Friday 5 December 2014

Seas

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 28 Nov 2014:

On Earth, the World Ocean covers two thirds of the planetary surface.

On Poul Anderson's fictitious planet, Nyanza, a single ocean covers everything except one island and some tidal reefs.

Anderson's fictitious planet, Kraken, is also described as oceanic so it is appropriate that, late in the Flandry period of the Technic History, a Krakener man is married to a Nyanzan woman.

By coincidence, I have interrupted rereading Anderson's "The Game of Glory," set on Nyanza, to start reading China Mieville's The Scar, only to discover that this fantasy novel begins with a four page section describing a sea, the life in the sea and an event affecting one specimen of that life. This section has no speech, just sights, sounds and sensations of the sea.

I am getting the message that the sea is important. One of Anderson's Time Patrol stories hauntingly links the deaths of seafarers, spacefarers, timefarers...

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