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jackEventually humanity realised there were three sorts of people.
There were the "C" people, sensible, middle-of-the-road people who knew when to stay out of danger.
There were the "A" people, the exceptional heroes, who went into danger and came back safely.
And there were the "B" people, walking menaces to themselves and others, like:
* A biologist who smears unknown biologically active grey goo all over themselves
* An archeologist who repeatedly forgot the difference between "seal off the area, clear the dust away with tiny brushes, meticulously record everything and keep it from being corroded, etc, etc" and "electrocute valuable samples with 1000s of volts for no reason, blowing them up"
* A geologist who wandered around with maps in his hand but refused to look at them, even when people yelled "LOOK AT THE MAPS"
* An adult human who ran away from a giant wheel in a straight line, even those she wasn't in a cave or anything
So the rest of humanity concocted a ruse where they claimed only the "B" people could save humanity by retreiving some sort of implausible ill-specified macguffin from a one-way trip to a far-away star, based on a confusing premise self-contradictory in both scientific detail and philosophical implication. And the "B" people, too stupid to realise they weren't the heroes everyone had told them they were, obligingly got on a spaceship to nowhere and all died.
But when the story is told from the point of view of the "B" people it makes no sense, because it's not clear:
* Why these self-destructive bungingly incompetents were chosen as representatives of earth
* Why all the evidence for the backstory is really weak and finda suspicious
* Why they all seem to have a different interpretation of the mission, that all seem a bit.. made up. Seriously, "the sun is going to be devoured by a mutant star-goat" is unlikely but it's not AS unlikely as "humanity were created out of nowhere two million years ago, and the fossil record happened, um, by coincidence?"
* Why none of them really know anything about the mission or each other
* Why each ship has a murderous android hidden somewhere inside
Etc, etc.
There were the "C" people, sensible, middle-of-the-road people who knew when to stay out of danger.
There were the "A" people, the exceptional heroes, who went into danger and came back safely.
And there were the "B" people, walking menaces to themselves and others, like:
* A biologist who smears unknown biologically active grey goo all over themselves
* An archeologist who repeatedly forgot the difference between "seal off the area, clear the dust away with tiny brushes, meticulously record everything and keep it from being corroded, etc, etc" and "electrocute valuable samples with 1000s of volts for no reason, blowing them up"
* A geologist who wandered around with maps in his hand but refused to look at them, even when people yelled "LOOK AT THE MAPS"
* An adult human who ran away from a giant wheel in a straight line, even those she wasn't in a cave or anything
So the rest of humanity concocted a ruse where they claimed only the "B" people could save humanity by retreiving some sort of implausible ill-specified macguffin from a one-way trip to a far-away star, based on a confusing premise self-contradictory in both scientific detail and philosophical implication. And the "B" people, too stupid to realise they weren't the heroes everyone had told them they were, obligingly got on a spaceship to nowhere and all died.
But when the story is told from the point of view of the "B" people it makes no sense, because it's not clear:
* Why these self-destructive bungingly incompetents were chosen as representatives of earth
* Why all the evidence for the backstory is really weak and finda suspicious
* Why they all seem to have a different interpretation of the mission, that all seem a bit.. made up. Seriously, "the sun is going to be devoured by a mutant star-goat" is unlikely but it's not AS unlikely as "humanity were created out of nowhere two million years ago, and the fossil record happened, um, by coincidence?"
* Why none of them really know anything about the mission or each other
* Why each ship has a murderous android hidden somewhere inside
Etc, etc.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-27 10:47 am (UTC)by retrieving [something] from a one-way trip [...] based on a confusing premise self-contradictory
You weren't kidding about that self-contradictory part, were you? :-) (Unless perhaps they were supposed to take a one-way trip to find the macguffin and then post it home...)
no subject
Date: 2012-06-27 10:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-27 11:00 am (UTC)I'm still not a 100% sure whether you're spoiling Douglas Adams or something else based on it :) I should read them again some time regardless.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-27 11:07 am (UTC)(I assumed the golgafrician reference was sufficiently old, non-plot-critical and opaque to people who don't already know it it didn't need a spoiler, although I'm not sure I was correct.)
no subject
Date: 2012-06-27 11:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-27 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-27 12:38 pm (UTC)