message 0086

• Chanur book covers/Physical appearance of the Compact races

>From: nancy ott <ott@ansoft.com>
>Subject: cherryhlist
>Date: Wed, 10 Feb 93 10:45:45 EST

> > >From: seth@cie.uoregon.edu (Seth Scott)
> > Just to discuss something rather trivial, what images do people have of the
> > races in Compact space?  From the edition that I read (and the
> > text, of course!),  I have an idea th> at hani are significantly
> > stronger (on the average) than 
> > humans are.  Pyanfar, for example, is shorter than Tully by about a head
> > (she has to look up to look him in the face), but she breaks a kif's back
> > with an open-handed blow.  (note that I'm discussing _female_ hani-- Khym Mahn
> > is clearly stronger than most anything except another male hani!)
> > Of the mahendo'sat, we learn that Pyanfar doesn't trust Jik alone in her 
> > presence, unarmed, presumably because of his strength and his blunt, control-
> > reaching claws.

I see the hani as being very feline in body.  A little smaller than
the Michael Whelan covers depict (except for the males), a little more
rounded, with more cat-like musculature ...  allowing them to move
with the unconscious arrogance and grace of tigers.  

The t'ca I see as smooth, psychedelic snakes with mole-like snouts;
the chi I see as spastic, fluorescent Gumby-like critters; the knnn I
see as quick moving spider-things covered in long, coarse, matted
black hair.

For some reason, I always visualize the stsho as looking like
elongated, well-dressed, mother-of-pearl versions of E.T.  (Although
that's not *quite* how they're described!)  

Funny how the covers of these novels influence how I view the
different Compact species.  Most of the time, I quickly discard the
images on a book cover as I'm reading since they usually don't match
up with the author's descriptions -- making me wonder if cover artists
ever look at the books they are supposed to illustrate.  (For
instance, the cover of one of Octavia Butler's novels showed the main
character to be a young white woman.  In the text, it was specifically
stated that the main character was black.  Go figure.)  However, both
Michael Whelan's and David Cherry's Chanur covers are pretty true to
Cherryh's descriptions of what the Compact species look like.  My
favorite image of the kif is from the cover of "The Kif Strike Back",
where a kif (presumably Sikkukkut) stands in a lighted accessway
surrounded by the heads of his fallen foes.

Speaking of the kif, a friend who's into military miniatures recently
showed me a catalog from Stone Mountain Miniatures.  In it are 25 mm
figurines of an alien race called "the fanatical K'hiff" (!!)  that
look just like the pictures of the Kif on the Chanur covers.  (Except
that the figurines are carrying little rocket launchers and so forth.)
Wonder where the designer got that concept from??  ;-) ;-)  



- nancy ott    | This space for rent. 
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