When i was in my twenties, i visited a friend of mine for a few days. I didn't have any books with me and i was bored. She had a series of TSR novels which i usually avoid like the plague. It was this or nothing though, so i gave it a go. It's called the Death's Gate Cycle, and while it was as cheese as i expected, it had a few redeeming qualities. Nice sense of humor, including the best Gandalf parody i've ever seen and one other thing. While it started as a fantasy series, it turned out to be sci-fi after all.

 Maybe it's because Death's Gate has shaped my preconceptions, but i've always thought that the SA isn't fantasy at all. I mean Earwa? Cummon, at least try a little harder with the names! Earwa is Earth in a very distant future. The Non Men and the Inchies are mutated humans and the Earth has become sentient. So while this piece is a parody, the general idea is something i believe might actually stand.

I loved the story (well, perhaps because I subscribe to the Geek tribe), it's really funny. A small correction, though, if you don't mind - it's "a lot", not "allot".

Thanks allot for your feedback . I am glad you enjoyed it. I would subscribe myself to more than one tribe, probably all of them except the Religious. I am just not a fan. Btw, i was very sad to read about your troubles with the Baron, i hope you've gotten rid of him by now.

I enjoyed that, SOA. I laughed out loud at Kirk. I grew up watching (reruns) of the original Trek.

The thing with parody is that in order to make it funny for the readers, they must be able to catch the references. Star Trek was the only widely popular sci fi where Man has managed to build a utopia, so it was an easy choice. Still, while the Kirk and Vulcan jokes are easy to get for most readers, the reverse the polarity bit is targeted to the true geek out there that has watched a lot of Next Generation episodes.

Btw, did anyone get the teleportation reference ?

This is NOT an attempt at literature of any kind what so ever, i just wrote it for fun. English isn't my native language so any input in spelling or grammar is welcome .



A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there was a medium sized solar system. In this solar system there was a beautiful blue planet orbiting the sun. The planet looked a lot like Earth, but it was called Earwa. It was a planet inhabited by a species of great promise that resembled apes without the fur. They wore cloths instead. And they called themselves Human which in our language translates to human.

Don’t be fooled by the similarities though, the Earwans were actual aliens, you only have to look at their achievements to be convinced. They managed to abolish violence, hunger, social and racial discrimination, pollution and disease. They even got rid of their bankers and lawyers. There were no borders or countries and no monetary system. Material goods could be replicated easily and everyone had access to whatever he needed. Repetitive administrative tasks were carried out by computers and the rest was decided through voting.

Earwans had it pretty great, and been the generous aliens they were, they decided to share their prosperity with the Cosmos. So they built their spaceships, trained their crews and set out to space. What they discovered shocked them to their core. Most other alien species had made a mess of it, war, hunger, greed, along with the classic pair of doom and destruction.

Not everything was bad though. They had found allies in their quest, creatures of reason and pure intellect! They were space elves, civilized to a fault, advanced in science and art, long living and wise. They were also obnoxious, condescending little bitches and they all shared the worst haircut that had ever been conceived. A haircut that offends. The Earwans though wouldn't let this opportunity pass them by because of a few minor details, so they decided to send their best.

His name was Kirk. He was a cool guy and a master of hair products. He made a lot of progress with the space elves, but he didn’t manage to convince them to remove their heads out of their bums or fire their barbers. They told him it’s warm and cozy in there, and that his brain was too small to process the perfection on top of their heads. Kirk also liked space booze and alien wenches a little too much, so he was eventually recalled home to retire.

Their next attempt was captain Pickard. Captain Jean Luke Picard to be exact. Picard was a very nice fellow but he had some issues. His name was French and his accent English, so everyone made fun of him. That’s why he was overeager to prove himself to the eyes of his people. He went out there and after a few close calls and some not so few polarity reversals he actually did it. He solve every problem in the universe. And this is when the Earwans discovered that the only unsolvable problem is not having any problems.

It crept slowly at first so no one took notice. In the following years, concern started to gradually arise but the majority thought it was a passing thing. Still, the situation kept getting from bad to worse and finally the Earwans were forced to admit that this was too much. They had to do something or be bored to death. People started forming clubs and then creating larger groups in search of new hobbies. For a time, hope returned on Earwa.

