Sibylla

Poul Anderson, "The Alien Enemy" IN Anderson, The Queen Of Air And Darkness And Other Stories (London, 1977), pp. 69-85.

Sibylla is a humanly colonized planet:

33.25 light years from Sol;
50% more diameter than Earth;
a third more gravity;
pressure gradient steeper;
lowlands too hot;
highlands lacking air;
metal-poor;
low density;
slow rotation;
very low magnetic field;
strong radiation background.

These are not just facts. They are adding up to something. And we have not been told who the alien enemy is yet.

Roland

Poul Anderson, New America, "The Queen of Air and Darkness."

Roland has a million inhabitants, all on one continent and half in one city, Christmas Landing, on the shore of the Boreal Ocean. 5000 live in Portolondon on the Gulf of Polaris in Arctica, past the Arctic Circle. The planet was colonized a century or more ago. Eric Sherrinford immigrated from Boewulf twelve years ago.

Surface gravity is 0.42 x 980 cm/sec (squared). I don't know what that means. Does it just mean that the gravity is 0.42 (less than half) of Terrestrial?

The sun, Charlemagne, is 40% brighter than Sol, even brighter in the ultraviolet, and emits more charged particles. Roland's orbit is eccentric so that insolation varies from more than double to slightly less than Terrestrial.

Yet another concretely realized fictional planet.

Another Planet

Poul Anderson, New America, "The Queen Of Air And Darkness."

In New America, "To Promote The General Welfare" and "The Queen of Air and Darkness" are separated by a Publisher's Note which begins:

"Here ends the story of High America." (p. 158)

Without this note, how quickly would we have realized that "The Queen..." is set on another planet? Immediately, I think. Its opening section describes a different environment. Although a sunset glow lingers, there is no day during the northern winter but nevertheless local species thrive:

flamboyant firethorn trees;
blue steelflowers;
hill-covering rainplant;
dale-growing white kiss-me-never;
iridescent winged flitteries;
a bugling, horned crownbuck;
hellbats.

Above are two moons, which do not sound like the Rustumite two, an aurora covering half the sky and the first stars. A long-haired teenage boy and girl, wearing only garlands, sit on a barrow. He plays a flute while she sings. Named Mistherd and Shadow-of-a-Dream, respectively, they are "Outlings" (p. 162), no longer part of human society, and are shortly joined by a short, claw-footed, feathered, winged, tailed "pook" called Ayoch who carries a stolen human child.

OK. We are not in Kansas. Or on Rustum.