Children of the Last God

[Kilarin]

By the way, this DOES contain some spoilers, if you haven't read "Children of the Last God" yet, go to www.diskuspublishing.com/jimfarris.html and BUY it, read it, and THEN read this post!

Well, Children of the Last God kept me up past midnight two nights in a row.

I LOVE the difference engine. Babbage should have tried binary!

Question though, do you think users would really find converting to and from binary easier than decimal addition? I'm not saying they wouldn't, I'm just having a hard time seeing it. For the Musties it obviously makes sense.

I was very pleased to see the horses blending in, and in logical ways! You didn't just drop the horses into a vacuum, you worked out how they would be working into Mus society and how they would be affecting it. Well, really STARTING to affect it. We've only seen the tippy tip of the Iceberg there.

At first I was a little confused as to why the Mus would be shocked by the stallion's harems when they have courtesan? It seems like once you go to two wives, three shouldn't be shocking, but then after thought I decided that this was just my prejudice coming from a monogamous culture. I suppose good muslims are horrified at the thought of a man
with five wives.

Kahgah surprised me in his confrontation with Xaa. An elegant and logical solution to his dilemma. Much nicer than the predictable kidnapping attempt!

Piniped=seals and walruses, but what is Febrilosis? My gut says this is not just a fantasy disease that you made up, but it MIGHT be...

I find the dark one's psychology intriguing. I know that the dark one was frightened by the bluff that Amani would do her serious harm if the dark one attacked, but the dark one thought that Amani was coming to kill it. It seems that when Amani started getting physically close, desperation should have caused an attack. But the dark one proved incapable of making that logical choice. It was frozen by fear, like a deer in headlights. There do seem to be some severe limits on it's intelligence.

"...for now, the chronicler's pen falls silent."

Thank you for an incredible story, AND, count my vote in for MORE of the Oerth series. I would really like to see more stories about Xaa and Merle, I'd like to know how Little Tinker and Xaa's children turn out, I want to find out more about the Canids, and I really want to find out what happens in the future of this society that Merle has helped to found.

Thank you!

Kilarin

[Xaa]

kilarin said:

I LOVE the difference engine. Babbage should have tried binary!

Yep. Unfortunately, at the time Babbage was working on his differential engine, the whole idea of binary as a valid number system literally had not occurred to anyone except Boole. What really needed to happen was for Boole and Babbage to meet - but, this didn't happen.

Question though, do you think users would really find converting to and from binary easier than decimal addition?

Well, YOU and ME, wouldn't, no. They would - you get used to the tool you are using. Example: The Abacus. Even after I tell you how an abacus is used, you'll still be sitting there trying to convert it into decimal. People who are raised with it and use it every day, however, don't have a problem with it. There was a time when the Abacus was THE calculating instrument of the Orient. Of course, today, everyone uses a pocket calculator, but that's as may be.

At first I was a little confused as to why the Mus would be shocked by the stallion's harems when they have courtesan? It seems like once you go to two wives, three shouldn't be shocking, but then after thought I decided that this was just my prejudice coming from a monogamous culture. I suppose good muslims are horrified at the thought of a man
with five wives.

Precisely. Everyone has their own little taboos, and the relationship of husband-wife-courtesan is one established both by law and custom. Moreover, it's the WAY they pick the females for their "harems" that the mus found shocking - the males literally win the females over with just a song. Since they can't experience it, they can't understand it, and to them, it just looks like the males sit together, the females come along, and they just start grouping up silently and then wandering off. To them, they don't see any tradition, they don't see a proper exchange of honor and respect, nada. So, the horses cover it up with outwardly "respectable" behavior, and everyone's sensibilities are preserved.

Kahgah surprised me in his confrontation with Xaa. An elegant and logical solution to his dilemma. Much nicer than the predictable kidnapping attempt!

They couldn't fight, the result of that would have been boring in the extreme. Xaa doesn't just out-rank Kagah, he's also several orders of magnitude more deadly than him. In any direct conflict between the two, Kagah is doomed.

Piniped=seals and walruses, but what is Febrilosis? My gut says this is not just a fantasy disease that you made up, but it MIGHT be...

Distemper. Please note that distemper affects pretty much all mammals, even you and me, but it's effects vary from species to species. Some animals, like pinnipeds, carry it with no outward sign of the disease. Others, like dolphins and dogs, die from it - and the course of the disease and it's effects vary widely from species to species.

I named it "febrilosis" because I figured they wouldn't come up with the name "distemper" on their own, or anything like it.

It was frozen by fear, like a deer in headlights.

Precisely. As she explains, she was afraid to NOT try to kill her, for fear of what she might do, yet at the same time she was also afraid to try, for fear of what she might do.

And incidentally, reptiles DO get frozen with fear at times, though this is rare. Most reptiles will run if they're afraid, and if they can't run, they'll attack. Barring those two options and tossing in the factor of intelligence and mass-mind, you have the Dark One.

There do seem to be some severe limits on it's intelligence.

The largest limit being a lack of empathy. Since the Dark One represents the overmind for an entire species and that speicies is literally hostile to everything that moves, there's only so far it's ever going to get on it's own.

[Kilarin]

What really needed to happen was for Boole and Babbage to meet - but, this didn't happen.

We were SO close to starting the information age in the 1800's, and just missed it. Just BARELY missed it.

They couldn't fight, the result of that would have been boring in the extreme.

Exactly, which is why my hat's off to you as an author. Many writers would have just done the obvious boring thing. You don't do that. Your characters refuse to be cardboard cutouts. They insist upon having depth and using that depth to surprise you by making decisions cardboard cutouts wouldn't. To me, THAT is a sign of a good writer.

Distemper

Ah! That makes sense, thanks for the clarification!

And thanks for the story! I'm looking forward to more of it if you get re-inspired on this series some day.