[extropy-chat] effing

[Damien Broderick]

At 12:00 AM 12/6/2005 -0500, gts wrote:

>I once thought of writing a children's book about a child who discovers a
>new color. It's an interesting idea and might make an entertaining story
>for children, but to me it seems impossible.

Ah, you've never read David Lindsay's famously weird novel A VOYAGE TO 
ARCTURUS, then?

http://www.litrix.com/arcturus/arctu006.htm

"Another remarkable plant was a large, feathery ball, resembling a 
dandelion fruit, which they encountered sailing through the air. Joiwind 
caught it with an exceedingly graceful movement of her arm, and showed it 
to Maskull. It had roots and presumably lived in the air and fed on the 
chemical constituents of the atmosphere. But what was peculiar about it was 
its colour. It was an entirely new colour--not a new shade or combination, 
but a new primary colour, as vivid as blue, red, or yellow, but quite 
different. When he inquired, she told him that it was known as "ulfire." 
Presently he met with a second new colour. This she designated "jale." The 
sense impressions caused in Maskull by these two additional primary colors 
can only be vaguely hinted at by analogy. Just as blue is delicate and 
mysterious, yellow clear and unsubtle, and red sanguine and passionate, so 
he felt ulfire to be wild and painful, and jale dreamlike, feverish, and 
voluptuous."