I like this story, but I never liked the wording "made out of meat", as if the word exists in a world without animals. I could have accepted "proteins", but that's not a catchy title.
They're made out of meat (1991)
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Re: They're made out of meat (1991)
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
The short film makes no sense, as the 2 people talking are meat themselves.
Plus for the story to make sense, they have to be seeing Earth from scans/sensors, and one of them must in fact not be familiar with Earth at all, having disbelief in what the other is saying. But if they are both there, in a diner, they cannot be as skeptical. I get the constraints of short indie films, I love them regardless, but in this particular case it completely misses the mark .
You just have to go along with the idea that skin provides no indication of meatiness and that the two aliens are Ford Prefect types, then the short film lands just fine.
Re: They're made out of meat (1991)
#33Earlier I found it awe-inspiring. Nowadays I find it funny because we have yet to even remotely approach the complexity of meat.
Re: They're made out of meat (1991)
#34see also Stanisław Lem
Re: They're made out of meat (1991)
#35As I’ve gotten older, it’s become increasingly hard for me to understand how anyone can read such comical reductionism as enlightenment. We are infinitely complex arrangements of systems built upon systems, from the quantum properties of carbon atoms up through the proteins that make the “meat” we are so glibly reduced to, through the complexities and adaptations of mammalian bodies, up to the fearsome order of the h…
Part of the human expression of disgust includes thought terminating cliches. Imagine how the average person would talk about a race of bug-like aliens, no matter how advanced they were. It would be a dismissive kind of 'ew, gross'. The humor is in seeing other beings reacting that way to us. I don't think it's supposed to imply the aliens are some kind of flawless geniuses revealing the true nature of human beings.
Sentient plants that move quickly would be another case of us humans going "WTF?!?!"
Re: They're made out of meat (1991)
#36Also by Terry Bisson and one of my favorite stories is Bears Discover Fire 1990 https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/bears-discover-fi...
I didn't really get it to be honest. I feel like something went over my head.
Re: They're made out of meat (1991)
#37I like this story, but I never liked the wording "made out of meat", as if the word exists in a world without animals. I could have accepted "proteins", but that's not a catchy title.
Maybe it’s lab grown in a future and not tied to animals in any way. Just for food.
Re: They're made out of meat (1991)
#38Re: They're made out of meat (1991)
#39The short film someone made is pretty great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6JFTmQCFHg
The short film makes no sense, as the 2 people talking are meat themselves.
"probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."
The two talking, and other races, are machines that cover themselves however they like. These two are machines with artificial skins. That is normal. Fully meat beings are not. At least that is how I always read this story.
Re: They're made out of meat (1991)
#40I like this story, but I never liked the wording "made out of meat", as if the word exists in a world without animals. I could have accepted "proteins", but that's not a catchy title.
I think that is what makes it great, because it makes it sound absurd.
If it was just talking about carbon based lifeforms it wouldn't land the same way.