Then, a growing part of the population got the idea that lower body re-orientation through teleportation  could produce some fun results. Sure, it was weird, but Earwans were a tolerant folk. Soon after, members of the same group opinionated that two penises are clearly better than one and six might be the magic number for boobs. That got the attention of the others, but everyone still agreed that this group was not as bad as the hipsters, so they let it pass. When Japanese porn became the number one imported good though, the rest of the Earwans knew that the danger to their fronts (and behinds) was very real, they had to act now or start investing in lube.

By now, the Earwans had been separated to 7 tribes, according to common hobbies and interests. The Religious, who were warning everyone from the start that God would crush them in his righteous fury for allowing these depravities to happen, summoned the rest of the tribes to a council.  There were a lot of talks about the pits of Hell, the merits of recreational use of certain herbs, how three penises might actually be even better than two and plenty of other nonsense. After what seemed like forever, those of them that were still conscious decided that maybe this was a bad idea after all. The only thing the tribes managed to agree on was putting the matter to a vote. The Hippies were too preoccupied testing their theory about herbs and the Hipsters didn't want to conform. Still, the four other tribes combined were more numerous than their horny brethren, so they won.

The Lovers had a choice. They would either have to be content with only one penis and two boobs, or leave the planet and preferably the galaxy. They packed in a hurry. When their airships launched to space, the six remaining tribes let out a collective sigh of relief. Little did they know that their troubles were far from over.

With the distraction of the Lovers gone, the constant criticism of the Hipster tribe became too much to bear. The Geek tribe decided they couldn’t take any more bitching about their beloved technology so they gathered their things and moved to another continent. They named it Eanna and sealed it with a dome, so no Hipster could ever get in. With the Geek tribe gone, the Hipsters turned their attention to their other brethren. In less than a year they had the whole continent to themselves. The only people left behind beside themselves, were a few  Hippies that were too stoned to move with the rest of their tribe. When they sobered up to find themselves alone with the Hipsters, they experienced true horror for the first time. Unfortunately this was just the beginning of their torment.

The Hipsters on the other hand were ecstatic. Left alone, they didn't have to conform to technology, color, pants, hair, or even the sun. They begun wearing black robes and shaving their heads. They also moved underground to be closer to mother Earwa. Since they didn't want to conform to manual labor either, they took the Hippies with them and tried breeding them for work. That proved to be an almost impossible task at first, till someone suggested a more effective strategy. Only working Hippies were allowed access to herbs and guitars at the end of each day. That did the trick.

While Hipsters were contemplating that Man might be too conformist a term, Geeks were having the time of their lives. Without the Hipsters busting their balls every time they wanted to push a button, they let themselves run wild. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and apparently sometimes they end with a nuclear winter. Not all was bad for the five tribes though. Their cities were gone, their technological advancements leveled to the ground, society had ceased to exist and most of the population was dead. Still, this proved once and for all that the Geeks knew their nuclear shelters, or as they told the other four tribes “Always look at the bright side of life”.

Meppa is Manet. It is known.

Lol, you're going gold here but I'm going to be a knob and try and bring it back to the thread. I don't know how cultures-not-mine perceive these books but all of these things go into determining our associations. Our parents in this sense have determined not only our perception and reaction to content, but the way in which we speculate and the things we speculate about.

Aside, for the obvious example, we are conditioned to read a certain way, for instance, because Bakker mentioned years ago that Dune and LOTR were heavy antecedents to the series and this was reinforced by the presence of obvious parallels, which even now condition my future speculation. Or even more obvious we are conditioned to know that the "Nonmen are False" and "the imperative to invade Earwa" are Inchoroi additions to the tusk they inscribed humankind's oral beliefs onto as we go into TUC.

I don't think these are incoherent or even incorrect thoughts. I would question bearing on the topic at hand but you are sketching a pretty decent frame for anyone who might not be familiar with these constraints to the content in discussion.

Sorry for going OT, it's just that to me the title didn't say it all. I found the general idea pretty interesting but i couldn't find the scope. I mean, reader is not that specific, are we talking about readers of the SA, of fantasy, of literature, reader in general? The same goes for the conditioning part. Are we talking about conditioning our beliefs or our expectations? So i improvised .

