From: Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: (whorl) Re: godlings
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 16:07:39 

On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Robert Borski wrote:

> Would it help to suggest that the term "godling" might be a generic one used
> by the human Whorlese to connote anything of unusual size, whether it's
> organic or mechanical?

But one of the main arguments for Pig's demideity ("godlingness"?) is that
comment about his ears, suggesting some kind of biological kinship with
the big guy.

> I've already argued that the godlings may have originally been designed to
> host the gods of Mainframe, of course, giving them an alternate raison
> d'être. How better to preserve their prestige and awesome nature than by
> taking on larger-than-life forms? Surely, whenever he got to where he was
> going, Pas was not going to spend the rest of his life as a computer entity.
> And there's evidence in the LS series that the gods of Mainframe can ride
> not only people and animals, but chems.

I agree, but if the godlings' purpose is to carry the gods to Blue, that
kind of negates your argument that they can be big becuase the Whorl's
apparent gravity is low.

> same forces that preclude such magnitude here. Even if the Whorl's gravity
> were earth-normal, however, there's the dinosaur parallel--are the godlings
> really that much bigger than the largest of these? 

I can't do the math myself, but I've read discussions of why a bipedal
human-type mammal can't be as big as a dinosaur.  Maybe with drastically
different biology and prosthetic bones and extra hearts to pump the blood
around it would be possible.  The muscles would probably have to be
augmented too.

But the point that the godlings don't seem anywhere near as big as the
undines is a good one.

-Rostrum


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