Garm Bel Iblis
Commodore
when i was a kid i didnt' know what an arboretum(sp) was until they took Stampy to one.
What pet peeves do you have about trek books?
- Thread starter Garm Bel Iblis
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when i was a kid i didnt' know what an arboretum(sp) was until they took Stampy to one.
I think it was Star Trek that introduced the term to me, as an adult, although I could have worked it out on my own since my school (when I was a child) used to celebrate Arbor Day every year.
We had a professional development day at the beginning of 2008 and there was a quote mentioned that bounces back to me all the time, "An intelligent student is one who can make connections". It's all about learning how to strengthen that chain of connections, not the simple regurgitation of random facts. Are we testing "How much do you remember?" or "How do you know you can trust the information you just read?"
I can live with that as long as you don't go and create a new thread on the topic.
I can live with that as long as you don't go and create a new thread on the topic.
Then in that case Jwolf, stop being a one trick pony and mentioning the wonders of ebooks every single chance you seem to get.
Anyway, isn't this topic about peeves in the BOOKS and NOT here?
I can live with that as long as you don't go and create a new thread on the topic.
Maybe I will, just to bring the more... interesting... perspectives out of the woodwork again...
Nah, I think we all got sick of that.
Now returning to your regularly scheduled pet peeves.
Major characters with unpronouncable names. You know, some alien crewmember with a name like "CCCsscvyyyykf" that appears throughout the entire book.
Sometimes I think the writers just shut their eyes and pound their fists on the keyboard to come up with some of these names.
Sometimes I think the writers just shut their eyes and pound their fists on the keyboard to come up with some of these names.Agreed Nerdius, I think that's what Fusion was trying to say earlier in the thread before he got flamed for being too ethnocentric. At least in the Titan novels they had the decency to say Chak’!’op was called Chaka by the crew so I could mentally say that to myself as I was reading! Mine is overuse of the word 'roiling'. Don't know why but I just don't like it.
Major characters with unpronouncable names. You know, some alien crewmember with a name like "CCCsscvyyyykf" that appears throughout the entire book.
Nah, we just play with Scrabble tiles.
Another cop-out is when they have, say, an alien character who resembles a dolphin or something, and they're from the ocean world of "Dolphina VI." Come on, how likely is that? Or maybe they're green with scales and hail from the planet "Reptilius."
Come on, how likely is that? Or maybe they're green with scales and hail from the planet "Reptilius."
Another cop-out is when they have, say, an alien character who resembles a dolphin or something, and they're from the ocean world of "Dolphina VI."
Yeah, I mean we are Terrans and we live on Earth. And our sun is called... Sol?
Think about it. We have already named the stars in most of the constellations we can see from Earth. If an alien comes here from planet orbiting a star we've already named, are we going to drop the name we coined in favour of their name for their homeworld? (Try telling a Frenchman he lives in France.) And they'll have already named and catalogued Sol and its planets (and Pluto, before it got eaten).
We already had the Lynx constellation named, and (coincidentally), the aliens who came from there reminded us of Earth felines. So we named them Caitians, probably as more of a nickname. They'd have had their own names for themselves. Possibly a Caitian word for "earth" or "ground"?
If we do change the local name of an alien race we meet, it'll probably be to something that reminds us of the people who live there. I always thought it was amusing that the lizard people of "V" came from the Dog Star. Mind you, they ended up being called Visitors (another colloquialism), not Sirians.
Another cop-out is when they have, say, an alien character who resembles a dolphin or something, and they're from the ocean world of "Dolphina VI."
Well, then you're really going to hate the alien I'm introducing in my Typhon Pact book: Ambassador Scrotus, Federation special diplomatic attache' from the planet Testiculon.
Another cop-out is when they have, say, an alien character who resembles a dolphin or something, and they're from the ocean world of "Dolphina VI."
Yeah, this is really annoying. Kathleen Sky's novel Death's Angel took that sort of thing to a ridiculous degree.
That is the way things are going, yes. And why not?
The French name for France is France, though pronounced slightly differently, so I'm not sure what you're getting at there.
Okay, see, this is the problem. There aren't really any such things as Caitians. A writer at some point decided to connect Caitians with the Lynx constellation (AFAIK, that's not canonical anyway) for the sake of being cutesy. As for why anyone would call them something that sounds like Kate instead of cat, I dunno. I also doubt their name for themselves would have any more to do with earth or ground than the word "human" does. Human is used much more often than Terran in Star Trek.
The Lynx connection is from the TAS Writer's Guide, which featured a tiny hand drawn map of its location to the rest of the UFP. Neither Lynx nor Cait made it onscreen, though.
Named after Sol Horowitz, the Federation President's urologist.
Little known fact.
I actually kinda did this for my story "The Hub of the Matter" that's going to be in the March 2010 Analog. I typed out a long random string on the keyboard, then looked through it for interesting combinations, sometimes taking them exactly and sometimes modifying them a bit to make them more phonetic. From that, I got such species names as Sosyryn, Zeghryk, Dosperhag, Hijjeg, and Jiodeyn. All of which are, I believe, fairly easy to figure out how to pronounce.
Another cop-out is when they have, say, an alien character who resembles a dolphin or something, and they're from the ocean world of "Dolphina VI."
Yeah, I mean we are Terrans and we live on Earth. And our sun is called... Sol?
We are Humans, from the Planet Huma.
Yes, I still enjoy this joke.
Poor example, since Terra is the Latin name for Earth. (And "Terran" isn't really a legitimate form of the word, but a coinage by SF authors who weren't fluent in Latin. The more technical term would be "Tellurian" as a demonym, "terrene" or "terrestrial" as an adjective. Fans of old-school Doctor Who will have come across "Tellurian" in several Robert Holmes-scripted serials.)