Well, this is an interesting point for notation because Bakker's books have been translated into over fifteen other languages. There are a number of members reading and posting from all over the world. We aren't all so similarly conditioned, though everything now in the world can bear an overarching mark of carbon copy corporations.

Definitely, we form a sense of homogenous group in that we're all SFF readers, who have been conditioned by reading the genre.

My opinion is that the differences between social groups are so noticeable because there are so few of them compared to how many preconceptions humanity shares as a whole. For example Christians and Muslims fight over who is right in his interpretation of God, but both share the belief that there actually is a God, an afterlife, judgement, angels, demons, good, evil, etc. Most writers that actively try to use conditioning for the purpose of gaining popularity, begin from the pillars of belief that most of us share or have learned to tolerate, and build from there.

Lol - wish fulfillment. It is interesting because I've met both extreme pessimist and optimistic persons here; most everything in-between. In fact, some of us must fit the confirmation bias example you mentioned above, where we're seeing echoes of our preconceived comfort-beliefs in Bakker's "uncomfortable" content.

Though, I was a little of both.

Pessimism and optimism, hmmm. In my view those traits don't have much to do with the ideas in the SA. It might appear so in the beginning but i think the meat of the book has to do with introspection and acceptance. The way we function isn't good or bad, it just is. The problems arise when we try to categorize it with current morality and we find it lacking, so we pretend it isn't there. That actually is bad. I personally think that we are beautiful. The world that we are part of is beautiful. Life is beautiful. It's just that we went looking for meaning and managed to find the opposite. When the distance between what you are and what you think you are is so vast, you can't be truly happy and most of all you can't become that something that you want to be, because you don't really know what you really have to change.

Anyway, i went ot again, sorry (but not really ). I agree that there is always confirmation bias, and i am sure the same thing happened to me. I may have gotten angry but i eventually gave it another chance because subconsciously i was half there already. Maybe it was something i read, something i heard or something i ate , i don't know, but i am sure that there was something.
 
Now if we are talking about conditioning expectations Bakker does it all the time. There are fantasy stereotypes, sci fi stereotypes, even historical and religious stereotypes and Scott uses them all. The smart thing about the way he does it is that he doesn't try to be original. He just uses them as tools, he doesn't really seem to care what we think about what he does with those tools.

Abercrombie for example uses every stereotype there is and then simply adds a minus in front of the whole equation. So everything feels familiar because you get the exact opposite of what you expected but also original because you get a different outcome from what you are used to. Bakker used Dune and especially the God Emperor as inspiration (among many, MANY other works), but despite the similarities between Leto and Kellhus i don't dare predict what the latter will do. Hell, when Meppa first appeared i was certain Scott was trolling the Dune readers. And while he deliberately does that and often (the bastard ), most of the time he uses something as a tribute and not to intentionally condition us. For example the Dunyain are obviously a reference to Tolkien, but besides that they have little to do with the Numenorians. You learn fast not to expect that kind of shit in his books the first time you realize your expectations were so far off the mark that you feel really stupid .

Of course when we read the books we condition ourselves because slowly but surely we start to understand how he thinks a little better, so we formulate expectations, not based on stereotypes, but on the character of the author, kind of like with Kafka as well.

Conditioning is a major part of the human mechanism in general. Most of the times we do it to ourselves. It's how we create a sense of self, despite being not one entity, but a very complex system of different parts. Our short term memory convinces us that we are usually in the right and our long term memory compresses data by association making memories even easier to manipulate. Even our sensory image of the world isn't objective, but we perceive it as the only one that can be. As every other system we need a purpose, thus we convince ourselves we are special, different, unique etc.

Our parents condition us. We share their moral code, their image of humanity, their religious believes, their traditions or even their habits. The same thing goes for the rest of society and we still haven't talked about intentional conditioning .

