Irumclaw II

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 22 Sept 2014.

In the pioneer days on Irumclaw, beehive-shaped native adobes were remodeled for other lifeforms but are now crumbling. As Flandry enters Old Town at night, Poul Anderson as ever addresses three senses. There are glowsigns, noises and smells. The last of these are unpleasant: body odors, garbage and smoke, although there also incense and dope, but why not some cooking smells?

An Irumclagian chanting with a vocalizer advertises games, stakes, food, drink, stimulants, narcotics, hallucinogens, emphasizers and sex with seventeen intelligent species. Thankfully, he does not mention unintelligent species although presumably anything goes.

Flandry seeks to enrich himself and a local vice boss but everything that he does has a purpose. That the Empire will abandon Irumclaw and let the Merseians move nearer has become a self-fulfilling prophecy:

an increasingly incompetent garrison;
able citizens withdrawing themselves and their capital;
defensibility and economic value spiraling downward.

But an enriched local boss with a stake to protect and a reason to stay will lobby and bribe to keep the Empire on Irumclaw.

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.

Alfzar

Alfzar is the main planet of the Betelgeusian System. Dank red mist smelling of wet iron drifts through an open bedroom window at Betelgeuse-rise. A horn blows, reminding readers of the Terrestrial past as they try to imagine an interstellar future.

Alfzarians and their Terran and Merseian guests, each seated in a one-person airjet armed with a needle beam energy projector in the nose, hunt ten meter long, leather-winged Borthudian dragons with light bodies, high-energy metabolisms and steel-rending teeth that can open an airjet's fuselage.

The landscape below is unearthly and mountainous with gaunt peaks, canyons and snow reddened by the sun but is not described in as much detail as we would have liked.

Unan Besar

Malayans colonized New Djawa. After a war with Gorrazan, some New Djawans colonized Unan Besar, where they have remained isolated for three centuries. Their ruling group, Biocontrol, trades with Betelgeuse, exchanging hides, fibers and fruits for technology, books and newstapes, but keeps its population ignorant of galactic affairs. Unan Besarians speak Pulaoic.

Unan Besar is:

one AU from its sun, which is more massive than Sol;
warmer than Earth.

It has:

no moons;
a small axial tilt;
0.8 gravity;
heavy clouds;
few uplands;
small continents;
shallow seas;
many islands, swamps and jungles;
a nine month year;
a ten hour rotation period;
an estimated population of 100,000,000;
a germ that enters human blood and excretes acetylcholine which destroys the nervous system unless Biocontrol sells each individual their laboriously brewed and carefully monopolized antitoxin.

Modern laboratories can synthesize the antitoxin and distribute it cheap or free but Biocontrol does not want that. The capital Kompong Timur, beside a lake, has many canals, tall well lit buildings, including the Biocontrol Pagoda, at the center and the dark unpoliced slum of Swamp Town beyond.

Early during colonization, Biocontrol scientists, by threatening to destroy their vats, replaced the government in order to reform society but of course became a self-perpetuating oligarchy. Flandry, usually against revolutions, tries to ask two commoners why they have not thought of revolution but cannot find that word in his implanted Pulaoic vocabulary.

Merseia

Originally published on Poul Anderson Appreciation, Tues 24 April 2012.

Astronomical:

in the system of the Sol-like star Korych;
four moons - Neihevin, Seith, Lythyr and Wythna;
lethally close (about one parsec) to the supernova, Valendary.

When visited by a ship of the Grand Survey:

an industrial revolution starting by the Wilwidh Ocean in the northern hemisphere;
scientific method invented;
heliocentric astronomy;
post-Newtonian, pre-Maxwellian physics;
chemistry beginning;
a well-developed taxonomy;
speculations about evolution;
steam trains;
political power fragmented among the Vachs;
scientists, engineers and teachers each under the patronage of a Hand of a Vach.

When visited, two hundred years later, by the trader team:

the Vachs have confederated;
in the social dislocation following the industrial revolution, the baronial tradition survives as the Gethfennu, organized crime;
the most powerful Vach, Dathyr, is based in Castle Afon in the city of Ardaig;
other Vachs - Hallen, Ynvory, Rueth, Isthyr, landless Urdiolch;
the Republic of Lafdigu in the southern hemisphere;
interplanetary travel;
inconclusive space battles;
a Gethfennu colony on the planet Ronraud;
Star Believers regarding galactics as divine;
Demonists regarding them as demonic;
Adzel addresses a Believer gathering of clients, commoners and city proletariat. 

When visited, several centuries later, by Ensign Dominic Flandry:

the capital planet of an interstellar empire, the Roidhunate;
unified under the Roidhun, who is of Vach Urdiolch;
Brechdan Ironrede, current Hand of the Vach Ynvory, is Protector of the Roidhun's Grand Council;
twin capitals, ancient Ardaig on the bay of the River Oiss on the Wilwidh Ocean and modern antipodal Tridaig;
Castle Afon, the Roidhun's official primary residence, and the newly built Admiralty House are in Ardaig.

When Flandry is an Admiral:

his opposite number, Tachwyr the Dark, has become Hand of the Vach Dathyr and Protector of the Grand Council.

Sources: "Day of Burning"; Ensign Flandry; The Game of Empire.