Conference noted::sf

    I thought it was a good book definitely not what I'd class in the
    escape reading category. However, there are many people (of poor
    taste and limited imagination) that classifiy everything other than
    classics (Heimingway and earlier????) or serious non fiction as
    escape reading. Also - to me anyway - escape reading implies that
    the "good guys" go through various adventures and eventually come
    out on top - not the case in West of Eden.
    Harrison's dinosuar society was well worked out. I especially liked
    their unique forms of communication and bio-technology. Maybe not
    a great book, but certainly a thoughtful development of a unique
    nonhuman society.

    	Thank you for reminding me how the so-caled "serious" literary
    world usually does NOT take SF in the way of the "classics".  They
    obviously don't know what they are missing (That's what I get for
    listening to Playboy - next time I'll just stick to the centerfolds).
    
    	Now I have an interesting question for you "Eden" fans and science
    fans out there:  What do you think our world would be like if that
    asteroid did NOT strike Earth and wipe out the dinosaurs?
    
    	Larry
    

    First of all, I'm not entirely certain that the dinosaurs were wiped
    out by an asteroid strike.  That's been popular for a few years,
    but people are starting to pour cold water on it.  However, supposing
    the dinosaurs did not die out (for whatever reason), I'd say there
    was a great chance we'd still have dinosaurs as the most conspicuous
    vertebrates.
    
    By the end of the dinosaur era, flowering plants were well-established
    and birds were coming along nicely.  Mammals were still obscure.
    Since the mammals moved into the niches vacated by dinosaurs, I'd
    expect mammals to remain obscure, except perhaps in the colder
    climates. (Even if dinosaurs were warm-blooded, they weren't furred.
    A warm-blooded saurpod would do no better in Canada than would an
    African elephant.)  Birds might have forced pterosaurs into extinction.
    
    Intelligent life?  Unlikely, but maybe no more unlikely than it
    was right after the dinosaurs' extinction.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    (this is from Stubbi::Reinke - I'm using my husband's account on
    Tweed since Stubbi is sick today.)
    Actually I don't really care for Playboy's taste in much of anything
    but then I have a gender problem(??) I can't imagine much of anything
    except possibly sterio equipment or fancy wines that I'd particularly
    care what they thought about it (bias admitted.)
    
    As far as the no asteriod (or other catastrophy) wiping out the
    dinosaurs, well.
    One is the question if you believe that a reptile would have evolved
    a larger brain and become self aware. Of course one answer would
    be that they did and we call them mammals - homo spaiens. The brain
    that modern reptiles have is pretty primitive, but we have a sort
    of copy of it as our brain stem. We have evolved two other brains
    in a sense over that one. So it is kind of hard to say if given
    a larger reptile population a different kind of higher brain would
    have developed. I kind of think not - I think natural selection
    would have built on the existing structures in pretty much the same
    way. There is also the question of whether or not a constant body
    temperature and more efficient oxygen and food supply is needed 
    for more complex brain function. I tend to believe that it is. This
    means that We would have gotten reptiles with more efficient hearts,
    better respiratory systems and some kind of body insulation if we
    are looking for more complex brains i.e. birds and mammals. In other
    words we ARE sentient reptiles.
    We would have a much larger reptile population if the dinosaurs
    hadn't died out, unless of course the ice age wasn't caused by the
    original disaster then any ice age would have wiped out many reptiles.
    Also given the large number of smarter large mammals wiped out by
    early hunters the chances are quite likely that they would have
    done a number on the slower, stupider reptiles as well. So my guess
    would be a world with a slightly larger and more varied reptile
    population but not too much different otherwise.
                        

    I should have read .3 before answering.....so
    
    p.s Nature was already on the path towards greater intelligence before
    the dinosaurs died out for whatever reason. The reason that early
    birds and mammals were already numerous was that they were smarter
    than the dinosaurs. Intelligence has a definite survival advantage.
    You don't need an empty niche - you can create your own. After all
    one early theory of dinosaur extinction was that the mammals ate
    their eggs. I don't think that the presence of larger numbers of
    dinosaurs would have done anything more than slow down the evolution
    of birds and mammals. In fact you might make a case that they would
    have become smarter sooner because survival pressure would have
    been greater.

    re .something that said Dinosaurs didnt have fur.
    
