From: Sally Manton smanton@hotmail.com
Which brings up the point of how much room people wouls have been allowed. We have (as alwasy) precious little evidence, but it appears that both
Blake
and Avon at least lived alone, and even in TWB, the rebels who actually speak seem to be lone family members, there's no spouse/sibling with
Ravella
when she and Blake leave etc. From non-Dome indications, family life in
the
Federation is often rare or disfunctional (the number of single-parent households).
This could have an impact on the way Our Heroes act and speak, those layered, defensive speech patterns and oblique verbal sparring that are
such
fun to untangle and decipher. If you're packed into 'buildings' with
masses
of other people, are nevertheless essentially alone, and living in a threatening environment to boot ... you'd learn very fast *not* to say
what
you actually mean too clearly.
A splendid rationale for the characters being the way they were because of the sardine society they come from. I think I've always seen it this way.
The only couple we see 'at home' in the domes are Tel and Maja, who appear to be childless. We know that Blake, Avon and Tarrant had siblings, but no more than two explicitly stated (for Blake) which suggests a small family size, which could reflect limited living space, though all three are higher grade where families might be on average smaller than among the Deltas ('The rich get richer and the poor get families'). It's not unreasonable to suppose that living space might be related to wealth and/or grade, though this might not be the case if there are finite limits to space.
Neil