Thursday, 2 August 2018

Old Planets

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, Chereion is an old planet. In Anderson's The AvatarXXXIII, Pandora is another:

shrunken aquamarine oceans;
sharp brown blots of continents;
a few olive clouds;
dust storms;
no ice or snow;
livid, gleaming salt beds;
a day as long as a month;
core radioactives long spent;
no crustal movements;
dead seas, crusted wastes and brine marshes;
much atmosphere lost to heat and solar wind;
no longer a strong magnetic field;
greenhouse effect;
soaring temperatures;
sparse vegetation;
bitterly cold nights and inferno days;
ruined cities;
a regular radio signal from the surface;
a solar-powered broadcasting satellite, pitted by micrometeoroids;
no sign of current inhabitants.

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