Atlantean Animals

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 1 Nov 2013.

Only birds are mobile enough to survive and flourish in the Atlantean environment made turbulent by the tidal influences of the giant planet and four other inner moons. Tides are variable but always high, up to seven times  Terrestrial.

The inner hemisphere has fish, reptiles and birds but no mammals. The following are all birds except the orcfish and maybe the carnivores.

Orspers: "horse-birds," used for riding, bigger than ostriches, with white, blue-tipped feathers and hawk-like heads;
aquils: swoop down from the rafters for food in the dining hall;
stampers: larger grazing herds, hunted for meat;
jacklins and wolfers: dangerous carnivores;
peepers: small and round with large eyes, parrot-like beaks and a lethal poisonous bite;
"seal-birds" (unknown to Freetooners, first encountered after crossing the Ridge): like large, penguin-feathered seals with dangerous flippers, beaks and jaws, they attack but can be roasted and eaten;
not named in the text: tame birds with colored tails in the garden of Lysum;
corvoids: they moult;
muckbirds: they are not regarded highly;
orcfish: military tunics are made from their scaled hides.

Atlanteans have "birdnaps," not catnaps (p. 38).

Anderson tells us in the Author's Note, not in the text, that there are a few primitive mammals, never seen by the colonists, on the outer hemisphere that is permanently turned away from the primary, Minos.

If we cast the net wider to include animals elsewhere in the Minoan system, then the Mars-like moon Theseus has an atmosphere and, according to the novel, "...signs of intelligent life..." (Virgin Planet, New York, 1982, p. 63). Thus, when the Stellar Union integrates Minos, it will have to deal both with the Atlantean colonists who have been isolated for three hundred years and with Thesesian natives.

Atlantean Astronomy

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 29 Oct 2013.

I missed some salient data about Atlantean astronomy in a recent post. The information is scattered through the text(s). I am finding it informative to reread the novelization, Virgin Planet, immediately after rereading the original, shorter, "Virgin Planet." Information is repeated, amplified or nuanced in the longer version.

Atlantis is an Earth-like moon of the gas giant, Minos, which is permanently visible above the colonized hemisphere of Atlantis. When full, Minos is fourteen times the size of Luna as seen from Earth! Also, four other inner Minoan moons may be visible. On one occasion:

"...overhead...were two crescents, dim by daylight: one almost twice the apparent size of Luna seen from Earth, the other half again as big."
(Starship, New York, 1982, p. 97)

I wondered, "Half again as big as Luna or half again as big as the moon that is twice as big as Luna?"

The novel elaborates:

"Overhead...were two crescent moons, dim by daylight, one almost twice the apparent size of Earth's, the other half again as big as Luna seen from home..." (Virgin Planet, London, 1966, p. 31)

The Author's Note to the novel elaborates further:

in full phase, Minos is as bright as twelve hundred full moons on Earth;
the moons Ariadne and Theseus are each several times brighter than Luna;
Aegeus and Ariadne never set but instead move rapidly across Minos from west to east, then behind Minos from east to west;
Aegeus crosses the sky in 3.1 hours and completes its phases in about 30 hours;
occasionally, the full Ariadne changes color as it transits the full Minos at midnight.

What a sky! What might native Atlanteans have made of it? But there are no natives, only colonists. The colony is three hundred years old so its inhabitants are thoroughly familiar with their complicated celestial mechanics - and when a survey man arrives, he knows what to expect.

More could have been done with these ideas. The Author's Note includes information that did not make it into the texts, e. g.:

there are a few primitive mammals on the outer hemisphere but the colonists never see them;
the mountainous main content, on the inner hemisphere, was later named Labyrinth.

After the events of "Virgin Planet," men would arrive, bringing technology. Thus, the colonists would stop reproducing by parthenogenesis, society would modernize and many sequels could have been written about this one planet.