On Tue, 13 Mar 2001 15:04:16 -0500 "Dana Shilling" dshilling@worldnet.att.net writes:
OK, there's a necropolis in "Duel," but what do they do with dead bodies on Terra-- bury them? Cremate them? If there's a small population, there would probably be room for burials, but of course there would be no religious objections to cremation.
Off the top of my head, the references to burial among Federtion types are -
Tarrant in Dawn of the Gods, when he believes Vila is dead, says he will retrieve the body so they can give him a decent burial in space.
Vila, in Sarcophagus, says 'Incidental' would look nice on his tombstone (yes, he's being ironic).
Servalan's reference to cremating Blake.
Tarrant's comment reflects strong feelings about giving proper rites, which would have to be social rather than religious. It may reflect military culture (a few billion bodies floating around Earth seems like it would be a travel hazard), and may even reflect the attitudes of one sub-branch rather than military as a whole.
Since Vila also makes references to Hell in a culture where religion is (more or less) nonexistant, the reference to a tombstone may also be a remnant phrase, reflecting a custom no longer followed or one no longer followed in a way we would be familiar with.
Whatever Servalan claimed to have done to Blake's body (and may have done to him or someone else), social propriety was probably not uppermost in her mind. Keeping the body could have had its drawbacks (focus of cultish devotion [whether or not that was common in Federation territory], issues of martyrdom, more clones, etc) but getting rid of it also posed problems ("Oh, yeah, you're just _saying_ he's dead"). She was also trying to say something really devastating to Avon and anonymous cremation may or may not have been meant to hit a nerve.
So, skipping that ambiguous evidence.
Although there was space on Earth, space in the domes themselves was limited. Also, the Federation would have had limited interest in memorializing the past outside of a sort of Cult of the Federation. Also, when given a choice between burial on an actual planet and 'burial at sea,' Tarrant chooses the latter. This suggests graves as a place of memorial was not part of his social baggage.
For the military, who generally see more of their friends die over the course of their careers than the average Federation citizen sees, emphasizing that this sacrifice is respected and meaningful would be important to members of the group. These 'burials' probably occured in deep space where the odds of the body being encountered by accident were low and not where they would be in orbit around a planet.
For the average citizen, I'm guessing a memorial service and cremation - and keeping the ashes was probably discouraged as macabre. In cases of a prominent citizen, some kind of memorial marker might be put up but _not_ over real grave or with the ashes.
Given Vila's surprise at events on Chenga and the fact Servalan used local terms like 'slaughterhouse' rather than saying, "It's their version of an organ slaughterhouse," they either didn't use such things in the Federation or were extremely discreet (my guess is that the Clonemasters could supply vat grown organs [what happened after the war is open to debate, but the ruthless doctors and the needed systems wouldn't have been immediately in place (and nonperfect genetic matches are never as good)]).
As for 'Soylent Green,' the little I know about cannibalism in its social context follows two main routes, ritual cannibalism with the attempt to 'absorb' or keep aspects of the dead and cannibalism as a form of terrorism (although this may also have ritual elements, as with the Aztecs) where it is used to intimidate enemies or subject peoples (educational TV is a scary world, isn't it?). The first probably wouldn't suit the Federation's needs, since they probably like to keep commemoration of individuals in the past (especially as separate entities from Federation glory) at a low level. The second has its points, but it doesn't seem quite their style of intimidation.
So long as there weren't food shortages (and there didn't seem to be) I'm assuming they wouldn't do this.
Had to think about this once when I was working on a story and I had to ask myself if Vila would get the concept of cemetaries on Auron and, if he didn't, where he was coming from and what they meant to him.
Ellynne ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.