Reviewer: Quicksilver Signed
Date: March 25 2013
Title: Chapter 1: Prologue
Paula said, "Trust me, I know," in regard to relationships between people of such different sizes not working. I'm surprised we didn't hear the story behind that; perhaps we will in a future chapter. I love the "T-Rex dancing among mice" description of Lena.
I don't see a blurb from Lena's thesis at the beginning of this chapter, but I guess that's because it's technically a continuation of the previous installment. I like how the thesis passages and the story complement each other: she draws upon her own experience walking Daniel home from the bar when writing about a clumsy person turning into a "Godzilla monster" in a miniature city, and her discussion of burglars more easily sneaking into giant's homes, but in turn being completely helpless if they're discovered by the inhabitants, mirrors Daniel's first meeting with Sarah. I think, however, that the blurbs might make more sense in the chapters they relate to rather than at the beginning of the following chapters, especially since the story is essentially a flashback, with Lena occasionally telling the reader such things as how little confidence she had in herself "at the time." The thesis excerpts can start the chapter, while she relates to us the "research" that applies to those findings afterward.
Speaking of Lena's thesis, it seems odd that someone who is scared to be among people significantly taller than she is, according to one of the reasons she gave Daniel for why she's studying in Mexico, is writing a dissertation on the role that size plays in behavior among humans; that makes about as much sense as someone who's afraid of cats and dogs wanting to study veterinary medicine or someone who can't stand the sight of blood wanting to become a surgeon. She's lucky to be a height that will allow her to look at other societies from far below as well as from far above, and to not seize the opportunity to enrich her views on the subject seems foolish. Hopefully, her increasing confidence will provide her the bravery to spend some time among relative giants. It also wouldn't hurt if Sarah tagged along for the trip, since Sarah seems like the type of girl who wouldn't be afraid to stand up to anyone...not even someone whose palm she could stand upon. If Daniel is mesmerized by the big bodies of Paula, Lena, and Sarah, I can only imagine how much fun he would have in Europe. Are there any bigger European students, or American students, at the university in Mexico City? That might be a way for Lena to ease into confronting her fear before making her face the streets of Amsterdam.
I don't know whether you have any specific ideas in mind for the "world tour" story you mentioned, but I was watching the television show The Amazing Race last week, and the contestants were in Vietnam, which I recalled as being home to some of the smallest people in your world, and I couldn't help but picture relatively half-mile-tall racers thundering across the countryside. (Americans aren't quite that tall compared to Vietnamese in your world, but I didn't have the exact measurements at the time.) I don't know if you've ever watched The Amazing Race, but if you're looking to give the characters from this story a break, something along those lines could be fun, with multiple teams jetting off to different countries across the globe.
Pkong's question about what stops people from conquering those so much smaller than them also got me thinking. There are lots of reasons countries go to war, but I'd say that competition for land and/or resources is at the top of the list of the most common. However, I reasoned that this may not be as much of a problem as it may seem at first thought, since I expect that the map of Earth in your Sizes and Countries universe (S&C) would look much different from the map of the real world (RW). To show what I mean, probably the highest ratio of S&C height to RW country size is Luxembourg--the Luxembourgers would be cramped into a relative 3 square miles or so of land--while the lowest ratio may be India, which, to people who average 6 centimeters in height, would seem to them to have more land than 21 entire Earths. If you scaled each country relative to its inhabitants, though, S&C India would only be about the size of RW Luxembourg, while S&C Luxembourg would swell to the size of Pakistan. Even though some big RW countries like India would shrink to an inconsequential size in S&C, the relatively small RW Netherlands would alone be about three times the area of Russia in S&C. So, I have a feeling that, if we kept the Earth with the same surface area, there would be less water, maybe even none. But, since we're already ignoring gravity's impact on such enormous human and animal bodies, let's forget that a bigger Earth would create even more gravity and just say that the planet is indeed bigger.
