Archopolis And Earth In Flandry's Time II

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 25 January 2014.

We want to know more about Earth in Dominic Flandry's time but our information is limited to certain passages in Poul Anderson's texts. (I think that I speak for more Poul Anderson fans than just myself?) A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows begins with an unusually up front statement from the omniscient narrator:

"Every planet in the story is cold - even Terra, though Flandry came home on a warm evening of northern summer. There the chill was in the spirit."

- Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 342.

The two opening words immediately establish for anyone who did not already know that this is a science fiction novel. And here is a first datum about Terra, that it is cold in spirit. When we have read the novel, we should pause to remember the other planets in the story:

Diomedes, previously visited by Nicholas van Rijn;
Dennitza, newly created for A Knight...;
Chereion, its environment postulated in earlier installments but here visited for the first and last time.

Regarding Earth, A Stone In Heaven clarifies that, although nothing has occurred to reduce the extent of the oceans, the land masses have become a single city although it is one that preserves many open green spaces. The urbanized areas consist of towers stretching around the planet. The urban nexus is the capital, Archopolis, where Sir Dominic, now a Vice Admiral, lives and works. He eats breakfast looking out onto a roof garden of Terrestrial and extraterrestrial flowers, beyond them two-century old towers and, above the towers, blue sky, white clouds and sparkling aircars.

Then, unfortunately, the text must return to the plot of the novel...

Archopolis And Earth In Flandry's Time

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 25 Jan 2014.

"...[the towers] went on beyond sight, multiplied over and over around the curve of the planet. Archopolis was merely a nexus; no matter if the globe had blue oceans and green open spaces - some huge, being property of nobility - it was a single city."

- Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 44.

In Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire, the capital, Trantor, is both a city covering a planet and a planet covered by a city. Both city and planet are named "Trantor." As far as I can remember, the only green growth is in the (large) garden of the Imperial Palace and there are no oceans or at least none left after the total urbanization of the planet.

In Poul Anderson's Terran Empire, the capital, Archopolis, is "...a nexus..." in a city covering the land areas of the planet Terra. Large open spaces do not prevent the Terran continents from being a single city any more than Central Park negates New York's status as a city. However, Terra is not completely urbanized like Trantor and there is a forest in the High Sierra.

Ramnuan Miscellania

Before disappearing to Scotland for a week, let me note some more details about Ramnu.

The meter-high Ramnuans' rigid torso and high pelvic circle make them squat rather than bend in their planet's high gravity, seven Terrestrials. Consequently, gestation is short and the young, born small, are carried in pouches by adults of either sex.

A Ramnuan's vanes are muscular tissue with sensory input and a rippling body language mostly incomprehensible to human beings, like an Ythrian's feathers. When Yewwl and her companions spy in Dukeston, they are suspected and arrested because they cannot conceal their tension.

Ramnuans around Wainwright Station live in the large, shared territory of a clan whereas those around Dukeston live in families, each with a surname and a single patch of land. Thus, Yewwl's band meets a prospector called Ayon Orresa'ul.

As on Merseia, Anderson imagines not only an alien biology but also cultural differences within the alien species. 

The Ramnuan System

A nearby supernova destroyed an entire planetary system except for the dwarf primary, the core of a superjovian and fragments of its three largest moons, now called Fathermoon, Mothermoon and Childmoon by dwellers on the solid surface of the former superjovian.

Diris:
innermost moon;
featureless metal (no meteors left in the system);
Port Luang, scientific base comprising domes, hemicylinders, masts, dishes and a spacefield.

Tiglaia:
middle moon;
massive enough for mountain-formation.

Elaveli:
outermost moon;
sharp-edged mountains;
Port Asmundsen, industrial base, mining metal from the exposed core.

Ramnu:
the planet;
inhabited (see previous posts);
Dukeston, Hermetian commercial base run by General Enterprises, extracting hardwood and an antibiotic from a sulfur-rich marsh and mining palladium and other minerals in the Chromatic Hills;
five thousand kilometers away, Wainwright Station, run for several centuries by the Ramnu Research Foundation, for studying the Ramnuans, including by several full sensory links.

Making Oneness
Ramnuans lose themselves in dance, music and chant until they and the world no longer have names, then sleep to wake renewed, comforted, strengthened and inwardly peaceful. Is this sub- or supra-rational? It sounds like the former to me.

