Originally published on Poul Anderson Appreciation, 29 June 2013.
Fully
inhabitable terrestroid planets are rare and artificial worlds have
obvious limitations so some planets have to be terraformed, for example,
Daedalus, discovered by David Jones, which, in its natural state, grows
no food edible to human beings or Tigeries. Native soil has to be
sterilized to bedrock, then a terrestroid ecology, when introduced, has
to be nurtured and protected from the native life which tries to return.
Islands are easiest to defend and some baronies were rich enough to buy
a non-interference pledge from the Empire.
Light is
refracted around the curve of Daedalus so that, instead of a horizon, an
endlessly receding landscape is seen with the setting sun perceived as a
ring. The Highroad River links the capital Aurea to the Phosphoric
Ocean where an autonomous cloned community (but see here) inhabits the island,
Zacharia.
The single moon of Daedalus is, appropriately, called Icarus.
Admiral
Olaf Magnusson, based on Daedalus, is from the harsh planet Kraken
which we have not seen (I don't think) whereas his wife, Vida, is from
the oceanic world, Nyanza, where Flandry counteracted Merseian
subversion. We know from the next installment of the Technic
Civilization series that Kraken will be a center of interstellar
activity during the Long Night after the Fall of the Terran Empire.
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