Assessing A Planetary Environment

 

The People Of The Wind, IX.

Rochefort has crash-landed on an island in an archipelago which, it will soon be confirmed, is Oronesia whose home guard includes the business partners, Tabitha Falkayn and Draun, both of Highsky Choth. Rochefort is already well-informed concerning the core, rotation, magnetic field, atmosphere, vegetation etc of Avalon but is also able to sense and deduce some further details.

Lower gravity causes exuberance. Although the Avalonian diameter is only 11,308 kilometers, the horizon does not seem closer than the Terrestrial or Esperancian. The sky is bluer, the sun sinks twice as fast and Morgana looks larger than Luna. It is smaller but closer and causes twice the tides. He thinks that the dense ground-cover helps to explain why the hexapodal animals have remained reptiloid and are no match for mammalians or avians.

On The Planet Lucifer II

See On The Planet Lucifer.

Quetlan and Laura, the suns of Ythri and Avalon respectively, are in the constellation Lupus.

Coya, astrophysicist and frequent space traveler, is at home in the universe, able to identify the brightest stars among the rest. The Dewfall has traveled at high speed for nearly a month from Quetlan towards the Deneb sector. Since Quetlan is 278 light years from Sol towards Lupus, they are now a hundred parsecs from Earth in unknown space. Coya knows this. To that extent, she is as at home there as a Londoner is in Hyde Park. The universe is our home and we ought to be one with it.
-copied from here.

We first read of Avalon in Hloch's Introduction to "The Problem of Pain," then in a conversation on Lucifer:

The planet Lucifer is inhospitable but might be marginally habitable and has mineral wealth. Both days and nights are long, storms are frequent, there is no green vegetation and the violent blue sun continually disrupts electronics. A uranium-concentrating root causes a unique ecological cycle in one area.
-copied from here.

I am rereading the relevant passages of "The Problem of Pain" for any more information about Lucifer. The narrator tells us that the planet is well named. However, if it proves to be even marginally habitable, then its mineral wealth will be worth exploiting. The exploratory team must determine whether the survival problems can be solved economically. Furious day-time weather ends in a twilight gale. Storms blow dust. The air is thin. Auroras flame. Frost covers the land and glittering ice sheathes twisted "trees."

When, in the concluding sentence, the sun rises from the burning horizon, I think that this is an appropriate pathetic fallacy for the theme of the story. See here.

Fully Realized Planets

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation.

For the second time recently, a recent post has disappeared from the blog. This time it was "Fully Realized Planets" so I will try to reproduce it from memory -

Tolkien's Middle Earth and Stirling's Emberverse are each a single planet whereas Anderson's Technic History encompasses many planets. However, some of the Technic planets are as fully realized as if each of them were the sole setting of a series:

Avalon is presented in three short stories and a novel and an Avalonian visits Aeneas;

Aeneas is presented in a short passage of The Rebel Worlds and in the entire text of The Day Of Their Return and an Aenean was among the explorers of Gray/Avalon;

van Rijn spends an entire novel on Diomedes and Flandry also visits that planet;

Flandry and Kossara march with Merseians on the Dennitzan parliament after spending time in the Kazan and on the Obala.

And so on.

A Dennitzan Forest

On Dennitza, Dominic Flandry and Kossara Vymezal land in a forest. Poul Anderson must show that this forest is not interchangeable with a Terrestrial equivalent. There is:

mahovina turf;
woodland "duff," the two relevant meanings of "duff" being plant litter and detritus;
the local equivalent of evergreens - low, gnarly trees, their branches plumed blue-black;
shrubbery but no real underbrush;
open sod.

Anderson sometimes describes a local equivalent of grass, e.g., on Aeneas, Avalon, Talwin and here.

