From: naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   On 2025-12-16, James Nicoll  wrote:   
      
   > Hard Landing by Algis Budrys   
   > Starmen marooned in barbaric America!   
   >   
   > https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/castaway   
      
   | There are oxygen-breathing and methane-breathing interstellar   
   | civilizations;   
      
   BTW, where did this trope start?  It appears early in _Perry Rhodan_,   
   where genocidal wars between the two are part of the historical   
   background, but nothing is ever original in _PR_.   
      
   | I am not sure what the marsupial analog of a camel is.   
      
   Something extinct. Possibly South American. ... A quick trawl of   
   Wikipedia doesn't net anything.  Maybe a confusion with some South   
   American native ungulates?  Those convergently evolved to resemble   
   extant ungulates--but they were placentals, not marsupials.   
      
   | It’s not especially plausible but the story falls apart if the   
   | crew is purple, be-tentacled Things.   
      
   But it would make the "life of debauchery and unsafe sex" so much   
   more intriguing!   
      
   --   
   Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)