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Fragment by Warren Fahy
Topic Started: Aug 7 2009, 10:45 PM (6,012 Views)
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Are you plausible?

I just finished the book, and it's an exciting read! As far as what's been mentioned in the thread so far:

- The creatures aren't descended from stomatopods. It's posited toward the end of the book that perhaps stomatopods are a product of this ecosystem that was able to escape and spread throughout the planet.

- Plenty of the species on the planet photosynthesize. The fact that they also feed on other things within the ecology doesn't change that.

- According to the book, what makes these creatures "superior" to the rest of earth life is their aggression, both in predation and in reproduction. Everything eats just about everything, which makes me wonder if anything is ever able to sleep or if it just resigns itself to its fate when it gets tired. Many species seem to reproduce at will, and the disk-ants are described as reproducing as fetuses!?! It's a highly competitive ecology, and even the apex predator, the spiger, must keep its wits about it.

- The hendropods' "immortality" is only supported in the book by evidence of their uncharted longevity. One individual is met who was probably at least 200 years old. They aren't immortal in the sense of "immune to bullets" or anything silly like that.

- The fire breathing theories included in the book are certainly interesting. To say that I agree or disagree with them is a ludicrous scientific prospect, not because they are inherently wrong but because they simply haven't been proven. They make some very compelling arguments and are wonderful examples of "thinking outside the box," but we have to remember that this is an author presenting ideas through a fictional scientist that support and explain events within the story. Are these ideas wholly implausible? I don't think so. It's an interesting idea that not only is sex evolved from a form of predation but that life cycles are closely connected with gestation time in order to prevent incestuous breeding. In an ecology such as Hender's Island, where there is no danger of even living long enough to potentially mate with offspring, then the DNA encoding that governs longevity wouldn't need to be present. If such a creature were to consistently survive in the environment it could potentially do so for a long, long time.
Take a look at my exobiology subforum of the planet Nereus!

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food for thought
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Rodlox
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sam999
Mar 1 2010, 08:03 PM
And the people DNA-tested the wasps compared to each other in detail?

how much detail do you want?

1) the wasps were trying to eat them {the scientists}
2) as soon as the wasps died, other things tried to eat them {the wasps}
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Parts of the Cluster Worlds:
"Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP)
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Cool_Hippo43
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hum, I did not find much information about the book on the internet, just a synopsis but nothing about how creatures
Could someone explain the biology of the island? What are these blood trees? Or is this lichen?
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Tartarus
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Cool_Hippo43
Feb 20 2018, 12:55 PM
hum, I did not find much information about the book on the internet, just a synopsis but nothing about how creatures
Could someone explain the biology of the island? What are these blood trees? Or is this lichen?
While your post is a necropost, being almost 8 years after the last post, you did ask some valid questions, so I shall try to give you some answers.

Henders Island was a place where life had evolved in isolation from the rest of the world since the Ediacaran period. Animals on the island were things like stomatopods (e.g. the Henders rats, spigers and hendropods), pararthropods (e.g. the disk ants and the drill wasps) and other very derived members of very ancient groups. The animals belonged to many different species and I have no idea why many of the old posts on the thread expressed opinions of it all being one species as the book never said or even implied this. Many did have life cycles where they radically changed their form but this does not mean that every creature was just a different life stage of another.
A notable feature of the island's ecology was that it was insanely dangerous. Instead of the usual "predator vs prey" it was "everything vs everything". Every creature would try to kill and eat whatever it could. Due to the extremely high mortality rate Henders creatures were asexually reproducing creatures that were born pregnant (this is actually one of the more plausible aspects of them as being born pregnant does actually occur in some real life creatures such as aphids). The high mortality rate was also why everything on the island had no lifespan. In a way they were immortal, not in the "nothing could kill them" sense as they could and did get killed, but in the eternal life sense. They could potentially live forever, though some other creature would almost certainly kill them eventually.
There was a sapient species on the island- the hendropods- who were the only animal there to not be immensely aggressive and violent. Due to their camouflage ability and having found a safe refuge at a tree where other creatures didn't really go, they had managed to avoid the life of eternal threats on their livelihoods and thus grew immensely old. The hendropod characters in Fragment (who feature again in the sequel Pandemonium) are tens of thousands of years old.

On your question on "blood trees" almost all of the "trees" on Henders island were in fact animals. The only exception was one plant species that the hendropod's refuge tree belonged to- the only plant species on the island. All other trees were plant-like animals, including a late stage of the disk ant life cycle where they apparently became trees if they managed to live long enough. The animal trees were rooted to the ground but could still move somewhat in order to catch and eat other animals.

The lichen-like organisms were named "clover" by the main characters. They were symbionts of cyanobacteria and proteobacteria. By day they would photosynthesise and by night they would feed on rock.
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Cool_Hippo43
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Tartarus
Feb 20 2018, 07:09 PM
Cool_Hippo43
Feb 20 2018, 12:55 PM
hum, I did not find much information about the book on the internet, just a synopsis but nothing about how creatures
Could someone explain the biology of the island? What are these blood trees? Or is this lichen?
While your post is a necropost, being almost 8 years after the last post, you did ask some valid questions, so I shall try to give you some answers.

Henders Island was a place where life had evolved in isolation from the rest of the world since the Ediacaran period. Animals on the island were things like stomatopods (e.g. the Henders rats, spigers and hendropods), pararthropods (e.g. the disk ants and the drill wasps) and other very derived members of very ancient groups. The animals belonged to many different species and I have no idea why many of the old posts on the thread expressed opinions of it all being one species as the book never said or even implied this. Many did have life cycles where they radically changed their form but this does not mean that every creature was just a different life stage of another.
A notable feature of the island's ecology was that it was insanely dangerous. Instead of the usual "predator vs prey" it was "everything vs everything". Every creature would try to kill and eat whatever it could. Due to the extremely high mortality rate Henders creatures were asexually reproducing creatures that were born pregnant (this is actually one of the more plausible aspects of them as being born pregnant does actually occur in some real life creatures such as aphids). The high mortality rate was also why everything on the island had no lifespan. In a way they were immortal, not in the "nothing could kill them" sense as they could and did get killed, but in the eternal life sense. They could potentially live forever, though some other creature would almost certainly kill them eventually.
There was a sapient species on the island- the hendropods- who were the only animal there to not be immensely aggressive and violent. Due to their camouflage ability and having found a safe refuge at a tree where other creatures didn't really go, they had managed to avoid the life of eternal threats on their livelihoods and thus grew immensely old. The hendropod characters in Fragment (who feature again in the sequel Pandemonium) are tens of thousands of years old.

On your question on "blood trees" almost all of the "trees" on Henders island were in fact animals. The only exception was one plant species that the hendropod's refuge tree belonged to- the only plant species on the island. All other trees were plant-like animals, including a late stage of the disk ant life cycle where they apparently became trees if they managed to live long enough. The animal trees were rooted to the ground but could still move somewhat in order to catch and eat other animals.

The lichen-like organisms were named "clover" by the main characters. They were symbionts of cyanobacteria and proteobacteria. By day they would photosynthesise and by night they would feed on rock.
Thank you very much, I did not want to have to ask the question in this topic so old more realy I did not find anything very descriptive in wikipedia
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Sigmund Nastrazzurro
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Now that the topic is alive again, it will probably not matter much if I add one more message. Here's a review from long ago: http://planetfuraha.blogspot.nl/2010/08/warren-fahys-fragment.html
"Never again, we vowed, would we let Natural History become a mere part of Human History" (Souren Nyoroge)
Visit the planet Furaha website and the corresponding blog
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