Footfall omissions...

I recently read a brief review of Footfall from someone who dismissed it
as tedious. I just finished it a week or so ago and have to thoroughly
disagree - in my opinion the story was ingenious and the cultural
explorations fascinating (which were especially interesting in light of
the book's pre-Soviet-collapse publishing date). I was actually
disappointed that it wasn't longer - I thought the ending was good, but
I couldn't help but want to hear what happened after the final
surrender. I feel like Niven had poised himself for a sequel. Since it
was a NYT best-seller I can't imagine why he didn't write one.

However, I was even more disappointed to have gotten to the end of the
book with almost no discussion on the reason for the uncanny resemblance
of the aliens to the elephant (especially if you take the book's cover
into account). I had made up my mind about halfway through that the
aliens' predecessors had travelled to Earth long ago and taken a herd
back with them, after which of course they died out and the elephants
evolved to become the dominant species and pick up where the
predecessors had left off. It would be one thing for the author to write
in a different explanation, but I find it patently unrealistic for no
one in the book to have even wondered about it - there simply was no
dialogue in that vein aside from both species noticing the resemblance.
After all, elephants use their trunks as forelimbs and the trunk's tip
is capable of grabbing things, so it would follow that they could evolve
into tool-users were they left in a dominant position. But there was no
such exploration, so the only assumption you can be left with is that
"large, four-legged, boneless-trunked, thick-skinned, mud-bathing herd
animal" is a common form-factor for life in the universe, which doesn't
sound right to me.

On the other hand, in perusing the Man-Kzin Wars covers I see that even
though Niven doesn't say the Kzin looked exactly like tigers, that's
exactly what is used for the artwork. Perhaps the cover artists are
allowed to be more literal with their interpretations than the stories'
reality, or perhaps the animal image itself is just a vehicle to lend
accessibility or tangibility to the subject (as far as I know, none of
the Kzin-related stories includes a hypothesis like the one above). But
I don't feel the Kintzi resemble the tiger as much as the Footfall
beings resemble elephants.

Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone else was missing an explanation
on this subject. I can't stand to finish an otherwise compelling book
that leaves such a gaping hole.
_____________________
w h i t g u r l e y
whitgurley.TakeThisOut@R-E-M-O-V-E-T-H-I-Shotmail.com

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 08:56:28 GMT, Whit Gurley wrote:

 > aliens to the elephant (especially if you take the book's cover
 > into account).
[...]
 > in perusing the Man-Kzin Wars covers I see that even
 > though Niven doesn't say the Kzin looked exactly like tigers, that's
 > exactly what is used for the artwork. Perhaps the cover artists are
 > allowed to be more literal with their interpretations than the stories'
 > reality

A couple of things I feel the need to point out:
1) Book covers *rarely* accurately reflect the contents of the book. In
most of my SF library, for example, the covers are not even vaguely
related.
2) If you haven't seen at least three different covers for any given
paperback, then you've been looking for less than a year. All the
paperbacks I've ever seen seem to change their cover art with each
reprinting.

(For example, the cover on my copy of "Footfall" features skewed-angle
view of the Earth, with a *very* large H-bomb-type mushroom cloud.)

--
Evan Couche UIN : 5361099
Mail: plorevhf.RemoveThis@punevbg.arg.nh.FCNZBSS
"Just think of it as Evolution in action."
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