Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 9 Nov 2014.
So
many extrasolar planets are being discovered, including I believe one
thought to be similar to Earth, that I am hopeful that some of them
might after all be colonizeable, as in Poul Anderson's History of
Technic Civilization. In the early 1960's, reading comic strip sf and
starting to read sf novels, I took extrasolar planets for granted but
was then surprised and disappointed to read in a book by British
astronomer, Patrick Moore, that no such planets could be detected. If
they were there, then they were too small and far away and not luminous
so how could they have been detected? How are they detected now?
Gravitational perturbation is one answer. One theory of planetary
origin, cited by EE Smith, implied that planets were rare, not the norm.
Poul
Anderson knew that, even if some planets were terrestroid, it would not
be a simple matter to go and live there as if they were previously
undiscovered continents on Earth. Space travelers learn to change their
circadian rhythms. Human colonists on Avalon adjust their fluid balance
and kinesthesia to 80% G. Ythrian colonists shift their breeding cycle
to a different day, year, weight, climate and diet and have low
fertility in their first generations but survive and then flourish.
When
Rochefort and Helu crash land on an Avalonian island, Helu, grateful to
be alive, asks how such a planet has a standard Terran atmospheric
pressure. Rochefort explains but, for once, I find it difficult to
summarize the technical explanation, on p. 540 of Rise Of The Terran Empire. Ironically, Helu's gratitude is premature. He is soon killed by an Ythrian.
Anderson's
vocabulary again: on p. 541, the sea is "...syenite..." This is a kind
of igneous rock so Anderson's omniscient narrator or his viewpoint
character, Rochefort, must be comparing the colors.
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