Questions1) The Ketran come from a world that is quite unique. It is a crystal based planet, with the actual ground pretty unliveable. The Ket actually live on crystals that they keep lifted in the air miles above the planet's ground. What do you think about this concept of a species? How could such a creature evolve?
Well, the crystals themselves are kinda contradictory. it is certainly possible for a planets to have such a thickly-gaseous atmosphere that solid objects with structures that provide internal buoyancy can have sufficently low density to float in particular levels of the atmosphere, but if that was the case then the crystal's increase in growth over time would not cause them to increase overall density and have "internal buoyancy and atmospheric pressure loose the battle to gravity"... unless some aspect of the crystal's growth involves the continued growth of the crystal in the higher part atmosphere to be a finer, more dense crystal structure... but that still wouldn't result in crashing down to the planet surface, it would gradually lower, form less dense crystal growth, gradually rise and form more dense crystal growth and so on until a homeostasis is reached. To be more scientifically plausible, the crystals would need to have originally grown from the atmosphere just at the surface and have been brought to the skies by the Ket, with the crystals depending solely on the Ket for lift.
As for the Ket themselves, if living creatures existed in the "less sulfurous seas" and perhaps occasional land masses, then flight capable creatures could have certainly evolved from them. There aren't any details on the Ket eating habits, but if some type of small insects or small flighted creatures existed just above the surface of the seas, and the Ket evolved from some sort of fish that originally jumped to reach them, then jumped with more controlled direction and glided descents (flying fish) into eventually true winged creatures, then gaining the ability to fly and perch on floating objects could give the the evolutionary benefits of closer access to prey and removing themselves from potential sea predators.
Having family structures that are surprisingly human (with paired parents that with individual children who have left home at some point in maturity to start their own family, then the parents bug the children to return and visit) rather than herd or pack types of families makes the cooperative nature of the larger societies to create flying homes seem unlikely but then again, individualizing our families is a relatively recent aspect of human history, and the tiny 'nuclear families' more of a modern American thing, humans developed from tribal 'clan' types of extended families, so Kets could have done the same and grown to their large crystal societies with smaller families within.
On the whole, I feel that Kets are quite plausible as far as the provided details go.
2) The juvies on Ket especially are involved in a sort of gaming that parallels the game that the Ellimist will play against Crayak (it is also suspiciously similar to rpging, but that's besides the point). What do you think about the game and its rules of limited intrusion? Do you side with Ellimist, where less is more, or with Menno, who thinks that the players should be able to become direct players in the game?
I would argue that the Ket society's gaming being similar to Earth's youth/young adult gaming culture isn't beside the point, but is exactly the point, this story isn't so much about the Ellimist as we know him and the game he's now playing (to the disappointment of some readers) but is about an origin that is completely different than the current conflict though it eventually leads to it; it gives us a very relatable frame of reference to character Toomin long before he became the Ellimist we know. (Which is itself a good thing, though I would have preferred this story and this character as a completely independent work of sci-fi with the same story but not necessarily tied into the Ani-verse; and the Ellimist remaining as awesome and mysterious as an outside, godlike 'non-interferer' that interferes indirectly taking his cues from Q.
To answer the question itself: Different strokes for different folks, the society could just develop and play multiple different games (it sounded like different games were released over time, and the 'Alien Civilizations' game just happened to be the current big thing; probably inspired loosely by Star-craft, Warcraft II and other competitive strategy games as well as 'civilization sims' of the '90s), or along AniDragon's thoughts have the single game engine develop into two different 'servers' with separate rule sets, something that may have developed overtime along with a Ketran-wide-uninet had they had time to develop it.
3) What do you think about Father, and his existence? Why do you think he chose Ellimist, out of all his captives, to keep alive for the purpose of gaming?
As I (and apparently some others) understood it, the Toomin/Ellimist just happened to be the
only one of the thousands to crash onto that moon to survive long enough for Father to infest, just another one of the Ani-verse's extremely unlikely coincidences that require you to suspend your disbelief in the unlikely and accept it at face value.
4) Any speculation on Crayak's story?
Nope, I'm happy with the general outline provided in the main series: an exiled criminal from another galaxy who is "a perfectionist, in his own way." I'm content enough to not know the details of why he is an exiled criminal other than assuming that there are many similarly powerful beings in said galaxy but that he is a criminal due to his desire for domination and disregard of value for life. He's power-hungry nature causes him to not just wipe out all other life in our galaxy (leading to him being all powerful, but over a very boring galaxy) but to rule all life; and since it is easier to rule one powerful cohesive race than a great many diverse races then an ongoing game of "you wipe-out everything you can find less powerful than you until something more powerful comes along and wipes you out" until "There can be only one" is his method of entertainment. Of course, his initial 'games' with the Ellimist weren't pursuing this, they were just little games of him vs. Ellimist, so he must have developed his goals during the thousands of years between encounters with Ellimist.
5) The Ellimist spends a good deal of time with the Andalites, even going so far as to start a family with them. This begs a couple of questions. Firstly, what did you think of this view of prehistoric Andalite times? Secondly, what do you think about the Ellimist's involvement in their history?
I'm with some of the others here too, I loved that he learned something very valuable from his time with the primitive society in a 'from the mouths of babes' sort of way, and it was neat to see an early version of Andalite adaptation, but I really don't think that he had any meaningful involvement in their history other than giving them a legend/fairy tale.
6) Anything else?*
(plus I really still have no concept of wtf a ketran looks like and can handle)
I don't know, I thought it was clear enough reading it. Not right from the beginning, but in the gradual clues you can piece together. They are perching and flying and seem vaguely avian from the beginning, though with quills on their hair and the top of their wings, so maybe more webbed wings that don't depend feathers for control. At this point, picture it as any combination of flighted reptilian/mammalian that you want (I tend to picture it being more Pterosaur like in general shape). Then for details, fit in the 2-4-4-2 description provided: 2 arms (with some form of hands, all in all relatively week and frail with possibly hollow bones to keep the weight down in a flighted creature), 4 eyes (very bright and colorful eyes it sounds like, I thought the magenta eyes sounded kinda cool), 4 wings and 2 legs/feet. The feet must be somewhat similar to bird-shaped legs and feet since they could perch on them, but since they were simply called 'pods' instead of talons, then I imagine they were more fleshy feet with internal bones rather than claw-like. Since the females could release and spray/spread hormones out behind them, I imagine that the source is some sort of gland in a genitalia-region at the meeting of the legs similar to Earth related creatures. All though, I have heard some describe them as being mostly angelic-shaped, so maybe the image I have is based way too much on my interpretation and the description was more vague than I remembered it to be.
On a side note, I thought it was really fun in that early part piecing together the details of their species and their planet in parallel with hearing expressions like "Deep Worms" and "Go surface for all I care" and "Four globes, no clouds" and figuring out the meanings and possible origins to the expressions in a completely foreign culture based on where they come from.
RYTX and Gafrash:I don't mean to single you out as a way to tell you you shouldn't be allowed to criticize TEC, because you certainly should, but I'd like to ask you more about your views simply because they are the most different from mine. Could you explain what you mean about it being 'too abstract,' what was abstract about it? What parts did the settings really require you to understand the physics to know what was happening? I guess I just don't see what is 'difficult to grasp' in a way that is abnormal in the Animorphs series, could you clarify some of the issues/problems you are talking about?
BTW, my answer to my assumption on who was going to die at this point was Tobias, but it was really nothing more than a guess based on nothing specific.
