Reply: Item #1194454 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET02#
Protean `R,'
Re: "Orphans of the Sky," wasn't the two-headed mutie giant just the second in command? I.e., the hero's "Tonto," to show how the pure strain hero could tolerate diversity. <g>
I seem to recall that in Harry Harrison's CAPTIVE UNIVERSE, the
colonists were kept in a stable society modeled on that of the
Aztecs, and the guardian of the tunnel between the worlds (of
essentially cargo and crew) was a robot in humanoid form with two
snake heads on top. Based on an Aztec god. (Colonists deliberately
kept in the dark here.) In Aldis's NON-STOP (aka STARSHIP) there
were mysterious ancient giants and aliens on board the ship, but it turned out to be that the crew had grown steadily smaller in stature (fish in a bowl?) so that their own ancestors were the giants; and the aliens were really humans come onboard to study them, as the ship had returned to Earth and been orbiting for some time.
Let's see, what else? Delany's BALLAD OF BETA-2 is about an anthropologist studying the empty generation starship post-colonization. There was an Infocom game called "Starcross" that had some pretty neat elements. Coney's THE HERO OF DOWNWAYS . . . let's see, how does that one go? Basically a hero is needed, so he's grown from the hero-vat . . . in the end, was that even a generation starship story? (Can't remember. Read it close to DARK UNIVERSE by — and I often confuse them. One or both are quasi-generation starship stories.) Then there's Geston's THE LORDS OF THE STARSHIP, where generations pass but the dingus doesn't even lift off! "The Starlost" pilot was novelized by Edward Bryant, I think? THE DREAM MILLENNIUM by James White has the sleepers going through "altered states" style evolutionary progression dreams, from primordial sea up to the society they left, and there's that mysterious entity onboard the ship.
Re: card currency used outside of Viron. If you can find some text to that effect, I'd be much obliged. I myself don't know.
=mantis=
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