{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2515",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2515,
    "subject": "5HC: the abo \"stellar chameleon device\"",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-12-16T10:17:58+00:00",
    "last": "2000-12-16T10:17:58+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0207@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-12-16T10:17:58+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) 5HC: the abo \"stellar chameleon device\"",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Talarican,"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Thank you, that is indeed the conclusion toward which I was meandering ever\nso erratically. The difficulty I have, with just leaving it at that, is that\nI should think that the French interstellar explorers who (re)discovered the\nsystem would have done basic astrometrics as a matter of course and perhaps\nbeen put on guard by the evident fact that Messrs. Hertzsprung, Russell,\nNewton, and Kepler have gone on holiday so far as this system is concerned."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Part of the situation here is: the C/A system had been overlooked, more\ndistant stars explored and colonized (the planets, of course), at the time\nthat the first French ship came down.\n\nThe easy answer is: ah, it was that \"cloaking device\" type spell being done\nby the Shadow Children.  It made the star itself not invisible (they knew\nit was there), but looking like a cannonical star that should not/could\nnot/did not have any planets at all for one reason or another (too big, too\nsmall, too young, etc.).  If this theory is to be followed out, then we\nshould be looking for completely inappropriate stars in the target range,\nrather than stars that could really be right.\n\nOTOH, when Shadow Child Wolf pulls the plug on the spell, it seems more\nlike maybe it was only hiding the twin planets (rather than disguising the\nstar).  But maybe not, come to think of it. So anyway, there's this stellar\nchameleon device angle."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "If the star is so nonconformant to the parameters of  the main sequence, who\nknows how unstable it might be? (and, if artificially altered, what would be\nthe ramifications of that scenario? What if the parties responsible return,\nprepared to weed from their garden any biological infestations which might\nhave occurred in the interim?) Would it be wise to colonize it, or even to\ninvest the effort of exploring it with an objective of possible\ncolonization? Or, perhaps, was the Great Anglo-Franco War already raging\nelsewhere in the galaxy, and were the French explorers/colonists in fact\ndesperate refugees disinclined to look a gift horse in the mouth? (rather\nremeniscent of Larry Niven's motley collection of flawed colony worlds in\nhis Known Space cycle.)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I still get a kick out of thinking about the twin planets and their star as\na big world-building/star-tinkering forerunner-race project.  I don't know\nif Wolfe thought of it this way at all, but still it is a neat angle.\nRemember how in RINGWORLD there is this Stapledonian angle of how the\nhumanoids come to fill each ecological niche . . . of an artificial\nmegaworld?  So you have grazing humans, and jackal humans, and so forth: a\nhuge ecological pyramid all evolved from human stock. Hard sf leading right\nback into that deep primitive hunter realm of \"we are all brothers, animals\nand humans alike\" (which is very different from the herding realm!): and\nthis is exactly what we have in the case of Wolfe's wonderful \"Tracking\nSong\" (terraforming, beastmen, etc.).\n\nBut in a manufactured environment: like bacteria found growing in jet fuel,\nwhere supposedly nothing could survive.  We know that creatures adapt to\ntheir environment, that the landscape biome shapes them, and that each\ncontinent on Earth has its own little variant as well.  Shaping humanity as\nwell, into what we call races (Wolfe mentions this in TBOTNS).  So what if\nplastic humanity is put into an artificial alien construction?  In Niven's\ncase, the world is obviously a dingus, so the surprise is how the humanoids\nhave responded by mutating the way they have (that is, we see the \"song of\nRingworld\" through the people it causes to flourish).  In the case of 5HC,\neven if the worlds and their star are not a manufactured thing, still, they\nare in effect a couple of alien continents--biomes which we begin to sense\nby the types of humans they cause to flourish.\n\nThe contest between Ste. Anne and Ste. Croix may originate in their soils,\nand predate all human contact.  If the worlds were manufactured, then the\ncontest might be one of alien design rather than natural happenstance.  In\nany event, it may be that Anglo-French conflict has really nothing to do\nwith it: the situation is the song of the planets being sung.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}