A World of Difference (novel) - Minervan Biology and Society

Minervan Biology and Society

Minervan animals (including the sentient Minervans) are hexameristically radially symmetrical. This means that they have six eyes spaced equally all around, see in all directions and have no "back" where somebody could sneak on them unnoticed. The different way that Minervans perceive their environment, and its major influence on their culture and way of life, is a significant plot element - especially important in the battle scenes towards the end.

Females (referred to as "mates" by the Minervans) give birth to litters that consist of one male and five females, and the "mates" always die after reproducing because of torrential bleeding from the places where the six fetuses were attached; this gives a population multiplication of 5 per generation if all females live to adolescence and reproduce. Females reach puberty while still hardly out of childhood, and typically experience sex only once in the lifetime - leading to pregnancy and death at birth-giving.

Thus, in Minervan society male dominance seems truly determined by a biological imperative - though it takes different forms in various Minervan societies: in some females are considered expendable and traded as property, in other they are cherished and their tragic fate mourned - but still their dependant status is taken for granted.

The American women arriving on Minerva and discovering this situation consider it intolerable; a major plot element is their efforts, using the resources of Earth medical science, to find a way of saving the Minervan females and let them survive birth-giving. At the end, they do manage to save a particularly sympathetic Minervan female - potentially opening the way for a complete upheaval in Minervan society.

Technically, the Minervans can be said to be living in a neolithic society, since they use stone tools. However, though using no metals, their society is actually feudal and comparable to late Middle Ages Europe, and actually one of the Minervan societies depicted - the one contacted by the Soviets - shows the beginnings of mercantile capitalism (which is directly related to its being the more aggressive and predatory one).

Paradoxically, it is this nascent capitalist society which the Soviets decide to support in its effort to invade and conquer its feudal rival. This raises some eyebrows among the cosmonauts; however, as the resident ideologue explains to his bemused comrades, it is quite sound Marxist doctrine: Capitalism is more progressive than Feudalism; therefore, helping it win will help prepare Minervan society to get to Socialism some centuries hence.