Whipping Star is a novel I’ve bought with the same pack as the Márquez novella this February. This story from Frank Herbert takes place in a universe quite different from the one of Dune (I was a little surprised to learn that Herbert has made up several different sci-fi universes). This one has much more resemblance to our 21st century even though it includes a dozen of sentient alien species and the possibility of instant communication and travel through unlimited space,introduced by some of those aliens.
For me, the most important feature of the novel was showing how astonishingly one-sided and narrow-minded could be the human point of view on the Universe, since we are perfectly unable to look at it as other than a three-dimensional system of objects and radiations. It might be nothing else but our very own model of physical reality, based on how our senses and brains instinctually map our environment. Agent McKie is ordered to negotiate with a Caleban, a kind of creature no-one has actually seen so far. As it later unveils, their form of existence, however material it is, cannot be comprehended with the sensations and concepts we’ve made up so far. Their conversations take place in a metal ball, a self-propelled ‘house’ the Calebans create for communication with other sentient species (not all the story takes place in the ball, however). Although Fanny Mae – as she, confusingly, calls herself, probably because name is a new concept for Calebans – is obviously a superior intellect, they’re both struggling very hard to understand each other and to make themselves understood in the humans’ language; all because of the very-very few common concepts between their ‘cultures’.
Finally, with the help of an accident, McKie understands some of how Calebans apprehend the Universe (thus he’ll be able to solve the story’s crisis), and the reader is given a clue as well, but I’m sure it will make even more sense if I re-read that chapter a few months later.
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