What's with all the fish?

[Steven]

What's with all the fish? They are all over this book. They pop up as a metaphor as the crew of Blue Origin and Gravity converse with the tomb in 4-dimensional space, And they occur again in the form of the glutton fish. Then, a fish forms an important metaphor in the closing sentences of the book. And, I'm really perplexed by the 4-dimensional tomb's request for a 3-dimensional fish tank.

Is this all part of some cohesive metaphor? What do you all think? Why does the tomb, in it's last moments before death, delight in seeing a fish tank?

[Øystein]

I noticed this as well. Some scenes are strangely emphasising the fish-thing. Like the one with the tomb, as you stated. The other one that really stood out (so far, I'm not yet finished with the book) was where Ai AA (I think) "threw up all the fish she'd eaten".

[Steven]

Øystein wrote: "I noticed this as well. Some scenes are strangely emphasising the fish-thing. Like the one with the tomb, as you stated. The other one that really stood out (so far, I'm not yet finished with the b..."

I didn't think of the throwing up scene. That's a good one to note.

[Shane]

I am still struggling with this one myself.

The two areas that I think it might tie to are:
- Fish are able to live in small self-contained ecosystems, so they are effectively a small representation of a planet or a society.
- Fish live in a world where they can freely move around in 3-dimensions (the sea), whereas if they climb onto land, they are now living in a world where most of their movement is confined to 2-dimensions (and they also die, since they can only breathe in water)

Of course, we would need to find the bearing coordinate to be sure of what he was trying to say.

[Hai]

Fish is a metaphor, a direct translation. It'd makes more sense if you had some understanding of Chinese culture

[Øystein]

Hai wrote: "Fish is a metaphor, a direct translation. It'd makes more sense if you had some understanding of Chinese culture"

Interesting! Can you explain?

[Gavin]

Øystein wrote: "Hai wrote: "Fish is a metaphor, a direct translation. It'd makes more sense if you had some understanding of Chinese culture"

Interesting! Can you explain?"

In the Tang Dynasty, there was this saying by Han Yu (AD768 - 824 ):"弱之肉，強之食" (meaning: The flesh of the weak, is the food of the strong). And another very related and similar phrase later developed was "大鱼吃小鱼，小鱼吃虾米，虾米吃烂泥"(meaning: The big fish eat the little fish, the little fish eat small shrimps, and the shrimps eat sludge)

So here, the fishes refers to all the civilizations once lived in the 4-dimensional universe, the one big fish who drained the pond refers to the most advanced civilization with tech to survive in a lower dimensional space who deliberately used their advanced tech weapon to lower the 4-dimensional universe into 3-dimensional, so that their rival civilizations could not survive (The lack the tech to convert themselves to 3-dimensional while keeping alive). The tomb is a piece of the 4-dimensional universe which is slowly collapsing into 3-dimensional.

The Glutton Fish, to my best understanding, however, refers to the low light-speed area (or low light-speed black holes) in which the speed of the light is much lower.