General > Author Q&A

Whence the Inchoroi?

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Bolivar:
Meaning, sorcery, and the supernatural are all intertwined and it's suggested by Aurang in TTT and TFS that these things are unique to Earwa. It then makes no sense to me how or why another civilization, whose planet had none of these things, would have the means to find out about damnation, or why it would apply to other planets outside Earwa. This is why I think the Inchoroi are just interstellar hedonistic antinatalists.

I also like the theory that they're us, and that the 144,000 number might just be a vague reference from the Apocalypse of St. John that they don't really understand anymore but figured they might as well try to bring about. The nuke also seemed to lend credibility to the Earth theory as well.

We heard that TGO would have the moment in the series' strip tease where the g-string flies across the room. I assume it's the nuke but I wonder what exactly it's revealing. To me, the mushroom cloud is something that is iconic of the 20th century. Unless you think it's teleologically inevitable that all conscious species would inevitably weaponize nuclear fission, it seems too much of a coincidence to me that something so visually recognizable from our civilization and cultural consciousness would just so happen to show up.

Alia:

--- Quote from: The Great Scald on August 17, 2016, 06:14:28 pm ---The Inchoroi seem to be exactly what they appear - a humanoid species who progressed technologically to the point where they could rewire their own neurology for maximum pleasure, at which point they turned themselves into a race of hedonist psychopaths.
--- End quote ---

Something like Bank's Culture gone horribly wrong? I like that idea very much.

The Great Scald:

--- Quote from: Alia on August 28, 2016, 02:22:51 pm ---
--- Quote from: The Great Scald on August 17, 2016, 06:14:28 pm ---The Inchoroi seem to be exactly what they appear - a humanoid species who progressed technologically to the point where they could rewire their own neurology for maximum pleasure, at which point they turned themselves into a race of hedonist psychopaths.
--- End quote ---

Something like Bank's Culture gone horribly wrong? I like that idea very much.

--- End quote ---

They're the Culture gone horribly right.

Bakker is very much a technological pessimist, where Ian Banks was an utopian optimist. Their conclusions are largely the same, they just feel differently about it. (Bakker writes horror far better than Banks for this reason; he's basically a conservative soul, much like Lovecraft and Tolkien.)

In fact, Bakker's technological pessimism is why I don't think there are any "non-depraved Inchoroi". According to the man himself, the neuroscience revolution will lead to the destruction of meaning and morality as we know it, and our technical progress points that way - the amoral hedonists would've been the elite of the Inchoroi species, since transhumanism would inevitably lead to depravity, while the primitivists who clung to fossils like "morality" would've lost and gone extinct. If there was an Inchoroi Civil War, the neuropath elite won it. Meaning, according to Bakker, is a mammalian relic on its way to extinction.

Of course, the big twist is that morality is real in the Bakker-verse, and the Inchoroi are damned as a result of their progress. How they discovered that damnation, though, is the more interesting question. The g-string is still on, as of TGO...

Wilshire:

--- Quote from: Bolivar on August 18, 2016, 04:38:03 pm ---We heard that TGO would have the moment in the series' strip tease where the g-string flies across the room

--- End quote ---
I think this was when TGO/TUC were concieved as a single book. She's still wearing the g-string, I think.

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