    I remember reading somehwere that Pterodactyls may have actually
    had fur more to lower body air-drag than as insulation, although
    it certainly could have served a dual purpose.  I wonder how many
    ECO's were involved in this evolutionary adaptation? :^)
    
    WARNING*****
    I am now going to postulate wildly
    
    The path that dinosaurs were taking, does not seem to be a
    very promising one for continued survival.  They were becoming
    bigger, meaner, and with bulkier offensive and defensive 
    weaponry, at the cost of mobility and brains.  Of course ther
    were plenty of smaller lizards running around, but they would
    be pretty busy avoiding the bigger ones seeing as how lizard
    intelligence never really reached great heights.  Mammals
    represented a new approach, sacrifice the armor and pack in
    more brains, plus raise the body temperature to keep it running
    all the time.  Mammals werent built for fighting, but for 
    running/burrowing/climbing out of danger.  This they could do
    reasonably well against the small, stupid lizards, and they
    were probably too small for the big ones to consider chasing.
    
    Based on this, I think, however the dinosaurs died, mammals would
    have survived, as they had a major evolutionary head-start.  
    History and science seem to agree that the smaller, faster, unit
    in great numbers, can defeat any single large unit.  Look at the
    the examples of warfare, like the defeat of the Spanish armada by
    smaller English vessels.  Dinosaurs were being equipped by 
    evolution to succeed against other dinosaurs, and werent selecting
    to compete with mammals until mammals already had a strong foothold.

    I do agree with Harrison, though, in that if any of the dinosaurs
    were to survive as a species long enough to gain intelligence, it
    would have to have been the smaller ones.
    
    I hope this made sense!
    
    dan

    I would just like to comment on the book 'West of Eden'. I finished
    it a couple of days ago. Overall I very much enjoyed the book, and
    found it quite remarkable that such a fine 'serious' novel was written
    by Harry Harrison. Previously most of Mr Harrison's books I have read
    have generally been of a lighter nature (e.g. Stainless Steel Rat series
    etc).

    I also recently finished a mundane ficitional novel by Mr Harrison called
    the 'QEII is Missing'. Another 'serious' work. It seems to me that
    Mr Harrison is keen to produce novels of a different character from
    his more traditional novels. Though don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed
    many of his light-hearted novels and stories in the past, but found
    'West of Eden' to be a product of a new Harry Harrison, one that seems
    to be capable of producing a more substantial or in-depth novel
    (not quite the right words to describe what I mean, but I hope you
     get my meaning)

    Mike    
    

    This could sound similar to the mini-series "V" that was on telivision
    a couple years ago.  The alien lizard people were from another
    planet very similar to our earth.  Presumably if an asteroid or
    huge meteorite DID hit our planet causing dust and ashes to obscure
    the sun for several months or years therefore wiping out the dinosaurs,
    man would of evolve from the dominate species, which in this case
    would of been the mammals.
    Now if on different planet similar to earth the situation would
    be reversed.  If an asteroid never hit their planet, the dinosaurs and 
    reptiles who were the dominate species 100 million years ago would
    still be today the dominate species.  Therefore, man would of evolved from
    an reptilian nature rather than mammal.
    I haven't read Harrison's book 'West of Eden', but it does sound
    interesting.      
    Mike_L
    

    
    One theory as to the extinction of the dinosaurs, as I understand
    it, states that dinosaurs became extinct simply because they were
    to big.  Their nerve cells (neurons) were 10's of feet long and
    thus the time it took for an impulse from their tiny brain to reach
    the muscles was considerable.  In addition, these neurons lacked
    an insulating substance called myelin which allows the nerve impulses
    to travel faster.
    
    Along came mammals which were small and had shorter neurons and
    thus a faster response rate.  Thus your average mammal could walk
    up to a dinosaur, lunch on its tail, and walk away before the message
    to attack got from the dinosaur's brain to its paws (?) and mouth.
    
    The fact that mammals could literally run circles around a dinosaur
    was detrimental, among other things, to the survival of the dinosaurs.
    
    
    re: Harrison
    
    I have enjoyed his lighter stuff, i.e. _Stainless Steel Rat_.  I
    have read other stuff by him: _Jupiter Plague_, _A Rebel in Time_,
    and _The QEII is Missing_ but found them all mediocre.  I also liked
    _The Deathworld Trilogy_ and to a lesser extent, the trilogy with
    _Homeworld_, _Wheelword_, and one other (I forget the name).
    