There is also "...a meadow of long silvery quasigrass..." on Starkad. (Ensign Flandry, Chapter Eighteen IN Young Flandry, p. 187)

Shalmu has "...whispering silvery psuedograss..." (The Rebel Worlds, Chapter Three IN Young Flandry, p. 394)

Trillia

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 13 Nov 2014:

In Lenidel, the principal nation on the planet Trillia, most cities are spread through a large forest and park. The city of Annanna has two million busy inhabitants, with perhaps three aircraft visible at once. Pedestrians and cyclists proceed along The Pathway Of The Beautiful Blossoms And The Bridge That Arches Like A Note Of Music.

Number 1337 on The Pathway Of The Beautiful Blossoms And The Bridge That Arches Like A Note Of Music has, over an otherwise doorless entrance, spicy-smelling, sunlight-trapping flowering vines. The interior has a wooden floor, stools and an intricately faceted rock crystal. The occupant, Witweet, reads poetry and addresses a visitor with endearments, offering Lapsang Souchong and sweet cakes. There is occasional trade with the Polesotechnic League and the Trillians, like the Merseians, have bought tea. Trillians can sell arts and crafts but, lacking the means to buy modern technology, are developing it themselves. I do not think that Trillia will need to join the Supermetals Company.

Around number 1337 are colorful flowers, red tree trunks, bright fluttering wings and the distant sound of The Waterfall That Rings Like Glass Bells. An armed Terran whose vocalizer transforms his speech into song knows that to omit honorifics and circumlocutions without apology is to issue a deadly insult.

Avalon appears in three short stories and one novel whereas Trillia is mentioned and described in just this single short story, "A Little Knowledge." Nevertheless, it is yet another colorful alien environment imagined in detail by Poul Anderson.

Livewell And Tempests

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 12 Nov 2014:

A few posts ago, I highlighted a fictitious place, Livewell Street, in Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind. Now, rereading "Rescue on Avalon," I am reminded of what "livewell" is:

"After the wind-howl, this stillness felt almost holy. The air was chill but carried odors of plant life, sharp trefoil, sweet livewell, and janie."
-Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), p. 312.

Every detail of an Andersonian environment connects with some other detail, here the name of a street in a novel with the scent of a plant in a short story. "The wind-howl..." is another aspect of the Avalonian environment:

"...sudden tempests. The rapidly spinning globe was always breeding them." (p. 310)

The colonists have settled some of the Hesperian Islands and, from there, have moved to the Coronan continent and even begun to divide it between their two species. However, their ability to cope with or even to forecast the violent weather is as yet grossly inadequate. Thus, here is another story premise: how does a man who is allergic to Ythrians cope when he alone is close enough to rescue the Wyvan of Stormgate who has been injured in a storm?

Livewell Street

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 11 Nov 2014.

Any fictional series can make a fictitious place seem real by presenting it as a constant backdrop of the characters' activities:

Conan Doyle has 221b, Baker St, and Victorian/Edwardian London;

Poul and Karen Anderson have the city of Ys;

Poul Anderson has Manse Everard's New York apartment.

Although Livewell Street appears only twice in a single novel, Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind, its fictitious ontological status is comparable to that of the other places listed. This street is in the city of Centauri on the Gulf of Centaurs on the planet Avalon in the Domain of Ythri. Christopher Holm and Tabitha Falkayn walk down Livewell Street. They see:

barges on an oily, littered canal;
dingy, ten- or twelve-storied buildings;
glaring signs for drink, food and fun;
ground vehicles and twelve kinds of pedestrians - one of Anderson's descriptive lists.

Sounds and smells are also listed. Chris calls the street a sty; Tabitha calls it fun. She insists that the Founder wanted nothing but freedom, not a purer way of life.

Later, an Ythrian flies above the Livewell Street canal. When the Terrans strike, she burns and falls into a burning house beside the boiling canal.

A Mixed Ecology

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 11 Nov 2014:

Ferune is an Ythrian:

his ancestor's shields hang in his house;
outside grow Ythrian trees - thick hammerbranch, high lightningrod and water-gathering sword-of-sorrow;
a trumpet calls his sons and chothmates to fly with his litter, led by his widow and torch-bearing daughters.

