APPENDIX 2

GALAPEDIA

The Free Encyclopedia

Carl Saunders

From Galapedia, the free encyclopedia for all sentient species in the Solar Neighbourhood and beyond.

Carl Saunders

Carl Saunders FRS is an English naturalist, explorer, professional poker player and xenobiologist. His Encyclopedia of Alien Life is said to be the greatest single work in the history of natural science. In this work, Saunders describes every species and genus of animal and plant and single-cell life on every planet ever explored by humanity. Saunders describes and classifies each species he encounters in meticulous and relentless detail, and yet also magically conjures up a sense of the alien creatures’ habitat and lifestyle and psychology in a prose style that is hauntingly evocative, and sinaesthetically vivid, and emotionally overwhelming, and spiritually compelling, and truthful, and sublime, superb, delicious, and witty, and verbose, and prolix, and strangely addictive.

His diligence as a classifier and alien “twitcher” is matched by his phenomenal theoretical expertise. He is the founder of the theory of accelerated evolution which has made possible the creation of the four key subspecies of humanity, namely Lopers, Cat People, Vacuum Dwellers and Computer Brains, and is also a pioneer of the microbiological 22-digit classification system for life, which he later disowned because he felt it lacked “soul”.

Saunders’s career has been marked by controversy, chiefly relating to his long and bitter feud with fellow naturalist and xenobiologist Andrew Hooperman. Rumours abound that Saunders left Hooperman for dead after a violent drink-fuelled altercation during their legendary Amazon Expedition, though Saunders has always roundly denied this, claiming instead that Hooperman is a “ludicrous fantasist”, a “buffoon” and a “fraud”.

According to Hooperman, the two scientists became separated from the rest of the party and trapped in the depths of the rainforest. During this time together, the two men jointly discovered a species of nocturnal hummingbird which they named Eulidia hoopermani. Elated by this triumph, the two men celebrated by drinking half a litre of 100-year-old malt whisky from Hooperman’s flask. Hooperman passed out, and when he recovered Saunders had fled, taking with him the hummingbird and all the supplies.

Hooperman, with rare courage, according to his own vivid accounts, struggled through the rainforest, despite contracting malaria and suffering extreme dehydration and hunger. When he reached civilisation he was nursed back to health by kindly nuns. And on recovering consciousness, he immediately wrote an account on his blog of the whole tawdry betrayal, which was widely reported by the print and internet press and was the basis for a dire TV movie called Deadly Feud in the Forest.

Saunders, by contrast, argues that Hooperman’s account is bollocks, the product of a crazed mind. According to Saunders, the whisky they drank was 25 years old, not 100, and they drank in moderation. During the night, however, Hooperman crept away carrying the hummingbird. When he finally awoke — after his usual deep and untroubled sleep — Saunders was amused at the joke, and cheerfully strolled fifty or so miles to civilisation. There he was dumbfounded to learn that Hooperman had accused him of attempted murder. Saunders further argued that his subsequent treatment at the hands of the Peruvian police was brutal and unfair; but his allegations that police officers took bribes from Hooperman with an instruction to “give the bastard a walloping” were never substantiated.

Many books have been written about this notorious affair, including Deadly Feud: How Saunders Betrayed Hooperman by Robert Hooperman, the scientist’s adopted son, and Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: the Hummingbird, Saunders and Hooperman, by Arnold Michaelson.

The controversy heightened when, after years of rivalry between the two men, Hooperman published his essay “J’accuse Carl Saunders”, in which he accused his former mentor and colleague of falsifying data about alien species and plagiarising the work of others, notably Hooperman himself. Saunders subsequently took out a libel action against Hooperman. In this celebrated legal action Saunders chose to represent himself, and after forty consecutive days in the witness stand, talking eloquently and swiftly and entirely without notes, he succeeded in refuting every allegation made against him and won substantial damages. Hooperman was forced to self-publish a humiliating rebuttal of his wholly fallacious and malicous accusations, entitled And Yet It Moves.

The enmity between these two scientists erupted into violence when Hooperman was nearly killed by a bomb inserted in the cover of an illustrated edition of Hooperman’s much-acclaimed Hooperman’s Tree of Life. Police quickly identified Carl Saunders as the chief suspect, after discovering an email sent to Hooperman in which Saunders wrote: “Serves you right, you evil bastard! You deserve to die!”

Carl Saunders is currently a fugitive from the law and faces the death penalty. His Encyclopedia of Alien Life, however, continues to be updated online, thanks to the thousands of researchers, many of them former students of Saunders, who have dedicated themselves to continuing his work.

Contents

• 1 Biography

• 1.1 Early years

• 1.2 Middle years

• 1.3 Post-Rejuve Years

• 1.3.1 Natural Science

• 1.3.2 Alien Science

• 1.3.3 Theoretical work

• 1.4 Post-Fugitive developments

• 2 The Chimaera

• 2.1 The process of dinosaur DNA extraction

• 2.2 Controversy and eco-terrorism

• 2.3 Homo saurus interviewed

• 3 Saunders and Hooperman: dawn of the feud

• 4 Saunders disgraced

• 5 Hooperman disgraced

• 6 Fisticuffs in the Royal Society café

• 7 The Encyclopedia of Alien Life

• 8 Accelerated Evolution

• 9 The Saunders 22-Digit Taxonomy System

• 10 Saunders’s repudiation of the Saunders
22-Digit Taxonomy System

• 11 The general annoyance at Saunders’s repudiation of the Saunders 22-Digit Taxonomy System

• 12 Fame and Infamy

• 13 Poker: the Saunders Method

• 14 Footnotes and references

• 15 Resources

• 15.1 References

• 15.2 Further reading

• 16 See also External links