message 0124

• Religion and Beliefs in C.J. Cherryh's Compact and Union/Alliance books
• Life on Carriers

>From: Lesley Grant <lgrant@maths.tcd.ie>
>Subject: cherryhlist
>Date: Mon, 10 May 93 9:48:23 BST

> >From: Jo Jaquinta <jaymin@maths.tcd.ie>
> >Subject: CherryhList // Religion
> >Date: Fri, 7 May 93 9:36:35 BST
> 
> 	If you look at her history you have the early stations being
> settled by these long term STL ships. On all ships there is a minimum
> of free space for anything. Whereas giving the crew space to practice
> their religion would be psycologically justified I have this feeling
> that the crews were probably chosen from a wide ethnic mixture thus
> making it impractical to represent each person's religion.

	In _Heavy Time_ and _Hellburners_, all the EC people appear to
be atheists or agnostics. It's likely that this also held true for the
first STL ships and the stations -- the only belief was in making the EC
more profitable. (BTW it doesn't take much room to pray, which is about 
all any of the 'major' religions requires. And how much room does a Tanakh,
Bible, Qur'an or any other set of scripture take on microfiche? Any other
religious duties can normally be postponed or worked out in some other way --
for example, an Islamic crewmember could have Zakat [standardised money
for the poor] paid by standing order from their wage account, and fasting
in Ramadan could be either practised if possible, or postponed due to being
'on a journey'. The other three necessary religious duties take either no
room [bekief in God, belief in angels] or little room [prayer])

> 	Certainly as The Fleet is run down they take on the social
> detrius of society, strip them of their past and indoctrinate them
> in new ways, they create an environment where ignorance propigates.
> Only the technical class know how to make things work but not necessarily
> how things work. The troops in the belly live in a world where things
> just happen and they only have to ponder orders. Cherryh portrays thems
> "dicing with the deep", i.e. playing games of chance as they hit
> jump space. It seems an echo of Samhain here in Ireland. Samhain
> (Halloween) comes at a time between seasons, where the normal rules
> of How Things Work break down. In folklore it is when the Otherworld
> is close to this world and all sorts of "divination games" are played.
> You know like suspending a wedding ring over a womb to determine the
> gender of a child, weather one gets the pea or the ring or whatever
> in the barm brak, etc, etc. Would not going through jump be an analogous
> time when the normal rules break down? Remember the Troopers seem to
> take a different sort of jump drug that doesn't leave them totally
> incapicated during jump. [Maybe that's why they are all a bit mad :-]

	First off, I don't really think that the aspect of Samhain as breaking
the borders is applicable here. However, the troops' playing dice games as 
the ship jumps is certainly presented as a quasi-religious act. I believe it
(and the troops' generally appallig behaviour) is an attempt by them to
try and gain a measure of control that is usually completely lacking in their
lives. They must sit out ship battles, are completely helpless most of
the time on board, and are on the bottom of the chain of command. In any
situation they can, they try to reassert control over the course of events:
control the new recruits by beating/raping them; control stationers' contempt
by intimidating them; control their fear of jumping by playing symbolic dice
games. It's probably as religious as the troops get, because more established
religious traditions would require them to submit themselves in yet another
area of life. 

	
> 	Not only that but The Fleet stands largely outside of time.
> Being almost constantly on the move the time dilation of jump means
> they live a very long time. Has anyone actually read Rimrunners and
> counted the number of days that pass for Bet Yeager compared to a
> year going by on Thule? For Stationers The War is a long, drawn out,
> and sparodic thing. (A bit like Northern Ireland in our papers here)
> Yet for The Fleet it is much more compressed. With this higher level of
> intensity it would not be difficult for The Stationers to personify
> them as archetypes.

	For people in the midst of the War, the Fleet may be demonized, but
it's certainly not demonic. Everyone's quite aware that the Fleet is made
up of humans. The thing that merchanters and stationers would try to forget
is that the Fleet is made up of their own children, that 'ordinary' folk
could be turned relatively easily into killers. The only 'archetypes' that
others have of the Fleet is 'murderers', 'theives', etc. This is just common
denial of the sort that leads people nowadays to think of a mass-murderer
next door as always having been a nice quiet person. People are either seen
as completely good or completely bad. Perhaps later on the Fleet might figure
as doomed heroes, a ghost fleet or whatever, but during/just after the war
they are just seen as criminals whose time is past.

			Lesley