However, Ferune has lived on Avalon, where his choth is Mistwood:

cold, wet fog blows from the sea;
inland is Old Avalon;
the noise of a boomer tree frightening away animals rolls beneath the house and echoes from the shields;
flying as high as they can, the litter-bearers see on the horizon the sunlit snow peaks of the Weathermother;
at sunrise, the new Wyvan of Mistwood blows the horn, calls the dead and speaks the New Faith;
the litter is tilted above crags, boulders and streams;
Ferune's widow leads a sky dance by a hundred Ythrians watched by hovering human Avalonians.

Life On Avalon

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.

The Winged Cross

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 19 May 2012.

The Winged Cross, a tower in Chicago Integrate, is connected to other towers by skyways. Aircars fly between them and cabs or flitters land on the roof where there is a garden and a penthouse belonging to Nicholas van Rijn. Several characters visit him there as also in his palatial Djakarta office and in his mansion on Kilimanjaro.

Interesting background details, for example about a character's residence(s), accumulate over the course of a series, possibly the most famous being certain rooms in Baker St. In Poul Anderson's works, another striking example is the New York apartment of Manson Everard of the Time Patrol.

Later in the future history featuring van Rijn, we learn that van Rijn's protege, David Falkayn, had lived with his family in a house on First Island in the Hesperian Sea on the colony planet Avalon but, because Anderson could not possibly write all the details of such a long fictitious history, we learn about this residence only long after Falkayn's death. An interesting exercise for the reader is to reread the van Rijn stories to uncover whatever details are revealed about the Winged Cross.

Addendum, 20 May 2012: Colorful details about the penthouse on the Winged Cross: several sources reveal that it has a live butler, an expanse of trollcat rug and a wall that can be rendered transparent giving a good view of the spires and towers of Chicago Integrate. Van Rijn reclines in a lounger drinking beer and does not stand to greet guests. His height as well as his width would overwhelm them.

Llynathawr

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 22 May 2014.

Fans of Poul Anderson's History Of Technic Civilization know somewhat of the major planets such as Terra, Hermes, Merseia and Avalon but what do we know of Llynathawr apart from its name (which we do not know how to spell)? Yet another entire planet sketched briefly by Anderson, Llynathawr was discovered by Cynthians and bought by the Terran Empire, has good climate and scenery and rich natural resources, is close to Sector Naval HQ on Ifri and has trade opportunities with both Imperial and barbarian planets.

Llynathawr's single (?) city, Catawrayannis (population: two million), on the Luana River, houses the hill top palace of the Governor of Sector Alpha Crucis. This frontier Sector also contains the Virgilian System, with inhabited Dido and colonized Aeneas, and the industrial rogue planet Satan which, at the time of the McCormac Rebellion, was an ancient possession of the Duke of Hermes, a colony planet in Sector Antares.

In the previous volume, the planet Irumclaw, with its empty suburban mansions, was described as:

"...like a piece of wreckage at the edge of the receding tide of empire."
 -Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (New York, 2010), p. 204.

Llynthawr has seen not a receding tide but a false dawn. The planet was bought in order to "...strengthen this frontier by attracting settlers." (p. 400) However, few people any longer leave comfortable environments for new beginnings in remote places and those few prefer town to country. Also, nearer colonials like Aeneans are already settled and unwilling to move. Thus, Catawrayannis is surrounded by sparsely lit wilderness.

The new Governor's audience chamber has a gold and black "...live-fur carpet..." (p. 402). A living surface, like grass underfoot? It also has many moving lights and dynasculps, incense, low music, an animated Imperial court masquerade covering one wall and an enormous inscribed portrait of the Emperor behind the chair of state. Subtle bad taste, reflecting Governor Snelund's personality.

An interesting place: we see too little of Llynathawr - although we are learning to spell it.

The Exploration Of Gray IV

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 4 July 2014.

See previous posts.

Like some later Terran invaders of Avalon, Olga Berg is dying of hell shrub poisoning, although Pete and his Ythrian companions do not yet know the cause. Pete leaves the camp so that he can be alone when he screams at heaven:

"'Why did You do this to her, why did You do it?'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. 26-48 AT p. 44.

