More Words, Deeper Hole

GETA = Courtship Rite? Ken MacLeod used something similar in the backstory to the Croatan book. (What a peculiar trilogy, btw.)

What I wouldn't mind seeing is more interplay in the history and development of ideas. Might be why I respond so well to Delany's stuff. Ted Chiang had a sort of AH story that explored this rather well, I think, backwards-looking only because Chiang seems too honest to use faux-aliens (e.g. Sawyer's people in lizard masks).

How about a series of naturalists' journeys exploring an ecosystem? The first expeditions start with earlier ideas -- I was going to say "primitive", but they might be quite complex (and wrong) -- while later ones get closer to the truth. To make it more human, you might have periods of ideological backsliding, a la social Darwinism and anthropology, or Lysenkoism and botany. X-treme libertarian selfish gene types investigating something closer to Gaia than what exists on Earth, perhaps.

(I just realized: was that the effect you were trying for in the Green Door vignettes?)

Harder to do with interplanetary exploration, but I think still possible while keeping a semblance of scientific verisimiltude.

Carlos of "Halfway down the Danube", a blog