Re: New Arvorec words

On Tue, 29 May 2001 18:00:10 -0400, Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:

>bjm10@CORNELL.EDU wrote:
>> Indeed, given the hard-line cladistics dominating modern
>> taxonomy, there might be a movement afoot to set up a complete different
>> set of kingdoms for each planet.
>
>Perhaps "Empire" could be used for that ultra-high level.  :-)
>
>On Terra Nova, there are at least three "Empires".  The planet was
>barren before 50,000 years ago (which means that there are no fossil
>fuels, the probable reason that no industrial revolution ever occurred),
>and was terraformed by a long-vanished race, which brought life there.
>At least three distinct genetic types have been discovered.  Four if you
>count the Earth-derived life represented by the human colonists and the
>organisms they brought with them.
"Empire" is exactly the word I used in my classification of Kolagian life.
Fairies and dragons belong to the Draconian Empire. The "furry people"
originally belonged to a different empire (there were five in all), but in
the current classification they're related to the fairies. (Actually I
should say "Nalitarka, the group of Draconian animals that I refer to as
'fairies' in English"... to distinguish them from other categories of
beings with the same name.)

It would really confuse things to try and fit alien life forms into a
classification scheme based on the phylogenetic patterns of life on Earth.
Inevitably there would be beings that share characteristics of multiple
categories, or ones that don't fit well in any category. Alien biology
might even (probably would?) have an entirely alien genetic code.