After kneeling for an hour, he is able to say, "Your will be done," (p. 45) and return. Like an Ythrian, he has fought with and honored God, although Pete would not see it like that.

"Israel" means "he struggled with God"?

"Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
"to mould me man? Did I solicit thee
"From darkness to promote me? -"
(Adam in Paradise Lost, quoted by Frankenstein's Monster.)

"Lord who made me as I am,
"Would it upset some divine plan,
"If I were a wealthy man?"
(Fiddler On The Roof, from memory.)

I ask similar questions although I cannot address them to a personal Creator.

After the death of Arrach, the crippling of Enherrian and Olga's mortal illness, the climax of "The Problem of Pain" is reached when Pete returns to the camp. He had sedated Olga so that she would sleep peacefully till death. Instead, he finds her awake and in extreme pain and a second injection has little effect. He must hold her till she dies:

"...it was like seeing a light blown out." (p. 45)

Enherrian says it is well that she is fallen. Thinking that Pete had miscalculated, he gave her a stim shot. Enherrian honors both Pete and Olga too much to deny Olga her deathpride. Did Pete not want her "'...to give God a battle?'" (p. 46)

The Surface Of Mirkheim

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 20 June 2013.

Mirkheim, the supermetal-coated remnant of a giant planet of a massive star that went supernova, is unlit by any sun so might resemble a rogue planet except that its surface is:

not covered by dust or frozen atmosphere;

 
not cratered;

metallic, hard, blank, dimly shining, almost mirror-like;

in some places, fantastically ridged and corrugated by congealed moltenness;

with five Terrestrial gravities and enough radioactivity to kill in weeks.

Rogue planets, which feature in more than one work by Anderson, are sunless because they move through interstellar space. Mirkheim, which appears in a short story and a novel, is sunless because its sun exploded a long time ago. Sunlessness suggests sameness but Anderson takes the trouble to imagine the differences, as summarized above.

Shortly before Sandra Tamarin visits Mirkheim, David Falkayn has visited the sub-Jovian Babur. Thus, although Anderson describes many beautiful humanly colonized planets like Hermes, Avalon and Dennitza, he also envisages planetary surfaces that are as inhospitable as space itself and also shows us what his characters see when they explore such places.

Living beings venture to Mirkheim not to live there but to mine the supermetals which are so valuable that a war is fought over them.

Ythri

A ship of the Grand Survey discovers the planet Ythri:


sun G9, half Solar luminosity;
Ythrian gravity 0.75 terrestrial;
thinner, drier but humanly breathable atmosphere;
red, moss-like ground cover;
two small moons;
modest oceans;
woods, lakes, plains, mountains;
winged carnivores lifting bodies heavy enough for intelligence by pumping oxygen with adapted gills, each needing a large territory for hunting or herding meat animals.


There are more data about Ythrians in the post "Who Knows Of Avalon?" (April, 2012) (here).

Life On Aeneas

Originally published on Poul Anderson Appreciation, 23 April 2012.

Anderson does not just tell us that his characters are on another planetary surface but presents enough colorful details to evoke an exotic environment.

Environment

Year nearly twice Terran; rotation: 20 hours, 19 minutes, a few seconds.

Little rain; no snow; dead seas; drought; cold; hurricane winds; drifting dust; scouring sand; water rare and precious but some rivers, canals, marshes and salt lakes.

Plants

The Aenean equivalent of grass, fire trava, is "...onyx tinged with red and yellow..." (1) Its daytime odor is "...flint and sparks..." (1) It curls into a springy mat at night. There is also bloom trava and sword trava as well as starkwood and daggerbushes. Trees are "...native delphi and rahab, Terran oak and acacia, Llynathawrian rasmin, Ythrian hammerbranch." (2) 

We are told that:

"True blossoms had never evolved on Aeneas, though a few kinds of leaf or stalk had bright hues." (2) 

Beside a spring, "Plume trava nodded white above mossy chromabryon; spearflies darted silver bright..." (3)

