Reythia
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Registered: 11-2005
Posts: 928
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 "Foreigner" Series by Cherryh
Here's a scifi series I was really impressed with. I've read the first three (I need to get #4 from the library still) of C J Cherryh's "Foreigner" series so far and can definitely recommend them.
The first book starts out (no spoilers here, don't worry) reading like the usual scifi book. A hyperspace transfer, a colony ship, etc etc. The ship ends up stuck around an alien world with no idea how to get back home, or even where home is. Eventually they make first contact with the humanoid aliens below.
That's all the introduction. (And if there's a weak point to the series it's that you can't figure out when the intro is going to stop and the real story start, since the intro is so long and in multiple pieces. Sort of like how the third "Tolkien" movie just refused to end, over and over and over...)
But anyhow. The long intro is well worth the time to read, since the "current day" story is excellent. The main character is a human interpreter, living as the sole human representative to the alien race. I won't give away any of the plot driving the book, which is pretty good, too, but it's not really the thing I was most impressed with anyhow.
What I really liked is how Cherryh wrote the alien culture. They're recognizably human in many ways -- most notably appearance and sense of human. But a big part of the story is the main character's continuing struggle to learn the inate differences between humans and the aliens. The largest of these is that the aliens don't understand the concept of "liking" someone else. They don't have "friendships" as we do. They have something else that looks similar on the outside, but isn't the same. Cherryh makes the point that this isn't just a cultural thing, something that can be taught, but rather something implicit in the aliens' biology. I thought a rather striking way of demonstrating this was by showing how the alien "horses" (effectively) had similar bonds of very non-human loyalty.
Anyhow, I don't want to go into too many details, but I'd definitely suggest you guys check out this series. Cherryh's stuff can be kind of hit-or-miss, in my opinion, but "Foreigner" was dead-on.
And if anyone's ever read it, I'd love to talk about the series!
---  -- YAR! |
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2/27/2009, 4:31 am
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