    /brian
    

    It's unlikely the mammals worked directly to extinguish the dinosaurs.
    Giant dinosaurs flourished for tens of millions of years, which
    you wouldn't expect if they had a gross engineering problem.  And
    mammals, so far as the fossil record indicates, remained an obscure
    bunch of little shrewish things for most of that same time.  When
    the dinosaurs all went, it wasn't during a sudden upsurge of new
    and improved mammals; instead, they left a vaccuum that the mammals
    came and filled some time later.  It's also hard to see how little
    ratty mammals could have extinguished the great sea reptiles.
    
    Regarding an earlier note, yes the pterosaurs had fur.  No question.
    At least some of them.  They've found pterosaur fossils with the 
    imprints of the fur in the stone.
                            
    Earl Wajenberg

    	Though it is not impossible, who is to say that other planets
    underwent similarities in their evolution of organisms as on Earth.
    I am inclined to agree with the current scientific theories that
    beings created on other planets in other solar systems would be
    genetically different, and probably have evolved quite differently
    as well.  The odds do not destroy the possibility of parallel
    evolution, but they certainly make them very unlikely.
    
    	Larry
    

    re -1
    If you believe that other beings can exist genetically different,
    why can't they exist in a similar environment and have the same
    metabolism?  Anything is possible since we do not know the full
    extent of the universe which would include other galaxies.
    Although the possibilties of a parallel universe can 
    exist, we would still be genetically alike.
    
    Mike_L

    I just started reading West of Eden, prompted by this discussion.
    I "cheated" by reading the appendices first.  Did anybody else notice
    a curious inconsistency of point of view therein?  The discussion
    of Yilane history starts out with the narrator denouncing "fictional
    histories", and apparently the current one that so upsets her entails
    a giant meteorite striking the Earth and setting up the ascendancy
    of the mammals.  Towards the end, this discussion references a
    subsequent discussion of Tanu language, but the preface to this latter
    discussion sounds as if it was written by Harrison for consumption
    by a human (NOT Tanu or Yilane) audience.  Did I miss something?
    
    len.
    

    	If you read my previous statement again, you will see that I
    did NOT rule out the possibility of similar evolutionary patterns
    on other planets.  With there being approximately 100 billion galaxies
    containing approximately 100 billion stars each just in our "known"
    Universe alone, it's not impossible.
    	Perhaps I'm just commenting because I've seen too many shows
    and books where those which deal with a planet's evolutionary
    development sounds too much like Earth's - with all those SF
    imaginations out there (let alone reality itself), someone should
    try and come up more often with a different evolution history.
    
    	Larry
    

    	No, you're not hallucinating - Harrison just wrote the appendix
    in that cockeyed style for God knows what reason!  By the way, that
    was a terrible joke - I wish I had said it!
    
    	I think another interesting "inconsistency" about EDEN to point
    out is what were Caucasians doing in North America?  Since Harrison
    strived to be so accurate about human development, what were white
    people doing where only Mongoloids (American Indians) should be,
    and were (the Sasku)?  My anthropology tells me that the white race
    developed in Europe and did NOT migrate to North America, so how
    did they get there, going even as far as the Eastern Seaboard?
    This is of course in following with Harrison's standards, pardoning
    the Yilane, naturally.
    	Besides, there were even comments in the book that NO humans
    were ever found over in that alternate Europe and Africa, so one
    might ask how do the Tanu exist at all?!
    
    	Larry
    

    Recent (~) work suggests Europeans may have gotten here sometime
    after the Mongoloid peoples; the issue is where from.  As I recall
    the discussion, it was based on a study of bone structure; the
    facial structure especially was starkly Caucasian in some of the
    America's aboriginals.
    
    But what the heck ! let's just give it back to China and be done
    with it.
    				;})
    
    Dwight

    
    	Has anyone seen the sequel yet?  I've heard that there is one,
    but I haven't seen it on anybody's selves yet?  News? Rumors?
    
    	Klaes

	The sequel is WINTER IN EDEN.  I got it through the SF Book Club
	so have no idea if its in the stores yet.  (got it a few weeks ago
	but haven't started reading.)

		Bob L.

    Winter in Eden has been out in paperback for many months.
    It answers some of the previous questions, such as people in Europe,
    etc.  Also, more questions do get raised.
    