Animals

Horses and green, six-legged stathas were imported for agricultural use. Terran-descended but gene-modified and adapted cattle are a new genus. Small, three-eyed "lucks," kept as pets or mascots by tinerans, are extra-Aenean but pre-human. Tinerans also keep big, well feathered neomoas. An ula flaps overhead. There is a native tadmouse. Hazards on the Ironland plain include spider wolves and catavales. On the river, "...long-bodied webfooted brown osels..." are used to herd "...fat, flippered, snouted chuho - water pigs..." which "...browsed on wetcress." (4)
 

There is more. As with Avalon, Anderson evokes not only a planetary environment but also the adaptation to that environment of human beings and their imported species.
  

(1) Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return, London, 1978, p. 9.
(2) ibid., p. 37.
(3) ibid., p. 79.
(4) ibid., p. 120.

Hermes

Originally published on Poul Anderson Appreciation, 21 April 2012.

The planet Hermes:

is in the system of the star Maia in Sector Antares;

has 97% G;

has two moons, Caduceus and Sandalion;

has one large continent, Greatland, with an arid interior;

was colonized early mainly by northern Europeans;

was developed by private corporations which became the basis of the Hermetian state;

began as a Grand Duchy with a stratified society;

gained stewardship of the industrially valuable planet Mirkheim after the Babur War;

at that time also became an ordinary crowned republic while remaining nominally a Grand Duchy;

during the Troubles, developed a military-oriented society with authority concentrated in the executive and rule by whoever commanded the greatest armed force;

lost Mirkheim when Hans Molitor became Emperor;

rioted against forced demilitarization under Molitor and was pacified by the Marines;

prospered under Grand Duke Edwin Cairncross who reclaimed the interior with canals, landscaping, imported species, urbanization, commerce and a castle on an extinct volcano.

Greatland divides the Auroral Ocean to the east from the Corybantic Ocean to the west. The city of Starfall is on the east coast where the Palomino River flows into Daybreak Bay. Tilirras sing from millionleafs and there are colorfully winged, trilling nidifexes.

When Hermes declared independence from Terra, its new constitution recognized the Kindred as the Thousand Families controlling the "domains": either landed estates or corporations. The presidents of the domains elect the Duke or Duchess of Hermes from the Tamarin family which must not own a domain. Ancestors of Kindred and Tamarins were the first to arrive from Earth but, instead of founding a corporation, the Tamarins free lanced as scientists etc. "Followers," holding entailed shares, are junior partners in domains, each holding a single vote in domain affairs whereas Kindred have ten. "Travers," hirelings or unaffiliated business people, descended from latecomers, are not taxed and have no vote. The Liberation Front demands full rights for Travers who, as a result of "Libby" campaigns, gain a vote in choosing municipal officers. Travers bow to the Duchess, Followers salute, Kindred shake hands.

The Asmundsens, Followers of the Runebergs and tenants on the Brightwater estate, manage the Runeberg's copper industry. A younger Asmundsen, who explores and develops other planets in the Maian system, is obliged by custom to give preferential promotions to fellow Followers but acknowledges that his strike-threatening Traver employees have legitimate grievances which he tries to address by negotiating in person with their leaders and offering compensations like extra vacations. Hornbeck, the estate of the Falkayn domain, is on a plateau jutting from Mount Nevis in the Thunderhead Mountains. Sam Romney, independent ship-owner, fisherman and loyal Traver, does most of his business with the Falkayns. 

Baburite invaders appoint Benoni Strang, an embittered Traver, as High Commissioner for Hermes. Strang, as Bayard Story of the Galactic Developments company and the Seven in Space cartel, had secretly armed Babur. As Commissioner, he intends to impose a social revolution, democratizing the domains and obliging them to conduct all operations through a central trade authority. Through Duchess Sandra Tamarin-Asmundsen, he announces that a Grand Assembly to draft a new constitution, as provided for in the existing constitution, will be held when procedures for the election of delegates are in place. Christa Broderick, the Liberation Front leader welcomes Strang's proposed social reforms but Strang bypasses the Front, many of whom oppose the invasion, and his Traver supporters form a new party.

