage with a few cuttings of spider plants, and ended up after 2 years with all four walls of his cabin covered and all the colonists and crew who wanted some having gotten plants from him (at the start of Destroyer, if I remember correctly). There were thousands of colonists and crew, and even if only a small proportion wanted plants that’s still a lot of new plants to grow from offshoots and cuttings in just two years.
Do plants grow extra fast in hyperspace, and is there a reason for that? People don’t really seem to speed up, Cajeiri is counted just 8, but they do get colder and slower-thinking which seems to be a sort of metabolic opposite of what happens to plants. How could that be?
And, if plants do that well in hyperspace, why don’t spaceships have more live food-producing hydroponic ‘houseplants’, even if there’s no room for ‘gardens’?
Things like small tomatoes, strawberries and such give a very quick and prolific return of flavorful produce in very little space and with limited use of resources beyond what’s already necessary for the people – I’d guess just the extra daylight-type lighting, but I’d think people who don’t get sun in their lives already need some of that to stay healthy.
Phoenix didn’t lose all her plants and seeds because of the calamity, because the colonists on the Atevi world brought tomatoes and such down with them, and are still being careful about letting them get onto the mainland. So how come the shipfolk were so starved for natural tastes?
They did have some ornamental plants that were unknown to the worldbound Bren (near the captains offices on the space-station, when Bren went up there the first time) – did they just lose all the food-producing kinds of plants? Or is it just leafy growth that’s accelerated, and producing fruit in hyperspace is too hard on the plants? Then they could at least take salads and spinach and such on the next trip!
Though perhaps better not cabbages, with so many people cooped up together without fresh air. :;):
😆 I once sailed on a boat completely overrun with spider plants: they hung from a planter that circled the main cabin, and as the Med would toss, the plant runners would all sway—I have NEVER seen anything that prolific. They served as curtains. So that’s behind Bren’s experience.
The colonists limited what they were willing to send down to the planet. Tomatos and potatoes, containing strichnine, would be a hit with atevi. But they didn’t fire up all the seeds they have, though some are going now on the station.
A plant can’t outgrow its nutrients. I figure in two years spider plant could be obnoxious…but so could tomatos, if you don’t mind trying to consume too many tomatos…hmn, into the reactor with them!
An acquaintance had a spider plant in a huge half barrel, inside. The plant was at least six feet in diameter.
All the excess fruit and cuttings would probably make very excellent compost once allowed to break down. And, of course, be a source of perpetual seed supply. I don’t suppose, however, that the ship goers/stationers had worm farms, but perhaps something like Bokashi bins? 🙂
Sorry, I still haven’t got the hang of making smileys and suchlike.
if you type semicolon and close-paren, you should get the 😉 smiley
colon and close-paren gives you 🙂
and colon lol colon gives you 😆
I think you can also get the LOL emoticon by typing colon-hyphen-D ( 😀 ).
Speaking as a house-plant incompetent, spider plants are dam near indestructible. Mine has been in the same 6 inch pot for about 5 years now, and gets watered when it wilts and doesn’t get fed. It still flowers every year. Every few years I’ll snip off a few babies, dump them in a tumbler of tap water and leave them until there’s nice root ball. Pot ’em up and off we go again. I’m not surprised they could take over a cabin given a bit of tlc.
I have a few questions! I love the Foreigner universe, the series is my comfort re-reading. I love how rich the books are, but occasionally when I am reading a question pops up. So here are some (and I am sure they demonstrate how much I overthink things!):
1. Do the atevi have farmland for production of grain, or do they manage/forage from existing stands, sort of like modern wild rice production?
2. If there are no birds, what kind of eggs are eaten, and how are they procured if atevi do not domesticate food animals. Is it like the mecheiti, where some animals are domesticated to serve a purpose? I am assuming these are some kind of reptile analogue?
3. What, if any rituals are there for atevi dead? I know about the memorial service that Tabini had for Valasi, where there was some kind of tomb or something, but are those transformative places or loci for behaviour (such as implied by how man’chi reorganises itself upon the death of a head of a household or whatever)? Would one normally visit the place where ancestors rest or for the common person are there even cemeteries or the like? I am a bioarchaeologist and spend a lot of time swimming around in mortuary theory, so I always am interested in those kinds of things when I am reading about other cultures.
I think we’ll find out about rituals for the dead when nand’ Ilisidi dies. (Which, I hope, will be a long time in the future.)
And I answered part of one of my questions…embryonic lizards are the eggs…knew I had seen something somewhere about it. Still, are milk/egg producing animals considered domesticated? Is it mecheiti milk? 🙂
Kate – a lot of this sort of stuff is debated over on the Shejidan site. I’m sure you’d be welcome. Be nice to have an answer from the horse’s mouth tho!
I’ve always wondered what Phoenix’s backers did/said/thought when it vanished from the known universe.
Though perhaps better not cabbages, with so many people cooped up together without fresh air. :;)
Co-generation pants. Somebody has to invent this stuff. Prototypes on cows.
What a fabulously interesting thing to ponder! One would think that a plant on a ship would grow extremely similar to how it does on a planet provided appropriate gravity, lighting and radiation levels.
From there you then have to factor in how close artificial gravity would be to the plants ideal environment, the type of lighting used how many hours of light, the air quality, air pressure, temperature, et cetera. You can drastically improve the growth rate of plants with simple changes in environment.
