A Genetic Gap in Understanding

Eifelheim is an interesting book to read, as it once again throws us into a situation where humans of the Christian faith make first contact with aliens whose culture is extremely hierarchical. Even compared to feudal Germany, the Krenken have a rigid class system, the laws of which they dare not break. This time though, it is the aliens who are marooned on the primitive planet Earth.

One of the most remarkable parts of the book is the Krenkens’ inability to understand human religious thought. They believe that servants should serve their superiors because the strong should always rule the weak. When they find out that “God, our master who lives in heaven, will come back to save us” they naturally believe that these humans have been contacted by another extraterrestrial race that rules over them. What they initially fail to believe is that humans would make up and spread a story that cannot is not literally true.

While the Krenken hierarchy relies on an order built into their genetic code, humans need a reason to serve other humans. The idea that someone all-powerful individually loves them and plans to reward them after death allows humans to ignore the fact that they have no upward social mobility. Without the reassurance of God (and sometimes with it) humans tend to rebel against or overthrow the hierarchy. The Krenken have no understanding that, for humans, a code of ideas and information informs their culture as heavily as the genetic code informs their physiological make-up.