Broderick's city and farming Followers snipe and sabotage while guerrillas operate in the Arcadian Hills and the Thunderheads. Both groups attack Starfall while the returned Ducal Space Navy engages orbiting Baburite craft. After the liberation, the Duchess receives a petition. Revolutionary terror has weakened the domains and the Liberation Front has gained confidence. It is agreed that a constitutional convention must await a firm peace but then Hermes, while remaining nominally a duchy, will become in practice a republic. Later, Cairncross is not a Tamarin though he is remotely descended from the Founder of the Empire, Manuel Argos.

Hermes, like Avalon, Aeneas and Vixen, is an entire inhabited planet imagined in detail by Poul Anderson.

Sources: Mirkheim and A Stone In Heaven.

Who Knows Of Avalon?

Originally published on Poul Anderson Appreciation, Friday 20 April 2012


In "The Problem of Pain"

"...intermediate in size between Earth and Ythri, surface gravity 0.8 terrestrial;
"slightly more irradiation, from a somewhat yellower sun, than Earth gets, which simply makes it a little warmer;
"axial tilt, therefore seasonal variations, a bit less than terrestrial;
"length of year about three quarters of ours, length of day a bit under half;
"one small, close in, bright moon;
"biochemistry similar to ours - we could eat most native things, though we'd require imported crops and livestock to supplement the diet.
"All in all, seemingly well-nigh perfect." (1)

South of the largest continent, a great gulf swarms with life. A strong eastward current is deflected north by an archipelago. Monstrous marine creatures graze on floating islands of densely interwoven "atlantis weed" probably also supporting lesser plants and animals. Higher solar energy input and rapid rotation make storms more violent than would be possible on Earth.

On an island in the gulf:

"A mat of mossy, intensely green plants squeezed out any possibility of forest." (2)

Surgeon trees' thin leaf-fringed bows, sharp enough to cut a wing from a swooping Ythrian, whip insanely in the wind which blows gorgeous blossoms torn from vines. Widespread low, russet-leaved, rankly odorous hell shrubs clutch at feet with raking twigs and emit vapours scarcely harming Ythrians but slowly poisoning human beings. Waterfowl fly through a rose, gold and silver-blue sunrise.

In "Wingless"

Ythrians and human beings settle different territories in the Hesperian Islands before jointly colonising the Coronan continent. Nat Falkayn, seventeen Avalonian (twelve Terran) years of age when visiting the Ythrian extended household of Weathermaker Choth:

"...stood on a balcony of that tall stone tower which housed the core families. Below were a paved courtyard and rambling wooden buildings. Meadows where meat animals grazed sloped downhill in Terrestrial grass and clover, Ythrian starbell and rye, Terrestrial oak and pine, Ythrian braidbark and copperwood, until cultivation gave way to the reddish mat of native susin, the scattered intense green of native chasuble bush and delicate blue of janie. The sun Laura stood big and golden-colored at morning, above a distantly glimpsed mercury line of ocean. Elsewhere wandered a few cottony clouds and the pale, sinking ghost of Morgana. A flock of Avalonian draculas passed across view, their leathery wings awkward beside the plumed splendor of Keshchyi's." (3)

Morgana is the moon, brighter and faster than Luna. Keshchyi is a young Ythrian.

Whirlpools around the dark coraloid reefs at a lagoon entrance hold "...thick brown nets of atlantis weed torn loose from a greater mass far out to sea..." (4)

In "Rescue on Avalon"

The highest Avalonian mountains are called the Andromeda Range by human beings and the Weathermother by Ythrians. (Hloch of the Stormgate Choth wrote The Earthbook of Stormgate on the peak of Mount Anrovil in the Weathermother.) Ironleaf trees draw metal from the soil and concentrate pure particles in shining purple leaves which attract pollinating bugs and also absorb radio waves. A hospital window opens on Avalonian king's-crown, Ythrian windnest and Earthly oak.

The Parliament of Man and the Great Khruath of the Ythrians divided continental territory between the species. Human beings need prairies for crops whereas Ythrian hunters occupy the Weathermother.