ISS. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/experiments/PESTO_prt.htm
Last spring Proge’s father brought me two of the saddest, most decrepit spider plants I have ever seen, almost dead, planted in cement. I took extreme rehab measures. Three months later I was working with my plants and he asked “Whatever happened to my spider plants?” I handed him two big bushy plants, dripping runners.
Spiders are almost indestructible and seem to grow any where. I would think they would be a great choice for space. They grow well, provide a psychological need for growing things and they are fabulous air scrubbers. Of course ships have sophisticated air circulation,but I think a living source of oxygen could be a huge benefit to all.
Alas, my tries with spider plants failed abysmally, poor things probably didn’t have enough light. But I had great success with philodendron, they survive too much water, too little water and a really dark place.
Hi friends, I’ve been away from CJ’s works for quite some time and want to get back to the Foreigner series. Can anyone tell me the title of the book where Bren and the Atavi have taken over the human space ship?
Off the top of my head: Explorer.
I checked: The actual take-the-ship part is Defender. The next one, Explorer, deals with the mission to the new station.
New here, long time fan- How many people were on Reunion? The 1st hint was that there were a few hundred (given out begrudgingly as part of the true nature of the Phoenix’s(?) return). In Explorer, after the capture, retention and interrogation of the 4 Reunion security troops, the population is revealed as seventeen thousand. Subsequently, in Bren’s letter/journal addressed to Tabini he reports that 4000 and change have been boarded. This number is confirmed in the re-cap at the beginning of Destroyer.
Lol: ever heard the ‘cat on the roof’ joke?
http://jokes4all.net/roof.html
Part of it’s due to secrecy, each step leaking a bit more of the true situation, until it’s evident it’s a catastrophe.
Part of it’s due to reproduction: a few hundred having a few children each over time goes exponentially: 500 couples originally each having 3 children while still staying alive is 2500; next gen is (children each having 3, older gen dying) with no allowance for couples: 6500; third gen is 13500 new kids plus 4500 old people, or, 18000. And 4th gen is, with elders, over 50,000 people. Rabbits. Lemmings. You can get a lot of people fast, if you really want to.
Hyperventilating slightly- First, thank you for the reply. I’m (male member of this pair who just put his soul mate to bed with a pillow talk debate on this point- she’s just catching up on book #7 or 1st of third series and I just read Conspirator) just wondering about the numbers. This confused me when I first read the book because of the interrogation. Were any Humans left on Reunion?
As I recall it was turned over to the locals, so no. But they’re threatening to visit.
And welcome in! We’re a friendly lot, here!
Thank You, east coast so off to bed. Seriously, love your work. Thanks.
Not technically a new fan- I’m half of Amy & Doug. She’s going to sign up separately to increase numbers. I’m new to fan sites like this and searched Google last night on a whim, hopefully to get into a discussion about your work with other readers. When you answered in person I did a spit-take. When I told my wife this morning she had a similar response (except hot coffee at me instead of beer at the computer screen). Having spent the last 2 hours roaming through the site I’ve realized how generous and patient you are with our fanboy and -girl questions. Like I said, I’m new to these type of sites so maybe I could spend the afternoon chatting with David Byrne or trading golfing tips with Tiger Woods (He still golfs, doesn’t he? Oh, maybe not.) I doubt that. Anyways- thank you very much. #I have a million questions but I’ll parse them out over time and, really, no need to respond- just thanks.
About spiderplants: I have a true purple thumb and even I can manage to keep them alive.
Something similar happened in New England, plus they didn’t have the diseases and political violence that killed off so many in Britain at that time. In my genealogy, the New England phase is characterised by enormous families with most members living to adulthood, long generations (3/century), and many people living into their eighties and nineties.
My genealogy stuff (plus volunteer-keying old parish records in England and Italy) turns up some really horrific die-off rates in Europe, with annual waves of plague punctuated by wars, famine, economic depression, and religious nuttery…not to mention the English Civil War part a and b. A lot of my folk were running for their lives.
And in the Americas, indeed, big populations.
One thing of note, however: the rate at which women in the Americas were dying in childbirth was horrific, far worse than, say, England. Some men were having three and four serial wives, having buried the others. And frequently you’ll see the child’s birthdate and the mother’s death date simultaneous. Nasty way to go.
My south Sweden ancestors (really – part of Denmark from time to time) generally lived until aged 80 or 90, if they didn’t die before their fourth year. This was a rich part of the country, though, with lots of good farmland to sustain the people.
I had learned that the mean age was about 30, back then, and was surprised to see my 17th century precursors live that long. But the mean figures are explained by the high child mortality, something they didn’t tell us in school.
I find that when I’m transcribing 19th century English parish registers. The burials go in cycles and often there are 2-3 of the same family all being buried in a matter of weeks. And of course, the newborns closely followed by the mother a number of days later.
Ilisidi may be my favorite character in the Foreigner books. She was hardly young when we first meet her, and there are signs in the latest book that she is becoming increasingly frail. What constitutes a “ripe old age” among the Atevi? Is she beginning to push the outer limits for an active old age or are there many active Atevi great grand-mothers?
She’s older than most, and the lack of exercise on the voyage took a bit out of her. But don’t count her out yet.