One of the main themes of Erebus Tales is the shocking contrast between primitive and advanced technology. The surviving peoples of the Southern Hemisphere had to colonize Antarctica, the only refuge left for them. Forced to leave behind their factories and computers, they now rely on subsistence farming, cottage industries and nomadic herding to sustain themselves. They spend the long, dark winters in villages near the coast, coming together but once a year for a big trading festival by the deep blue waters of Lake Tal (renamed from the present Lake Vostok, submerged under a mile-thick ice sheet).
Then Sky-Borne aliens arrive in an iridium-coated flying machine, which Luz, having no way to fathom such a thing, likens rather to a giant silver bird. But culture shock works both ways. Fay Del Campo, the gushy anthropologist among the plane’s crew, is dumbfounded by Venga, a ritual hallucinogen for channeling ancestors, promoted by the tribe’s shaman. #channeling #hallucinogens #antarctica #cottageindustry #anthropology
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