Skroderiders vs. Ents

It is not often in literature that you get such a clear comparison between science fiction and fantasy as you get between Vernor Vinge’s Skroderiders and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Ents, and I often get asked why I only read science fiction and no fantasy (with the exception of Tolkien). Here is an attempt to combine the two above topics into a hopefully coherent and entertaining blog.

These two entities are basically the same creature. The only difference is that one is based on rules of pure fantasy and the other on rules of clearly defined and traceable science. They both are conscious trees. The both are rather large. They both talk their time in conversation and thought because they live for thousands of years and have no need to hurry. They both act as guardians of some world (or universe) and may be considered to be a tree-of-all-trades. That’s where comparison ends.

I’ll start with the Ents because they are the more easily identified and the more popular of the two. Ents are, of course, from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy. They are the guardians of the forest and of Middle Earth. They are very old (for you LOTR geeks out there, they originated shortly after the awakening of Elves) and seem to live forever, although they can be killed. Oh yeah, and they are trees. Big giant trees with hands and feet and eyes and mouths who walk around keeping the other trees in line during the dark times of the Third Age.

That’s the general description and explanation for the entities known as Ents.

Now it’s time for the Skroderiders. They came from a Hugo Award Winning Novel by Vernor Vinge called A Fire Upon the Deep. They are indeed riders of skrodes. Skrodes are, according to Vinge, six-wheeled computers that are fully able to navigate through corridors in zero-gravity. They are a computerized buffer that serves as a short-term memory for the Riders. The Riders themselves are trees that have evolved long-term memory in their branches. They also have evolved to have a complete range of motion with their branches, as well as eyes to observe the world around them. For some of you, this may seem as big of a stretch as the magical Ents, but Vernor Vinge explains their development in detail so that even the most skeptic individual can acknowledge that they are possible.

The history of the Skroderiders are as follows. Billions of years ago...well, I’m going to take my first break there. In Vinge’s book, there are thousands of civilizations spread across the universe. These civilizations have been around for billions of years, and therefore have had ample time for the variety of evolutionary tracts that appear in the novel. Alright, billions of years ago, the Riders had evolved their eyes and long term memory and their full range of motion, but had no short term memory (because why do trees that live hundreds of years need a ‘short-term’ memory?). Then a conscious, artificial entity, which they call Whoever, (for it was so long ago that they can’t really remember who) designed and built the Skrodes and integrated them into the Riders. Again, it took millions of years before the Riders became true Skroderiders, but this entity had the time and the resources (I cannot really explain the origin of this entity without giving away the entire story) to make the Skroderiders.

So during the novel, the Skroderiders are respected space travelers, with their long lives and slow thought ideal for long missions in space, but thanks to the Skrodes and Whoever, they have the ability to communicate with every form of life they encounter (after learning their language or finding an accurate translation program).

Now whom do you prefer more? Ents or Skroderiders? Who do you find more interesting? Do you have to like one over the other? I enjoy them both, although I find that there is more to think about and learn from the Skroderiders.

The detailed description of the Skroderiders and their development is exactly the reason why I enjoy science fiction so much. There are no real leaps-of-faith that must be made to accept them are real. No magic, just fact and extrapolation and traceable and arguable probability.

“.... the difference between fantasy and science fiction lies in the fact that fantast takes place in a world in which the rules of everyday experience do not apply, and science fiction in the world of everyday experience extended...”

-Speculations on Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction