Gunn, James.

Gunn, James. "Tales from the Spaceship Geoffrey." I.e., "four stories [that] are part of a novel-in-progress[,] Transcendental." In Gateways. Ed. Elizabeth Anne Hull. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2010. "A Tor Book" festschrift in honor of Frederik Pohl. Pp. [130]-165.

According to JG's headnote, the novel is "about a group of human and alien pilgrims on a long space journey seeking the site of a transcendental machine, who pass the time telling stories about what brought them on the quest" — though none of the stories deals directly with the transcendental machine, which remains in the background. Two stories are relevant. One is "Xi's Story" of his home world of Xifor, "a cruel world of rocky continents and cold seas whose misery is relieved by a few fertile valleys near the equator" (139). Xi's ancestors were driven from the valleys "by the privileged few": "Out of deprivation came strength," and invention: "To cope with the ugly reality of their circumstances, Xifora turned to technology," and their machines allowed them to take the valleys and the planet and to proceed to "the gas giants" of their star system, planets "that oppressed Xifor," the planet, "and Xifora," the people, "and saw those worlds, like the valley Xifora, hoarding resources that Xifora could use and the satellites that could provide a home for more Xifora, perhaps more hospitable than the Xifor mountains" (140). And so the Xifora became a spacefaring species — and continued spacefaring, in part, to escape the softening influences of even Xifora after the Xifora had developed "machines to protect these persons from the cruelties of nature" (141). "4107's Story" is significant for a vegetative species that evolves — with unconscious interference from an intelligent alien "meat species" — to where they can grow machines, including spaceships and a space elevator (161-63); cf. and contrast Bob Shaw's The Wooden Spaceships and Brian Aldiss's The Dark Light Years, cited in Clockworks [1].

FICTION, RDE, 07/V/11