In The People of the Wind, Chapter One

The city of Gray on Falkayn Bay is surrounded by human-owned grain-fields, Ythrian-owned pastures for maukh and mayaw, forests of oak, pine, windnest or hammerbranch and treeless areas of native susin where some barysauroids survive. Even in Gray, humans, with ample room on Avalon, build low. Highrises are for ornithoids (Ythrians).

"Laura, a G5 star, has only 72 per cent the luminosity of Sol and less ultraviolet light in proportion; but Avalon, orbiting at a mean distance of 0.81 astronomical unit in a period of 0.724 Terran, gets 10 percent more total irradiation than man evolved under." (5)

Christopher Holm, thirty years Avalonian old, has joined Stormgate Choth as Arinninan. The Stormgate compound:

"...stood on a plateau of Mount Fairview. At the middle lifted the old stone tower which housed the senior members of the family and their children. Lower wooden structures, on whose sod roofs bloomed amberdragon and starbells, were for the unwed and retainers and their kin. Further down a slope lay sheds, barns, and mews. The whole could not be seen at once from the ground, because Ythrian trees grew among the buildings: braidbark, copperwood, gaunt lightningrod, jewelleaf which sheened beneath the moon and by day would shimmer iridescent. The flowerbeds held natives, more highly evolved than anything from offplanet - sweet small janie, pungent livewell, graceful trefoil and Buddha's cup, a harp vine which the breeze brought ever so faintly to singing. Otherwise the night was quiet and, at this, altitude, cold." (6)

Avalonian constellations include Wheel, Swords, Zirraukh, Ship and Maukh.

Chapter Two

"Avalon rotates in 11 hours, 22 minutes, 12 seconds, on an axis tilted 21 degrees from the normal to the orbital plane. Thus Gray, at about 43 degrees N., knows short nights always; in summer the darkness seems scarcely a blink." (7)

Human fluid balance and kinesthesia have had to readjust to a gravity field only 80 percent Terran. Ythrians shifting their breeding cycle to Avalonian conditions had low fertility in early generations.

Humans who join choths "go bird." Ythrians who leave choths to become atomic individuals within the global community become "Walkers." Mistwood Choth, like the home world Ythri, has successfully adapted Terran technology.

Chapter Three

Equatorial diameter: 11,308 kilometres. Highest Andromedan peak: 4500 metres. Corona, the north polar continent extending past the Tropic of Swords: eight million square kilometers, comparable to Australia. In the Southern hemisphere, Equatoria, New Africa and New Gaiila are small continents or large islands.

2000 kilometers west of Gray, the Oronesian archipelago crosses the Tropic of Spears, separating the Middle Ocean to the West from the Hesperian Sea in the northern hemisphere and the South Ocean beyond the equator. Oronesia supports a distinct ecology. Eccentrics flee there to settle islands and found choths of only a single household. However, the more numerous Highsky Choth occupies much of the archipelago and controls the fisheries around latitude 30 degrees North. Tabitha Falkayn, Hrill of Highsky, is a third generation human member of her choth and was brought up by Ythrians. Western Corona and northern Oronesia must defend the Hesperian Sea against Terrans.

Upper slopes have susin and a few shrubs. Lower, cultivated ground has red Ythrian clustergrain to feed shuas and Terrestrial fruit trees to feed Highsky humans. A herder and his uhoth control flapping shuas while an Ythrian sailor scouts for piscoids and native pteropleuron lumber around.

Chapter Four is about Terrans preparing to attack Avalon from Esperance.

Chapter Five

The main Ythrian language is Planha, the equivalent of Terran Anglic. Kruaths, gatherings open to all free adults in a given territory, have judicial and limited legislative authority. Wyvans, the presiding officers, explain the law and try suits but cannot compel. If non-compliance is deemed sufficiently serious, then the Wyvans cry Oherran, calling on everyone in the territory to attack the offenders. Rejection of the call would be a deathpride matter, with suicide the Wyvans' only option.

