Comments on: "The Inheritors"

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 06:35:58 +0000

i like dance of the tiger too. kurten basically did a hard science fiction attempt in regards to verisimilitude.

By: Tom Meyer

Tom Meyer — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:16:08 +0000

I very much enjoyed Bjorn Kurten's Dance of the Tiger, another Sapien/Neanderthal contact novel that was very entertaining and -- from what I understand -- quite plausible.

By: Sandgroper

Sandgroper — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:38:56 +0000

toto – Plus you get to see a young Rae Dawn Chong’s erm anatomy, albeit painted with black and white paint. http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1277335808/tt0082484 Which is reason in itself to watch the movie. Hybrid vigor, man. OK, tribrid vigor. Whatever. Better than that movie she did with Arnie, anyway – there she got to keep her clothes on and speak intelligible dialogue, which was a mistake on both counts.

Yeah, the Neanderthal dialogue was deep throated grunt grunt and the Sapiens dialogue was high pitched squeak jabber jabber. Very convincing. And the Neanderthals were a lot taller than the Sapiens. Very convincing.

I liked the part when the Sapiens girl taught the Neanderthal guy the missionary position. Not.

Bah, I mentioned this movie eons ago. Get with the program, bro.

But in fairness, it is an old movie, and for its time, I thought not a bad effort. At least they got the skin colours right.

Nobody has read the book because it’s in French.

By: toto

toto — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:37:50 +0000

In the same vein, there’s a movie called “Quest for Fire” by Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Name of the Rose, Stalingrad, Seven Years in Tibet, etc.) It’s adapted from an even older book that nobody seems to have read.

I recommend it. It has no dialogue, action, suspense, romance and, yes, hot inter-species sex! The basic premise is a bit out of whack (Neanderthals can’t make fire by themselves (!), so they go look for it and eventually learn firemaking techniques from neighbouring Sapiens), but they also get many things right (e.g. pigmentation – pale Neanderthals, darker Cro-Magnon).

Plus, no need to look for an English version or subtitles – the dialogue is essentially “grunt grunt” throughout (except for the Sapiens scenes).

By: Simon says

Simon says — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 07:20:42 +0000

no really, that chariots of the gods stuff is so unlikely. If you don’t want to believe *me*, then go up the mountain and check it out your-AGGGGGGG

By: -

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 07:16:22 +0000

“(granted, I am not up to date on the latest scholarship on Neandertals!)”
well, for an authentic POV, we *only* need to find a neanderthal scholar to interview!

By: chris y

chris y — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 09:31:02 +0000

Well, he wasn’t up to snuff with the latest scholarship, but that’s unsurprising since he wrote the book 50 years ago. It’s a long time since I read it, but IIRC he wasn’t really up to snuff on what was the latest scholarship at the time. Basically, it’s a ‘first contact’ novel – a fine old SF tradition – and he tries to write it from the point of view of the ‘aliens’, the Neanderthals, to explore what I’ve seen described as ‘a different way of being human’.

Where I suspect it would grate a bit these days is that he was clearly assuming that Neanderthal thought processes and Neanderthal society were necessarily less sophisticated that modern human. His Neanderthals are convincing aliens, but inferior humans.

But yes, it’s a great book.