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I discovered a [Unknown site tag] right before my eyes
Got up late, and spent most of the day catching up on/getting ahead with my reading for my classes, and drifting in and out of sleep. There's *nothing" like waking up the dark, absolutely convinced that your room has been taken over by vengeful Devonian encrusting tabulate corals while you were asleep, taunting you and waving their little tentacles in your face.
Hopefully the bryozoans in the next chapter will be less sinister.
Although they have good reason to be vengeful. Non-arthropod marine invertebrates really get overlooked in SF, and it's annoyed me ever since that comic I wrote in fifth grade with a crinoid as the main love interest. And they're *really* cool. When they are used, occasionally, it's either just as a side note, like various giant clams or brain corals being used as archives, or done badly, like that Piers Anthony novel with the tube worms which were actually Quetzalcoatl, which was a seriously wtf? moment. What exactly to tube worms have to do with feathered serpents? And they're not even colonial!
That's all I remember about that book, which should tell you what a pet peeve this is for me. Mind you, it was also wonderfully creepily Lovecraftian. Now, Lovecraft did cnidarians and echinoderms and cephalopods *well*, and he was writing when they were barely understood. But he's the only one I can think of who did-- none of his acolytes even really picked up on that part of it well. There really was a time when Elder Things ruled the earth. Actually, they still *do*.
H. P. Lovecraft is one of many very odd reasons that I still want to be a geologist.
Hopefully the bryozoans in the next chapter will be less sinister.
Although they have good reason to be vengeful. Non-arthropod marine invertebrates really get overlooked in SF, and it's annoyed me ever since that comic I wrote in fifth grade with a crinoid as the main love interest. And they're *really* cool. When they are used, occasionally, it's either just as a side note, like various giant clams or brain corals being used as archives, or done badly, like that Piers Anthony novel with the tube worms which were actually Quetzalcoatl, which was a seriously wtf? moment. What exactly to tube worms have to do with feathered serpents? And they're not even colonial!
That's all I remember about that book, which should tell you what a pet peeve this is for me. Mind you, it was also wonderfully creepily Lovecraftian. Now, Lovecraft did cnidarians and echinoderms and cephalopods *well*, and he was writing when they were barely understood. But he's the only one I can think of who did-- none of his acolytes even really picked up on that part of it well. There really was a time when Elder Things ruled the earth. Actually, they still *do*.
H. P. Lovecraft is one of many very odd reasons that I still want to be a geologist.
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You discovered a new species of LJ tag? ;)
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Not to mention certain marine mammals – like, say, of the north american aquatic continental mustelid variety. Not that I'm partial or anything.
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Okay, maybe otters are a bit shortchanged in sci-fi, but then most of the Charismatic Mammals (other than cats and dolphins) are. They get plenty of play in fantasy novels.
Catch someone with a hydroid Patronus, I *don't* think! (oh, all right, Harry Potter does have a giant squid, so it gets points.)
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