DaveC426913 said:
One thing that I've always had trouble with though, is the fact that Earth has produced a plethora of critters that are genetically almost identical to humans, yet started independently 3.5 billion years earlier. How can we be an alien race on a planet that is, genetically, our creche?
Yes, I take your point, and I'm bound to say that I've never considered it until now. One instance where
Protector gets it wrong concerning our common genetic inheritance is particularly telling. This occurs when one of the novel’s leading characters speculates whether Phssthpok (the novel’s by now-deceased Pak antagonist) would have gone on to deliberately infect the chimpanzees in the Congo with ‘tree-of-life’ — that’s to say, the plant-based virus which initiates the Pak into their final evolutionary stage: aka the ‘protector’ end-phase’ — a sort of living breathing proto-
Terminator? The point here is that the split between chimps and the line that eventually lead to us humans occurred long before
Homo habilis arrived on the scene. This inconsistency in turn prohibits any idea of
H hablis possessing its own unique set of trans-Terran genes. Therein lies the problem.
As a side note: one possible workaround to explain away the restrictions implied by a local genetic inheritance would have been to introduce a Panspermian element into the story. Why not? After all, the only biology we presently know about is what exists down here on Earth. We have yet to discover a single alien bacterium, never mind a full-on spacefaring ET civilisation. Yes, of course, it’s hard to imagine any space-based biological flotsam, along with its delicate genetic coding, surviving the shooting gallery which is the interstellar medium. Still, in our present state of unknowingness-for-sure, this to my way of thinking is exactly where science fiction should step into the breach.
There’s not a whisper of any of this in
Protector, of course.* So it can’t be used as a justification. All I can say in the novel’s defence is that it was (if memory serves me well) first published in shortened form back in 1967, and we’ve come a long way since then. Even so, for me at least, it still continues to punch above its weight. I especially enjoy the way it taps into our creation myths, theogonies, and the like, which here can range from Genesis to Olympus — an incessant War in Heaven waged by truculent and motivationally programmed gods, as it were.
I feel much the same way about other venerable SF novels:
Out of the Silent Planet, for example. The most kindly thing that can be said about CS Lewis’s understanding on orbital mechanics is that it was, well, sketchy in the extreme, and that’s putting it mildly. But it’s still a cracking good read, full of interesting ideas about alien life (yes, okay) on Mars, and how, to cite one example, all three Martian races evolved to cope with the varying density levels contained in the planet’s tenuous atmosphere column.
So both novels, and many others like them, have their share of inconsistencies, for sure. It’s just that, depending on their content, I tend to take a more charitable view about them than some. Indeed, it’s possible to argue that these inconsistencies are often a sign of speculative fiction going out on a limb, and doing so productively. And if the writing is good and fulfils its brief, then that usually gets my vote.
Otherwise, I agree entirely.
* Actually, there just might be: Phssthpok recalling something about the fabled 'starseeds'? Or have I got the wrong book?