Happy New Year

We are just back from a party. (The time on this lap top is out of sync with the time here.) Thank you for your attention.

Yesterday, the Poul Anderson Appreciation blog recorded 297 page views although it had no new posts whereas this blog received 33 page views although it had 3 new posts. Later today, I will copy this post and the three from yesterday onto PAA.

This is sheer self-indulgence. I am wallowing in Poul Anderson's Technic History for as long as possible. However, Anderson's texts make it possible to focus on the many details of their narratives and descriptions for a very long time. There is a lot more to post about Dominic Flandry but not right now.

The Approach To Talwin

When traveling through space, the inside of a spaceship becomes very much a "cosmic environment," albeit an artificial one. If, like Dominic Flandry in A Circus Of Hells, CHAPTER ELEVEN, you are a human prisoner/passenger in a Merseian destroyer, then the crew themselves become the most obtrusive part of your environment:

larger than human
green
hairless
spined
tailed
in foreign-cut black uniforms
with belted war knives
sharp, dry body odors
and dark whiteless eyes
practicing centuries-old ritual deferences

Pretty frightening to anyone without Flandry's training and experience? He converses politely in Eriau with appropriate salutes.

Approaching Talwin, he sees peaks that dwarf the Himalayas but are naked rock. An extensive swamp informs him that, in winter, the icecap extends to 45 degrees latitude and the glaciers flatten everything whereas, at midsummer, lakes and rivers boil. He travels with aliens towards a frightening environment.

More On Planets

The previous post lists twelve planets visited in four novels. Also, Therayn is mentioned but not visited in A Circus Of Hells.

Lists of planets might become a feature of these blogs. See:

Planets Of The Long Night
Fully Realized Planets
Fully Realized Planets II

Point of view makes a difference to how any planet is perceived:

in Ensign Flandry, Terra is perceived not by the title character but by Lord Markus Hauksberg when he attends the Emperor's birthday celebration at the Coral Palace;

however, in The Rebel Worlds, young Flandry visits Admiralty Center in the Rocky Mountains;

in Ensign Flandry, Brechdan Ironrede, Hand of the Vach Ynvory, surveys his ancestral domain on Merseia (see Merseian Customs) but that planet is also, very differently, perceived by the young Flandry who has become aide to Commander Abrams of Intelligence. See Merseian Scenery.

There is much scope here for rereading and the studying of details. I had completely forgotten Ysabeau and the unnamed planet in A Circus Of Hells.

Planets In The Young Flandry Trilogy

Ensign Flandry
Terra
Starkad
Merseia

A Circus Of Hells
Irumclaw
Wayland
Talwin
an unnamed planet
Ysabeau

The Rebel Worlds
Terra
Shalmu
Llynathawr
Aeneas
Dido 

A Hostile Environment

Poul Anderson, "Territory" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-76.

(The contents page classifies "Territory" as a "novella": longer than a short story but shorter than a novel.)

There are many terrestroid planets in sf but Anderson also shows us some that are different, e.g.: t'Kela:

temperature 60 below;
enough nitrogen to induce narcosis;
enough ammonia to burn lungs;
no water vapor;
enough oxygen to sustain life for several minutes.

Human beings have several kinds of business on t'Kela but must be permanenetly protected from its environment. Would you want to spend any time there? And why is van Rijn without a helmet in that cover illustration?

Cosmic Environments In Tau Zero

Poul Anderson's Tau Zero opens in the Millesgarden.

The characters visit Stockholm Old Town.

They see stars from space, venture into interstellar space and go EVA.

There is a garden in the ship.

The universe looks strange at high speeds.

The ship passes through the galactic center, leaves the Milky Way, traverses intergalactic space and passes through other galaxies and clusters.

The next passage is through inter-clan space, here, here and here.

The universe ages and the ship enters the outermost abysses.


A new monobloc forms and the ship explores a new universe here, here and here before finding a new planet.

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.