I don't know if you've ever seen world maps where the national borders are redrawn to illustrate various measures (like this one at http://rs.resalliance.org/2006/02/16/another-world-population-map/ does with population), but when I imagine how your world would look, scaling the countries to the humans' heights, I picture Europe and Russia utterly dominating the Eurasian landmass, with South and Eastern Asia occupying only a small portion of land in the lower right corner. Certainly, if borders were the same in S&C as in RW, I bet the Europeans would change that pretty quickly, but when Cambodia is 30 square miles in area and a Dutch person probably covers 100 feet per step, a Dutch explorer stumbling upon Cambodia would have been like finding a needle in a haystack. And even if they found Cambodia, tracking down and killing millions of people who only seem a millimeter tall would have been like trying to get rid of every ant in your neighborhood.
Obviously, I like to mention the Dutch and Cambodians because they represent the most extreme size difference, but I think that even when there's less of a disparity, the giants would not have tried to wipe out the smaller people. Depending on the size difference, the giants may have used their smaller counterparts to serve such varied purposes as food, fashion accessories, pets, lab animals, or slaves: more as resources to be occasionally harvested and exploited for the giants' pleasure and utility than something to be eradicated. To modern sensibilities, those fates may seem just as reprehensible, but doing these things out of ignorance is a little better than committing genocide out of sheer cruelty. I wouldn't expect that all the people of your world lived in harmony, and there would have been a lot of death and humiliation inflicted upon captured individuals from the smaller countries, but I think the nations as a whole would have survived.
In the modern day, smaller people would be easier for giants to find, building shiny office towers and emitting electronic signals, but I think science's increasing understanding of the similarities between humans and technology's ability to connect everyone across the size spectrum would inspire international outrage if one country attacked a significantly weaker country. RW Costa Rica doesn't have a standing army, but for anyone to invade them would be pointless at best and probably turn the world against them at worst. I find it hard to even picture a non-state actor like a terrorist gaining entry to a country with tiny inhabitants only to get to a city and start stomping on everyone in sight. Small people could still do some damage if they want to, though: a tiny terrorist's bomb exploding in a crowded area could still kill a few giants, and anyone of any size could create an electronic virus to cripple the computer systems of anyone else.
I know the logic of how such a world as yours could have developed isn't our first concern in this story, but I thought I'd share some logical possibilities for how the "lesser" members of the species still exist. Keep up the good work.
Author's Response: Hallo:
OK, first of all...wow! I'm extremely flattered to see that you give all this thought to the little scenario I made here. It means a lot to see that someone is so interested in it to make such a long comment. I'm also glad that you like the little comments spread around the story.
Now, for the thesis thing, I didn't want to give spoilers at the beginning of the chapter, so I decided to put them in the next chapter. I know that spoilers wouldn't be so bad in these cases, but the readers would still already know what to expect from the chapter.
About her being afraid of large people, I think that'd be kind of normal. I didn't really mean to put it as if she had some kind of giant-phobia or something. I just thought it'd be kind of easier for someone to study the role of size in societies when you're the big one and can more or less calmly observe the city around you, than if you were tiny and maybe too busy trying to avoid being stepped on, or taking a long while to cover distances. Being the big one might just give you a panoramic view of things. But I agree with you, she should also try to visit a large city. That might give her an even more panoramic view of things. I was definitely considering that from the beginning. That's why, like you said, I picked someone more or less in the middle of sizes.
Unfortunately, no, i have never seen The Amazing Race. It sounds interesting and fun, though, so I'll try to give it a look. As for the big ones attacking the little ones, I admit I didn't give it much thought before. But I absolutely love your idea. Invasions would be kind of pointless if the invaded territory or resources were so tiny. Plus, like you said, technology nowadays would let even the tiny ones do some sort of damage. And finally, I guess other countries wouldn't exactly like it if a tiny country was attacked like that. Of course, I know the world would be bound to have conflicts, but as you said, I tried to avoid that point, at least in this story.
The world map in general would be much different, I agree, but I didn't think I'd really need to describe how it was. It sure is interesting, but this story might not be the place to do it. I probably will eventually, just...not here.
But all in all, you have no idea how much I appreciate you taking the time to share your point of view about this setting in general. Even if I don't immediately do something about them, it doesn't mean I don't take them into account. I definitely will do something about them at some point. Again, thanks a lot and hopefully I'll hear from you soon.
Wholia.