Chapter Six

The only other Avalonian city is Centauri at the mouth of the Sagittarius in the Gulf of Centaurs. In the Phoenix House, Tabitha/Hrill orders a catflower cocktail. She and Chris/Arinnian eat piscoid-and-tomato chowder, beef-and-shua pie, salad of clustergrain leaf and pears and drink coffee spiced with witchroot and a bottle of vintage dago. The Nest, a tavern for ornithoids, is the tallest building in Centauri with a gravshaft to its rooftop for humans who have not brought flying gear. It is unwalled, protected from rain by a vitryl canopy. Insectoids circle fluoroglobes and a service robot serves New African beer.

Most of Highsky keeps to the Old Faith, using drugs in sacred revels. Other planets in the Lauran System are Elysium, Camelot, Phaeacia and Utgard.

Chapters Seven and Eight describe a battle in space.

Chapter Nine

Morgana is smaller than Luna but, being close, raises twice the tides. The Avalonian vertebrate design is hexapodal. Winged creatures have four legs. The dense mat of low-growing vegetation prevents native forests and helps to explain why animals remain reptiloid, unable to compete with mammals or birds. Trees are low and thick or slim and supple to survive high winds caused by rapid rotation. Imported domestic animals had to be revamped genetically because local food lacks some vitamins.

In Chapter Ten, the Terran Admiral parleys with Avalonian leaders and a fallen Avalonian, the First Marchwarden, is laid to rest.

Chapter Eleven

High Wyvan Liaw of the Tarns addresses the Great Khruath of Avalon from outside David Falkayn's house on First Island in the Hesperian Sea. On a North Coronan prairie, a flapping youth leads a herd of quadrupedal burden-bearing zirraukhs. South-East from Oronesia are the Brendan's, Fiery and Shielding Islands. Atlantis weed patches are entire ecologies grazed by peaceful but huge kraken. David Falkayn's granddaughter named Avalon. Equatorian centaurs use tools of stone and bone.

Chapters Twelve and Thirteen are mainly about the consequences of the war in space.

Chapter Thirteen

In winter, snow falls in North Corona and in the mountains but not in Gray where "...the susin stayed green on its hills the year around." (8)

Chapter Fourteen

Zirraukhs are warm-blooded quadrupeds smaller than horses and unlike them but used for the same purpose.

Chapter Fifteen

An Ythrian swoops on a pteropleuron that had been hunting piscoids near the surface of the sea.

Chapter Sixteen

Grief causes premature ovulation in a bereaved Ythrian female. A male seeks her out. This is not against choth law and the female's human chothmate, Arinnian, has no cause to challenge so he insults the Ythrian male until the latter challenges him.

Chapter Seventeen

On the Scorpelunan plateau in Equatoria, hexapods graze under their parasol membranes. Packs of dog-sized hexapodal lycosauroids and throngs of twenty centimeter long cockroach-like kakkelaks attack Terran invaders who are being slowly poisoned by hell shrubs. Furious tropical storms caused by high irradiation and fast spin delay evacuation.

Chapter Eighteen

Smaragdine susin, chasuble bush and Buddha's cup grow on a hill above Falkayn Bay.

Chapter Nineteen

Trefoil and sword-of-sorrow grow in the grass. Harp vines ring. Jewelleafs twinkle. Morgana is less bright because scarred by Terran bombardment.

Why Am I Doing This?

I have summarized an alternative reading. We read an Anderson novel to follow the story. We appreciate that there are rich background details but do not usually pause to savor the details. I have noted as many details as I can of the planet Avalon.

(1) Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Earth Book of Stormgate, New York, 1978, pp. 26-48, AT p. 33.
(2) ibid., p. 40.
(3) Poul Anderson, "Wingless" IN The Earth Book of Stormgate, pp. 411-420, AT pp. 413-414.
(4) ibid., p. 417.
(5) Poul Anderson, The People of the Wind, London, 1977, p. 7.
(6) ibid., p. 10.
(7) ibid., p. 18.
(8) ibid., p. 127.