    The book itself is done in a much more depressing (not quite the
    right word) situation than the first work.  People (as opposed to
    lizards) don't have much of a good time in this one.
    
    The trend of these books seem to be similiar to the trend in the
    Star Wars series
    
    Vol. 1  - the confrontation in a volume that can stand all by itself.
     A victory or resolution acchieved in the end.
    
    Vol. 2 - the bad guys fight back and have their own victories (I
    am not really sure that the lizards are the bad guys and the tanu
    (people) the good guys in this series)
    
    Vol. 3 - and volume three is promised late this year will probably
    have the baddest of the lizards destroyed (I can't remember her
    name) and accommodations reached (although tenuous) between men
    and lizards.
    
    As for the dinosaurs disappearing millions of years ago, I am not
    sure that I agree.
    
    We have some direct descendants in animals such as crocodiles and
    alligators, the kimodo dragons, probably some large critters in
    the ocean or seas (Nessie anyone).
    
    There may have been some leftovers from whatever major catastrophe
    hit the earth.  I have to believe that some of the "legends" have
    to have some basis in fact....
    
    dragons in European and Asian cultures,
    
    read about Behemoth and Leviathon in the Book of Job (and forget
    about what the footnotes say they are, no way the descriptions apply).
    
    There are records of hairy elephants being hunted in north america
    as recently as the 17th and 18th century.
    
    The descriptions given of supposedly extinct creatures from
    non-scientific peoples probably has some basis in fact.
    

    I think that Harrison just wanted to contrast this style of 
    technology with our own.  Notice that the humans in the story 
    still use mechanical instead of organic techniques.  I think the 
    only major difference between us and the Yilane was that they had 
    an excellent sense of smell.  I don't know if that would help you
    do genetic engineering, but it would definitely steer you away 
    from internal combustion engines!
    
    This idea of bio-technologies seems to be catching on.  Another 
    interesting example of it was in a novel called "Shapers" by ?.
    The aliens here were vast aquatic intelligences.  Each was
    basically a species unto itself.  They could grow new creatures 
    inside themselves and manipulate their genes to do anything from 
    being food-gatherers to spaceships.  Another example was in John 
    Brunner's novel, "The Crucible of Time" (note 336).  The race
    there was conventionally sentient (individual intelligences in 
    loose social groupings), but did not have solid skeletons.  Their
    bodies were supported by pressurized tubes.  Their civilization 
    is like the Yilane's in being based on bio-engineering, and it's 
    worked out in interesting detail.
    
    /jlr

    
    Hummmmm...dinosaurs...biotechnology...
    
    Gee, sounds a lot like _The Dragonmasters_!

   	Didn't he tie that to their metabolism... living in warm
   climate... no need for fire... etc., so concentration on the biologic
   aspects.

   mike JN

Yilane biotech:

I recall from one of the appendixes to one of the books that they
started their technology with normal selective breeding.  They started 
living in trees, then began to select trees good for living in, began 
to selectively breed these trees for what would eventually be their cities,
and so on.  Breed a guard dog, refine it to a pit bull, breed it to get rid 
of its legs so it can't run away, and pretty soon you've got a door stop
that will take care of door-to-door salesmen and routine burglars.
I got the impression that it never really occurred to the Yilane
to actually build anything until they were so advanced that they could
pooh-pooh the idea as beneath their dignity.

And Harrsion is apparently adamant that the intelligent mammals in this
world aren't human, but his publisher keeps drawing them as such in the
cover art.

- tom]

    
    I read all the "Eden" books. And my impressions were "Just another
    epic" I like Harrison and my loyalty extended into reading all of
    them. I might have read the first one twice. My brother is really
    into this trilogy, he has them all in hardcover. As for Bio-technology
    I found the Octavia Buler Xenogenesis (sp) series really neat. 
    
    No need to flame me. I'm out of DEC in 3 hours B^).
    
    And I Am Out Of Here.................
    
    		Domenic

    I guess I have a problem with the biotechnology in the Eden world.  

    It seems to me that there is just too much of an inbalance in the
    Dinosaurs' science.  They are doing wonders with DNA ... but I don't
    see them doing Physical Chemistry at all... unless they invented an
    xray chrystalography lizard unmentioned in their history ;-) ... 

    I enjoyed the series as a rescue/revenge tale ... and the scenery was
    pretty...

    							js