This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Kizor: Ha HA! Thanks, Dangermike, Corahs Uncle, Greenygal! I was wondering if anyone else read these things.
Greenygal: I'm not deleting the addition to Stay In The Kitchen in case I've missed something, but I don't think the narrative actually demonstrates that gender makes a difference. The female Khone is the one Cha Thrat connects with directly, but she gets just as much access to Conway's memories, up to and including the way he feels about his wife. (For that matter, the fact that Conway is resident in Khone's mind to that extent would seem to suggest that not every two-gendered species has this problem, as O'Mara claims earlier in the book.) And I don't think there's any indication that the telepathic parasite-being even has a gender.
fleb: Never read the series, or heard of it till now, so question: What do all the four-letter acronyms stand for?
Greenygal: It's a shorthand classification system; the letters indicate various things about a species' physiology, like what they breathe or how many limbs they ought to have.
Kizor: After Stay in the Kitchen was resolved, another example continued to house an ongoing argument. I'm moving it here so it can still be viewed, leaving the bare-bones version in the article so that it stops.
- Most Common Super Power - Again, Murchison receives attention due to her anatomy, especially when she puts on a skintight diving suit to visit the aquatic wards. Subverted and Lampshaded later on, as most of the aliens wonder how human females can stand upright, let alone walk with such a top-heavy, imbalanced design. (Men generally have more upper body mass than women, making males the actual topheavy ones, but what the hey.)
- Then again, the aliens are right if you consider the distribution as well as the mass itself. Males have more upper body mass in total, but it's distributed evenly over one's center of gravity. Females hang several pounds' worth of tissue off the front of the chest wall, pulling the center of gravity forward and causing alterations of gait and posture, to say nothing of the back and shoulder strain that can develop if one is... ahem, overendowed for one's frame.
Kizor: And this pops up the next day, I'm moving it to talk until someone (preferably me soon, but I'm erratic so feel free) cleans it up.
- Aliens Speaking English - And using the Latin alphabet as the basis of their classifications.
- The stories actually subvert this trope. It is not that everyone speaks english, but the vast translation computer solves the problem of interspecies communication. The one story that has the terrible event of the translation computer getting damaged introduces the difficulty that Conway can understand tralthan, thanks to his memory tape, but is poorly equipped to speak it well. In the Galactic Gourmet, on approaching the station, Gerronsevas is asked for his species and planet of origin. He replies 'Human from Earth'. The official replies (presumably in his best 'talking to provincial rubes' voice) 'Every species name translates to human and all planets where intelligent life has evolved are named Earth.'. The books are typeset in english and the roman alphabet, because of who reads them. It is only the names of the human characters that give any indication that anyone speaks english.
