TNG: Dark Mirror by Diane Duane Review Thread (Spoilers!)

[Christopher]

Markonian wrote:

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Why should dolphins and elephants be sapient? They don't use technology, don't build cities.

Non sequitur. The greatest human genius in the universe couldn't hold a hammer without opposable thumbs, or light a fire underwater. It's deeply species-centric to assume that the only way to be intelligent is to build things. Really, a science fiction fan should know better. Do Hortas build cities? Do incorporeal life forms carry iPods? Intelligence is about the mind, not the shape and capacity of the body.

Science has discovered evidence of high intelligence (and yes, in some cases, tool use) among a variety of other life forms on Earth: great apes, cetaceans, elephants, corvid and other birds, octopus and squid. And many scientists now think that most higher animals are self-aware to a greater extent than we have traditionally believed.

Even if they were sapient yet eschewing technology, what would prevent them from communicating with Humans and starting a civilisation of their own, or joining ours?

It's a conceit of science fiction that interspecies communication is easy, because it's convenient for storytelling. It would be deeply foolish to assume that a fictional convenience would be true in the real world. Fictional aliens can usually pronounce phonetic speech the same way humans can, or else have magic technology to do it for them. In real life, different species usually don't have the ability to produce the same sounds, which impairs communication. But we know for a fact that dolphins and great apes are able to understand human speech, and that apes can communicate with us intelligently through sign language. There's even documented evidence of dolphins and elephants mimicking human speech to the best of their abilities. Of course, certain birds can mimic human speech perfectly, and there's research suggesting that they understand what they're saying to some extent. If anything, the problem is on our end -- they can understand what we're saying while we still struggle to figure out what they're saying unless they have the ability to communicate in our terms. Which hardly argues that we're the more intelligent ones.

Another conceit of fiction is that alien intelligences would think just like humans so that mutual comprehension would be easy. That's another convenience of fiction that no reasonable person should expect to be true in reality. Even among humans, we often have great difficulty understanding people whose worldviews and ways of thinking are different from our own. Different species could have radically different ways of thinking and perceiving that could create enormous barriers to communication and understanding. For instance, there's abundant evidence of advanced cognitive ability in octopus, but unlike most intelligent animals including us, they're more solitary than social. So the factors that drove the evolution of their intelligence would be different from ours, and the way their intelligence works could be very different. That could create quite a barrier to understanding how they think. But of course any SF fan should know better than to assume that just because something doesn't think like a human, that means it doesn't think at all.

[JoeZhang]

They went to the mirror universe and there wasn't an evil dolphin with a moustache and an eye-monocle?

Lack of vision.

[Therin of Andor]

JoeZhang wrote:

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They went to the mirror universe and there wasn't an evil dolphin with a moustache and an eye-monocle?

Frikkin' laser beams.

[Markonian]

Does the Dark Mirror timeline mesh with the mirror timeline from Q&A?

[Csalem]

Really enjoyed this book and have reread it a number of times. Although you know by the end of the book everything will work out ok, there was a great sense of jeopardy and peril throughout and you really felt the crew were in a tough position.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Markonian wrote:

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Does the Dark Mirror timeline mesh with the mirror timeline from Q&A?

No, because in the Dark Mirror version, Noonien Soong was killed in an Imperial purge before he could construct any androids. In Q&A, Lore exists.

[Stoek]

This is one of my favorite Next Gen books, My favorite Duane book after Spock's World, and My favorite Mirror Universe story. And best of all it's not the least bit incompatible with tv show continuity since there's no reason why there can't be two different mirror universes.

[rfmcdpei]

The big problematic incompatibility I see between Dark Mirror and the rest of the canon is that in Dark Mirror, the Mirror Universe's existence was kept secret by the Federation, whereas in "Crossover" Bashir learned about the transporter accident at Starfleet Academy.

[JD]

I've actually had the book for probably over a decade and I've never actually read it. I might have to fix that in the very near future.

[Christopher]

Stoek wrote:

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This is one of my favorite Next Gen books, My favorite Duane book after Spock's World, and My favorite Mirror Universe story. And best of all it's not the least bit incompatible with tv show continuity since there's no reason why there can't be two different mirror universes.

But there are contradictions on the Prime-Universe side too. There's the difference in secrecy that rfmcdpei mentioned, and there's the problematical claim about a galactic-scale cataclysm resulting if matter from another timeline is permanently transferred across -- which has been definitively contradicted by "In a Mirror, Darkly" if nothing else. (And by Forgotten History, on a planetary scale.)

But what does it matter? Continuity is nice when you can get it, but it's all just a bunch of made-up stuff anyway. All that matters is if the story is enjoyable.

[rfmcdpei]

Christopher wrote:

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But there are contradictions on the Prime-Universe side too. There's the difference in secrecy that rfmcdpei mentioned, and there's the problematical claim about a galactic-scale cataclysm resulting if matter from another timeline is permanently transferred across -- which has been definitively contradicted by "In a Mirror, Darkly" if nothing else. (And by Forgotten History, on a planetary scale.)

That second could be fudgeable. A method of interuniversal travel that depends on hacking about the strings that bind the universe together in space and time could be plausibly expected to have consequences more traumatic than mishaps with transporters or godling-populated wormholes.

But what does it matter? Continuity is nice when you can get it, but it's all just a bunch of made-up stuff anyway. All that matters is if the story is enjoyable.

The character of Security Officer Deanna Troi alone was worth it. I wonder if Duane did write the character after seeing "Face of the Enemy". Duane certainly managed to make Troi's duplicate rather unexpectedly terrifying, and with style--the paraphrase of an Einstein quote--"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity."--delivered to LaForge in the agony chamber was noteworthy.

[Markonian]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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No, because in the Dark Mirror version, Noonien Soong was killed in an Imperial purge before he could construct any androids. In Q&A, Lore exists.

Maybe Soong faked his death and lived in secret? Nah, a guy like him would never do that.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Soong was clever enough to build androids, but not to escape the Empire. People like him tend to stick out. Easy to find and eliminate.

[Avro Arrow]

rfmcdpei wrote:

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The big problematic incompatibility I see between Dark Mirror and the rest of the canon is that in Dark Mirror, the Mirror Universe's existence was kept secret by the Federation, whereas in "Crossover" Bashir learned about the transporter accident at Starfleet Academy.

I just checked MB, and apparently Dark Mirror took place in 2367. IIRC, DS9 was Bashir's first posting after the academy, and he was posted there in 2369. So as long as Starfleet Command declassified this information after Dark Mirror but before Bashir graduated, both could still be true. (Maybe it was the Dark Mirror incident that caused Starfleet to declassify the original crossover! )

[Therin of Andor]

Avro Arrow wrote:

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So as long as Starfleet Command declassified this information after Dark Mirror but before Bashir graduated, both could still be true. (Maybe it was the Dark Mirror incident that caused Starfleet to declassify the original crossover! )

I seem to recall that the main difference was that "Dark Mirror" had a large human representation in the Mirror version of Starfleet, while in the DS9 sequels to "Mirror, Mirror", the humans had been downtrodden slaves... for decades.