 David Langford cited Vance's "engaging speculation", but concluded that the protagonist "seems too weak a character for his leading role", while "the culture and landscape of Pao are grey and ill-defined, in strong contrast to the exotically colourful societies and ecologies which became Vance's trademark".In linguistics, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis asserts that a language's structure and grammar construct the perception and consciousness of its speakers.This novel centers on a fictional experiment in modeling a civilization by tweaking its language.