Ramnuan Society

Before The Golden Tide

On one part of Ramnu, each of the six dzai'h'u (clans), including Kulembarach, Arachan, Arrohdzaroch and Ngaru, occupies a territory and consists of households whose female leaders gather at a yearly moot to trade etc and also to "...make Oneness." -Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 107.

Didonians also "make Oneness" but in an entirely different sense. On Dido, this phrase means three animals linking their nervous systems to form a single intelligent entity. One of the three units resembles a rhinoceros, as do the onsars used by Ramnuans but this is another coincidence.

Each clan is named from a different Forebear and Ramnuans outside the territories have different ways. 

During The Golden Tide

The volcano erupted, emitting the Golden Tide, and the land doubled its fertility. The population increased until kin-moots were insufficient to maintain law. Then, the clans raised a stone hall near the precipice for the Lords of the Volcano, its doors flanked by statues of the Forebears and also by a seventh statue representing the chosen family, bred out of the clans, from which the Lords of the Volcano are elected.

The clans live by ranching whereas the Lord's household lives by hunting because the country around the mountain is rich. Also on the mountain are artisans and the College where the Seekers of Wisdom keep books, instruments and ceremonial items.

The Ice Returns

Plants are dying. A landslide destroys the tomb of Kulembarach and the Shrine with its books and art. The clans hope that the star-beings can help but a senior Seeker opposes off-world influence.

A Ramnuan Landscape

When, in A Stone In Heaven, Poul Anderson describes a Ramnuan landscape, he makes clear that, apart from the autumnal light, the scene is unEarthlike:

a river flows too fast;

leaves are large, cup-shaped and several colors but not green;

tall grass-like "pyrasphale" hides herds of small animals though not the giant onsars, just large enough for a man to mount;

an onsar is like a rhinoceros with a hump, dorsal fin and extensors ending in clawed, prehensile tendrils.

Meter-high Ramnuans have emerged from forests and hills to conquer the plains by riding onsars from which they see prey and glide towards it. There is more to be said on a future occasion about Ramnuan society.   

Ramnu

When Poul Anderson describes the planet Ramnu in A Stone In Heaven IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), I have to google phrases like "climax forest" (p. 86) and "graviportal" (p. 87). (The latter sounds like a science fictional device: a portal between gravitational fields?)

How Plants Have Adapted To The Frequency Of Fires
deep roots or bulbs;

rapid reseeding;

"pyrasphales " or "nullfire" - ubiquitous plants like Terran grasses or Hermetian yerbs but synthesizing a silicon compound that makes them incombustible and that herbivores either excrete unchanged or break down with symbiotic microbes whereas earlier species unable to digest or excrete the fireproofing became extinct. 

How Organisms Have Adapted To Long, Cold Nights
some plants secrete antifreeze;
others make freezing part of their life cycle;
some exotherms sleep where they won't freeze or be dug up;
others "...start a new generation by sunset whose juvenile stage can survive." (p. 87)

Ramnuan Animals
are generally small because of high gravity;

if larger, have cooling surfaces like big ears, dorsal fins or wings;

are often featherless flyers, because the thick atmosphere offsets gravity, but usually keeping low because pressure drops swiftly with altitude;

if "pleurochladoi," have intermediate false limbs, "extensors," aiding locomotion;

sometimes have membranes on extensors for cooling and gliding.

The Golden Tide

A nearby supernova causes a superjovian planet of 3000 Terrestrial masses to lose all its hydrogen and helium, over 90% of its mass, transforming it into Ramnu, a glacial globe of 310 Terrestrial masses, later inhabited by small, intelligent gliders.
-copied from here.

The italicized passage above is copied from "Unusual Heavenly Bodies," which was originally published on the Poul Anderson Appreciation blog from where it was then copied to the current Poul Anderson Cosmic Environments blog earlier this month. 

The idea of the new blog was, first, to make it easier to find earlier-published posts summarizing information about the many extra-terrestrial environments described in Anderson's works of hard sf and, secondly, maybe to add to this information. 

One feature of the Ramnuan environment not mentioned before is sulfur:

abundant because of vulcanism;
redistributed by forest fires that are caused by oxygen concentration and lightning; 
metabolized by microbes;
vital to several biological functions, including reproduction.

Around an active volcano, the microbes multiply until they are visible as yellow smoke, the Golden Tide. Dying, they enrich the soil but their dwindling brings famine and the sulfur trade has dominated Ramnuan history.

I remembered the phrase "the Golden Tide" from earlier readings but not its meaning until I reread again in search of further details.