Re: The Silly Future, Or What Was Pohl Drinking?

Malcolm wrote:
>
> Or a cost-cutting Visitor version of McDonalds might figure that, if you
> have humans, they will muck themselves out and prepare their own food. If
> you play it right they might even sacrifice themselves to you when the time comes.

That's a possible scenario.

It's not a very rational decision on the part of VMickeyDee's, because
of the danger of the sapients revolting and of some of one's own
employees sympathizing with the rebels (note that _both_ happened in
the TV series). But human history contains enough poorly thought out
decisions that I can accept a certain degree of stupidity on the part
of aliens, without it destroying the story's verisimilitude.

The water thing bothers me a lot more. Water is common in the
Universe: as liquids go it's even fairly common in liquid form (*).
And of course if you have the energy to fly miles-wide starships, the
energy required to warm ice or condense steam is fairly trivial.

We are fooled by our own experience regarding dehydration in deserts
into regarding water as rare, in general.

Sincerely Yours,
Jordan

(*) Liquids, being an in-between state of matter between solid and
gas/plasma, aren't that common in the Universe in general. The vast
majority of matter is plasma, followed by gas, followed by solid.

.

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