Conference noted::sf

    
    Sounds very much like 'The Crucible of Time' by John Brunner.
    
    A very strange book in my opinion.  It actually goes through several
    generations of the 'people'.  There's also a different sort of
    'technology' in use.
    
    	'nuff said without giving anything away.
    
    	Klaes
    

    Thankyou, The name is familiar I'm sure that's it. Bonnie

    The 'Crucible of time' is about a group of astro-archaeologist that
    find the remains of an extinct beetle like society. It is one of
    the finest sf I have read.

    I thought it was a retrospective - the "astro-archaeologists" are
    the offspring of that society, which left the planet to avoid the
    constant meteoric bombardment.  The society is not extinct, it's
    just gone into space.  The book describes their ascendance from
    a primitive myth-driven race to spacefarers.
    
    It is unusual SF in that there are no human characters.  The base
    note (.0) describes only the first (second?) chapter of the book.
    I've just started rereading it (the whole thing).  I first read
    it a few years ago when it was published by SFBC.
    
    I haven't gotten any sense of "beetle-ness" of these aliens, but
    they're definitely not humanoid.  Nor did I get any sense of their
    being "giant"; the "barqs" that they sail on are giant relative to
    them, but there don't seem to be any other clues to their absolute
    size.
    
    len.
    

    My sense of "beetle-ness" came from the illustrations accompanying
    the original exerpt that I read. The size from the impression that
    the rivers, vegatation etc. were not huge in comparision to the
    characters. However it has been several years since I read the exerpt
    so my memory may be at fault.

Also, the creatures were described as having exoskeletons and, as I recall,
mandibles.  Internal support came from pressurizable sacs, allowing the 
creatures to change their size over a range of two or three to one
for postures of dominance, submission, and other environmental needs.
Hence the apparently "beetle-like" outward appearance on a somewhat different
inner structure allowing them to scale up to much larger than beetle size.

- tom]

    As I've been rereading the book, I've been looking for evidence of
    beetleness.  I haven't come across any statement about exoskeletons;
    in fact I got a rather strong impression that they were skeleton-less.
    They do have mandibles and claws.  They have some kind of internal
    pressure and internal tubules.  They have a "mantle".  They are
    quite variable in height, and use raising to full height as a dominance
    or threat gesture.  They emit strong pheromones as an auxiliary
    way of communicating (like facial gestures or tone of voice).
    They count radix 20 ("scores of scores of scores").  They are
    susceptible to radiation poisoning and burns.  They encounter insects and
    make no references to a common heritage.  They go insane when they
    starve.  They walk on "pads".  They refer to their brain (heart?)
    as "pith", and their blood as "ichor".
    
    Unquestionably a different life form, but one I'm hard-pressed to
    describe as "beetle-like".
    
    len.
     

    Do they reproduce by live birth or by eggs? They do sound more like
    some kind of arthropods rather than vertebrates. 

    Ah, thanks for reminding me - they reproduce by budding.  The actual
    birth process is not described anywhere, nor do their equivalents
    of infants appear anywhere (sort of like baby pigeons;  I've always
    had a spot in my heart for the theory that pigeons are spontaneously
    generated from coathangers, which explains where coathangers disappear
    to and why you never see baby pigeons...) in the story (so far).
    
    Actually they seem more like mollusks or cephalopods to me, or some
    sort of cross between those and the arthropods.  But clearly
    invertebrate.
    
    len.
    

    From Websters
    
    exoskeleton:  an external supportive covering on an animal

    exoskeleton, mandibles, mantle, sounds kind of beetle-like to me.
    
    I remember reading the excerpt from IASFM.  Until now I didn't realize
    that it was an excerpt.  I'll have to keep my eye out for a copy.
    I always enjoyed Brunner's works in IASFM.

Actually if you are going to be picky in a biological sense an exoskeleton
    does equal a skelton. There are two types of skeltons exo- for
    arthropods, molluscs, echinoderms, and endo- for the vertebrates
    (made of bone or cartilage) and their close relatives the chordates
    (which have a short internal cartilage rod.) Except for the budding
    (where do they get any genetic diversity to evolve then?) they sound
    like something that could have descended from a common ancestor
    of the mollusc and the arthropod.

    I got the impression they do "mate", and that this involves exchange
    and mixing of genetic material.  In fact they face an evolutionary
    crisis at one point because most matings fail to trigger budding.
    
    I still don't buy beetleness. "Mantle" sounds soft to me (there
    is mention of mantle curling as a smile gesture); if they were
    beetle-like a more appropriate description would have been "shell"
    or "carapace".  I think Brunner composed his descriptions carefully.
    E.g., "pads" are to me soft, not like insect legs.  I tend to think
    of them as soft bodied with some insect-like parts (e.g., mandibles).
    We ourselves are softbodied with some rigid parts (e.g., teeth,
    nails).
    
    And exoskeleton does mean skeleton - the exo just means "external".
    What we familiarly call a skeleton should really be called an
    endoskeleton.

    Finally, many illustrations have turned out to be erroneous, because
    the artist didn't bother to read the whole book/story, just a small
    part of it.
    
    len.
    

    The mantle and pads are really mollusc characteristics, mandilbles
    and claws are arthropod. This was why I suggested that they'd eveoled
    from something like the common ancestor of those two earthly phyla.

    I finally finished it, and at the very end there is a reference to
    themselves as being "soft" creatures, relative to "hard" creatures
    which appeared in the ancient (i.e., millions of years ago) past.
    
    I'll buy the mollusc/arthropod synthesis, it's consistent with all
    the descriptions.  Of course, there were no arthropods or molluscs
    on the planet, but we're talking analogies here.
    
    len.
    

    Now after all this discussion all I have to do is find a copy of
    the book and finish reading it!

    I finally got a copy of Crucible of Time over vacation and have
    nearly finished it. It really is a good book. I do agree they are
    definitely not beetles or any sort of arthropod. They are more like
    molluscs than anything else (although at one point it is mentioned
    that their ancestors flew.) As a Biologist I am really impressed
    with how Brunner has created an alien species that is really unlike
    anything on this earth. I wonder - is dreamness anything like excessive
    notes writing??