Races
- Humans
All humans in the novel (except Pham) are descended from Nyjoran stock. Old Earth is noted as being on the other side of the galaxy. One of the major human habitations is Sjandra Kei, three systems comprising roughly 28 billion individuals. Their main tongue is Samnorsk.
- Tines
A canid race, each 'person' comprising a group mind of 4-8 individuals, connected by sound-waves. Each 'soul' will last as long as it has members, potentially hundreds of years.
- Skroders / Riders / Skroderiders
A benign sessile race, using wheeled mechanical constructs to move and as short-term memory.
- Dirokimes
Older race of inward dreamers, original inhabitants of Sjandra Kei.
Read more about this topic: A Fire Upon The Deep
Famous quotes containing the word races:
“Now different races and nationalities cherish different ideals of society that stink in each other’s nostrils with an offensiveness beyond the power of any but the most monstrous private deed.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Late in the afternoon we passed a man on the shore fishing with a long birch pole.... The characteristics and pursuits of various ages and races of men are always existing in epitome in every neighborhood. The pleasures of my earliest youth have become the inheritance of other men. This man is still a fisher, and belongs to an era in which I myself have lived.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“While the white man keeps the impetus of his own proud, onward march, the dark races will yield and serve, perforce. But let the white man once have a misgiving about his own leadership, and the dark races will at once attack him, to pull him down into the old gulfs.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)