Catch And Release by Daniel C. Smith

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Lester Curtis
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Catch And Release by Daniel C. Smith

Post by Lester Curtis »

Well, usually I complain of preachiness when I read something like this, but in this case, I can't. Yeah, the message of our environmental folly is there, but it's overwhelmed by the main character's -- character -- his personal integrity.

I remember a really great line from Chanur's Legacy, by C. J. Cherryh: "Never shoot at anything you can't talk to." The main character in this story understood the importance of that.

Very good story; it went fast and was easy to read, and the introspective viewpoint puts you in close touch with the character's feelings. Very nice descriptive work, also.

This one works.
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Lester Curtis
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Re: Catch And Release by Daniel C. Smith

Post by Lester Curtis »

Nice commentary, Tristan, and welcome aboard! Hope to hear more from you, and maybe some story submissions as well.

Good point about the food chain. Something else should have shown up, and there should have been a variety there.
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Robert_Moriyama
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Re: Catch And Release by Daniel C. Smith

Post by Robert_Moriyama »

Lester Curtis wrote:Nice commentary, Tristan, and welcome aboard! Hope to hear more from you, and maybe some story submissions as well.

Good point about the food chain. Something else should have shown up, and there should have been a variety there.
Silly boys. Europa had a rat farm ecology. That's where you raise rats to use their skins for small, ugly leather goods, and feed them the skinned remains of the preceding generation... (What's that you say? You would have literally diminishing returns because you are removing some of the organic material (in the form of skins), so each successive generation would be smaller (in size and number)? Well, EUROPAN rats -- er, large, possibly-sentient ocean life forms -- have very efficient metabolisms, and absorb organic compounds from the hydrocarbon content of the oceans and atmosphere, so they can live as cannibals indefinitely.

Would you believe...
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Lester Curtis
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Re: Catch And Release by Daniel C. Smith

Post by Lester Curtis »

Robert_Moriyama wrote:
Would you believe...
No. I wouldn't. :wink:

Seriously, though . . . a large, complex organism doesn't just evolve by itself. By the time anything gets that big, it's environment will have spawned thousands, or likely millions of other species -- an entire ecology, in other words. There are too many jobs to do to sustain an ecology: nitrogen cycles, carbon cycles, etc. -- and no one species can do all those jobs.
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Robert_Moriyama
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Re: Catch And Release by Daniel C. Smith

Post by Robert_Moriyama »

Lester Curtis wrote:
Robert_Moriyama wrote:
Would you believe...
No. I wouldn't. :wink:

Seriously, though . . . a large, complex organism doesn't just evolve by itself. By the time anything gets that big, it's environment will have spawned thousands, or likely millions of other species -- an entire ecology, in other words. There are too many jobs to do to sustain an ecology: nitrogen cycles, carbon cycles, etc. -- and no one species can do all those jobs.
Of course, you are assuming that the creatures evolved on / in Europa, instead of being seeded there (along with some form of self-sustaining food supply) by The Big Giant Head during a pit stop en route to the Third Rock From The Sun. Seriously... if the science / exploration (/exploitation) teams HAD NOT found evidence of simpler life forms, maybe it's because they weren't there to find. (Less Occam's Razor-worthy alternative: the creatures and their sustaining ecosystem were seriously limited in range, and Our Hero was the first who happened to cross their territory. Viz. the teensy (relatively speaking) areas on Mars with (maybe) occasionally-liquid water...

If the creatures are not 'vertebrates', one would not necessarily find a 'fossil record' of past, larger ecosystems (everything just dissolves into the soup, which contains a lot of organic compounds ... but so do some interstellar gas clouds, comets, etc.).
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Jack London (1876-1916)
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