Yesterday I was running through the forest and thinking about a remark I had recently heard: apparently humans are extremely good at smelling. The reason we don’t use our nose like dogs do is because we have them so far up in the air. We smell different things. But apparently we’re very sensitive. It reminded me of another story I had read where a father and a son decided to live like moles for a few days, blindfolded. They would leave the house, blindfolded, looking for food, on their hands and knees, nose to the ground. Soon, they could smell the mushrooms. They could eat. I have no idea whether that’s a true story. I started thinking of aliens keeping humans as poison detectors. Train them, like we train dogs to find drugs.
Here’s a room, human. Find the illegal substance and you’ll get some nice strawberries. I’ve been listening too much about cruel old times, about slavery in Rome and worse. If you had a nose-human, why would you teach it to read, to talk? I was reminded of kids growing up in a dead and mute household, inventing their own language. A simple one. My thoughts turned to toki pona, the constructed language with just 123 words.
Could I write a short story from the perspective of the nose-human, using just 123 words? The reveal that the main character is not a dog but a human would come at the end. I hated it. I hate slavery. I hated this story idea. Disgusting.
That’s not a story I want to write.
#Fiction
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Did you read Deepness in the Sky? It’s not written from the point of view of the dog — not entirely at least — but it has this idea of making people obsessive about something to make them work for you. It raises a lot of moral questions. It also has very cool non-human aliens in it.
– Radomir Dopieralski 2020-08-13 14:01 UTC
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Yes I did! Both A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep were excellent books as far as I remember. Both the spider aliens and the dog pack aliens were well written from an internal perspective, which I liked.
– Alex 2020-08-13 14:39 UTC
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It made me wonder about the difference between inspiring people and/or teaching them a job you want them to do, and compelling them as in the book. What’s the difference? In both cases they are happy to do it. The only thing is one method is more reliable than the other.
– Radomir Dopieralski 2020-08-13 17:40 UTC
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This makes me think of that Richard Feynman essay about smelling books at a party – referenced in this Salon article: https://www.salon.com/1999/07/28/smell/
https://www.salon.com/1999/07/28/smell/
Basically, he went out of the room, had people handle books (pick them up, thumb through them, put them back), and he came back and could smell not only which books had been handled, but by whom! I’ve always wanted to do that experiment myself.
But yes, the story idea is ... strange. Haha!
– Case Duckworth 2020-08-14 16:31 UTC
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Wow, that is a weird story! And it’d be awesome if true. I guess I want it to be true! 😆
– Alex 2020-08-14 20:10 UTC