This post is in reference to previous forum posts by @KatieV, which were so fascinating in the examination of catholic themes in the books (post 1, post 2), *and other discussions we had about the themes of the book. They really got my brain into gear, and I couldn't stop thinking about this connection and wanted to add a final thought.

One of the major themes of the book is storytelling - who (literally) gets to write history, how do people in power use storytelling to manipulate and influence, who do stories benefit? The initial story of Una, the saint, the saviour, has many parallels to Jesus - her death a necessary sacrifice for the good of the world (in Yvanne/Vivian's eyes, and in the beginning, also in Owen's). But in the end, the story was used mostly to advance and secure the power that Yvanne/Vivian has unjustly accrued, to the detriment of so many of the people. Importantly, in Owen's timeline, her story is used for propaganda, much like Jesus is so often misappropriated for propaganda and political populism in our timeline. However, here at the end, Owen's version of the story integrates elements of original folkloric belief (dragons and their heart sprouting a yew tree), which Yvanne/Vivian wanted to eliminate as they did not serve her. He unearths these ancient stories and shows they were real. Additionally, Owen is telling the story of Una as a community builder, as the Green Knight who helps and takes care of those around her. So this last story creates a story/legend that is more community-oriented, akin to folklore stories. The tension between traditional, folkloric beliefs and Christianity is evident again and again in the history of countless countries, as Christianity saw these stories as threats to it being spread further.

So, my proposition in a way is that the stories told at the beginning and end of this book are contrasting stories for the benefit of one versus for the benefit of all, of Christianity versus folkloric tradition. Super curious to hear what you all think!!

Edit to add: I just realised that this also ties into a comment by spaceystargazer on how Una means one, and Ulla means all - her story in the beginning was literally for one person, Vivian, and her story in the end was for all.

After Dorte talks about her injury: "[...] the next day [...], I had become ancient, I had become wizen, the children laughed at me [...]; I was a grandam, a grimalkin, a crone, an old ewe and the Devil's milk-wife, I had at once, as if by a stroke of magic, become Dorte Kjærulf, the one-eyed hag."

There is sooo much in this little passage about womanhood, ableism, ageism, and so many connections to witchery. First of all, it is remarkable to me how this (very visible) injury led to such a complex change in Dorte's social status. In a patriarchal society, the desirability of women is what gives us worth. When we are not "desirable" (read: young, beautiful, thin, able-bodied, ...) anymore, we are not worthy of respect. The injury lowers Dorte's desirability three-fold: she is now blind in one eye and she is is perceived as less beautiful, and thereby she becomes old. Together, this earns her the ridicule and disrespect of her community. Now it gets even more interesting that this non-conformity to gender expectation is conflated with witchcraft, which is a big theme in the novel (and like, a very real thing in the middle ages of course). A grimalkin is an old word for a cat, specifically an old female cat, and they were apparently often associated with witches as their familiars. Crones and hags already fit the archetype of a witch, especially if they are "ugly" or have facial deformities (just think of any Disney witch...), which fits the final "one-eyed hag". I find the conjunction of this description of herself with "as if by the stroke of magic" particularly interesting, she is flipping the witchcraft association on its head because here it is society, and not herself, that is casting that spell, so to speak. I found "the Devil's milk-wife" particularly intriguing and decided to look it up. This article explains that this was a common theme in accusing women of witchcraft, particularly in medieval Denmark. Women were particularly accused of being in cahoots with the devil to steal milk and butter or to spoil it and the article explains how these items were not just essential foodstuff, but were metaphorically equivalent to happiness and prosperity.

Okay, I think that's enough of an essay for such a small passage, but it just goes to show how richly and densely woven this book is, so full of symbolism and allusions to real-life witchcraft allegations! Very intrigued to see your thoughts on these themes :)

Okay, so the taumoeba doesn't like nitrogen and Grace is saying taumoeba can be changed... does this mean he will finally whip out the CRISPR-Cas to edit its DNA?? He is a microbiologist by training (which they stress too often to be insignificant), and the mission is to study a space microorganism - surely they thought to pack him some crispr tools and maybe even some reference bacteria to boot! Or he could just get some from his own body, all of those can tolerate nitrogen. That would be so cool! But I have a feeling he might not actually be using boring old Earth stuff like this, otherwise he could have run some metagenomic sequencing to find out the nitrogen intolerance from the start, right?

While this is what triggered this post, I have some other sciencey thoughts that have accumulated over the book, so I thought I might add them on!

Something that has bothered me for a while, and I'm wondering if I'm the only one, is that the author doesn't say astrophages and "they" when talking about multiple but just astrophage and "it". I know some people leave out the s (which I find weird but can ignore), but he doesn't seem to see them as multiple organisms but rather as a whole? But that doesn't make sense with how astrophages are characterised, as individually-acting, survival-driven single-cell organism.

I almost lost my mind during the first contact with Rocky because what do you mean you are not filming or recording this?? Not taking any notes? playing solitaire while waiting for a response rather than writing up extensive reports and analysis of your observations to send back to earth? In general, the lack of planning of experiments, no hypotheses written down, no experiment notes, no lab reports - bestie, you just recovered from severe amnesia!! You might forget stuff! And there is so much value in the little things Rocky says or does in their day-to-day interactions, some behavioural scientists and linguists would have an absolute field day if you took like.. any notes other than the dictionary 😭 Or am I just missing those parts, are they maybe implied? To me, it feels like Grace is just being super casual about it all haha.

On a different note, my favourite science joke, and I can't remember at what % that was, was the joke about Xenon (I think?) being an "Ig nobel" gas - I couldn't stop laughing 🤭

I am super interested to see what other people think about the microbiology part, and other science bits in general! The book has been so fun for me, and reminded me of why I love science so much :))