Computational cognitive scientist
Dr. Tavanda Ruun
A scientist whose work makes her the subject of the Rebel Ascendant’s extraction assignment.
Dr. Tavanda Ruun is a computational cognitive scientist. Her work has made her important enough for the crew of the Rebel Ascendant to be sent into occupied Clonmel to retrieve her.
Scientific work
Ruun’s expertise places her at the meeting point between evidence and interpretation. The first-contact problem cannot be resolved by noticing something unusual alone; someone has to determine what the observations support and what remains uncertain.
At Agartha, the instruments and telemetry available to Sam Rothrock provide another setting for that investigation. Their work combines close attention to a signal with the difficulty of knowing what kind of source could produce it.
A person within an assignment
To the crew, Ruun first appears as the person a mission has been organized to extract. Her presence brings the knowledge behind that assignment into their immediate lives. The novel’s questions of protection and authority therefore concern her as a person as well as a scientist.
FOLLOW THE CONNECTIONS
Related articles
Reading references
- Geometry of Grace — Reader orientation
- Geometry of Grace — Chapters 1 and 3
Introduction view omits plot outcomes. Interpretive articles are readings of the fiction.