Conditioning does the funniest things. We think we are a species that love freedom. Yet our society has so many written and unwritten rules that you can't name them all even if that all you do for a whole day. We give away our freedom for security and comfort every day, and no one seems to notice. We submit to another's will and call it democracy. We think we are moral creatures yet it's in our nature to search and find shortcuts to our goals. Heck, some of us even think we are something other than a type of monkey and that there is a holy pervert in the sky (what is holy ffs) that watches our every move and judges us accordingly. We think that a word can describe a complex socioeconomic system and that this system is the same as long as it bears the same title. We think that every day we make conscious decisions when in truth we decide once for every type of problem and then recall that decision when a similar situation arises.  I could go on forever ... but i won't since i've just taken my pills  .

Anyway, to answer the question i think it depends on age and prior conditioning. If a person has an already formed personality conditioning happens through confirmation bias. You get the safety of your believes served along with something new. Since most people in our culture are subjects to very similar conditioning, it's not that hard to find that common, safe core belief and build upon it. Of course, younger people are more receptive to bigger changes, thus we have school which has authority, so the books must be right.

That's why i love so much the exceptions to the rule. The best books i've read, i couldn't complete on the first try. This also happened to me with the DTCB, it was so alien that it offended me on a subconscious level, so i put it down after 100 pages, but i somehow kept thinking about it, and i mean actually thinking, till one day i picked it up again and kept reading and reading till the end of the trilogy. I later realized that what had initially offended me was simple honesty, it was making me feel uncomfortable about myself and we don't like that, do we ?

As a fantasy reader, I feel heavily conditioned by the Return of the King/happy ending.  Wonder if Bakker is just going to kill everyone.  Something more Comrac style.

Some things are so very subjective. I completed the return of the king decades ago, i was probably 13 or 14 at the time and it was an awful feeling. You saw a happy ending, i saw the end of beauty. A world becoming somehow less, the begining of decay. Lol i was a weird boy .

Lol.

I just find it difficult to believe the string of assumptions necessary to assume that Nau-Cayuti is the No-God.

Assumptions that go into Nau-Cayuti as the No-God:
- Nau-Cayuti is the Nameless Captive
- The Golden Room manifests the No-God
- The Golden Room uses the Line O'Captives to manifest the No-God
- The Golden Room requires 144,000 people in the Line O'Captives to manifest the No-God
- Nau-Cayuti/the Nameless Captive is somehow more than the other 143,999 people in the line in the No-God.

Thus, Nau-Cayuti is the No-God...

Too much nerdanel for me to support .

EDIT:

Sixth assumption: Baby in the dream is Nau-Cayuti, is No-God?

Isn't it obvious? He is the newest model, fresh from the oven! There is no such thing as too much nerdanel, you just have to do it with style .

My favorite pet theory has always been that something has caused a loop in Earwa and that's why so many events big and small repeat themselves. So the baby should be  Nau Cayuti 2000, since according to Mimara who is NEVER wrong (ever), she is just a conduit that allowed Aka's (Seswatha) and Esmi's (empress) love child to be born.  If the dream implies that the baby is connected to the No God, then something similar should apply to the older model as well. It's totally straightforward as you can see for yourself.

I know it doesn't sound that impressive of a theory yet, but that's because i haven't yet managed to incorporate Elvis in to the mix. He will be the glue that makes this theory completely airtight, you will be awed.

Like that part a lot!  Also, very cool what you said--if Nau-Cayuti is the NG, then he is there at his dad's death.  Communicating sorcerously?  What with all these dreams being sent, is someone coaching Celmomas through a death vision...TO CONDITION SESWATHA???

If? Iiiiffffffff? How can you people still be in doubt, it's practically a proven fact by now. Who was coaching whom, that's a good question. Celmomas saw Nau-Cayuti but whom did the Consult see. WHAT DID THEY SEE?

Yes but maybe it's a trap . For example Mepa is so similar to Muad'Dib that i am certain Scott is once again trolling us...

Lol or her .

But +1, SOA.

I love the nerdanels that once you get into Ishual's Thousand Thousand Halls, the Dunyain are in a Battle Royale Cannibal Deathmatch. Also, the one that started this thread in my mind, that the Dunyain have previously conditioned Ishterebinth.

Sorry, Bakker's misogyny seems to have rubbed on me :p. Seriously though, in the long run i doubt the Dunyain would bother with anything outside their interest and the only thing they might want from the NonMen is genetic material (which they probably already have through the Anasurimbor line).