Friday 30 January 2015

Van Rijn And Brannock

Contrast Nicholas van Rijn on Diomedes with the Christian Brannock upload on an unnamed extrasolar planet.

(i) Van Rijn, with a life expectancy of a hundred years, regularly travels through hyperspace between the Solar and other planetary systems whereas immortal inorganic intelligences like the Brannock upload travel between stars at sub-light speeds and do not intend to return to Earth. In fact, Intelligence Prime and Brannock have been on this one extrasolar planet for seven hundred years.

(ii) Diomedes has a planetary ecology and an intelligent species whereas Brannock's planet has only primitive organisms of interest because they are alien to Terrestrial forms.

(iii) Van Rijn manipulates the winged Diomedeans and their societies in order to keep himself and his companions alive whereas Intelligence Prime, helped by Brannock, aims only to understand the planet and its life.

(iv) Van Rijn must win a war whereas Brannock merely explores, charts, studies and discovers although these quests can be difficult and precarious.

(v) Van Rijn returns home whereas Brannock is incorporated into Intelligence Prime.

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