Under The Moons Of Vanessa

"Norman Bean" was ERB's pen name. "Under The Moons of Mars" by Norman Bean was republished as A Princess Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

In the following passage, the planet Vanessa seems to me to reflect ERB's Mars/Barsoom:

"Dinner was served in the roof turret, which had a view like being outdoors. By night Vanessa took on beauty. Both moons were aloft, small and swift, turning the land to a fantasy of dim silver and moving shadows. The lake gleamed, the native towers looked like giant blossoms. Overhead, the sky was splendid with stars..."
-"A Sun Invisible," IV, p. 289.

Over dinner, Falkayn mentions and explains rogue planets. They will be crucial to the plot.

Cynthia And Woden

Cynthia
"Oh, treetop highways under the golden-red sun of Cynthia!"
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 175-197 AT p. 183.

"Oh, to be back on Ta-chih-chien-pi, Lifehome-under-Sky, again in a treetop house among forest perfumes!"
-Poul Anderson, "The Trouble Twisters" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 77-208 AT VI, p. 138.

"Ta-chih-chien-pi - 02 Eridani A II or Cynthia to humans - felt even more distant than it was, warm ruddy sunlight and rustling leaves around treetop homes lost in time as well as space."
-Poul Anderson, "Day of Burning" IN David Falkayn: Star Trader, pp. 209-272 AT pp. 224-225.

"'Light across a sea of leaves, but down below full of shapes and mysteries, a cry of color on wings and petals, a glen where a rill comes joyful -...'"
-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT XXI, p. 289.

Woden
"Adzel's thoughts turned sentimentally back to Woden, the dear broad plains under the brilliant sun, where his hooves spurned kilometers..."
"The Trouble Twisters," V, p. 132.

"'That wild bright openness where the winds run loose, horizons endlessly before us but also flowers underfoot, a land that that is the living Nirvana -...'"
-Mirkheim, p. 289.

I will quote more about either planet if I find it.

Beauty On Ikananka

"The Trouble Twisters."

Tidal action has forced one hemisphere of the small, eccentrically orbiting, librating planet Ikrananka to face its red dwarf sun but such slow rotation generates a weak magnetic field so that the planet retains an atmosphere although most of its water has frozen on the cold side making the warm side a slowly deteriorating desert whose inhabitants, struggling for survival in their season-less, rhythm-less environment, regard nature as hostile, believing in demons but not in gods, whereas dwellers on the edge of the Twilight Zone with rain, snow, day, night and constellations, more conventionally believe in an annually dying and rising god and a single devil whose power can be neutralized. The latter are easier to trade with.
-copied from here.

As Falkayn and his Ershoka captors approach, then enter, the Twilight Zone:

they leave the wasteland;
the country grows greener;
mosslike growth carpets the foothills;
brooks become audible;
the wind sways "...forests of plumed stalks..." (p. 156);
mountains glow in the red light;
there are "...snow peaks and glaciers..." (ibid.);
stars and a planet become visible;
slopes reflect heat;
ice melts;
rivers foam down cliffs;
the royal purple sky blackens;
the city, Rangakora, occupies a plateau above a mountain pass;
a road joins mountaintops, city and green, gold, glimmering, misty sea;
above the city, rainbows crown a waterfall;
then forest hides the river as it flows near the city wall;
Falkayn is impressed;
so am I.

Jovian Sky And Surface

In Poul Anderson's Three Worlds To Conquer and "Hunters of the Sky Cave," Jupiter has a solid surface.

In "Hunters...," Flandry, descending, sees:

a glowing, multi-colored planetary surface;

moving dark storms bigger than Terra;

thousand-kilometer-long clouds of ammonia crystals;

the blue and green streaks of free radicals;

lightning in a purple sky;

sodium explosions;

allotropic ice crumbled, then lifted, by methane ocean waves flattened by pressure and gravity;

a vast plain where organisms neither plant nor animal lash at hundred-meter-long flying ribbons;

colored, singing bubbles on a red wind;

an immense, blue, low-built, artificial structure;

flashing white energy;

Ymirites flying, or rather swimming, in the dense atmosphere, some on their own wings, others in gliders.

He also feels and hears titanic winds.

The Game Of Empire: Some Loose Ends

One more divine name: Tangaroa Zachary. Gatto and Tangaroa converse by eidophone.

Half a millennium after the events of "Day of Burning," Merseia still requires forcefield protection from the radiation of the supernova, Valenderay: a permanent reminder to the Merseians of their former vulnerability and dependency.

The moons of Imhotep are Zoser, Kanofer and Rahotep. In autumn, dead leaves are underfoot in Olga's Landing. In Old Town, Tigery trading caravans arrive from the lowlands. There are crowds, music and savory odors from foodstalls and Winged Smoke houses.

Through the transparent wall of a high Terra-conditioned floor of the Pyramid, Dominic Flandry, Diana Crowfeather, Targovi and Axor see:

scarlet, russet and amber woods;

outside the heated area, boulders, crags, native plants, frozen rivulets, sunlit snow-covered mountains and green glaciers.

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.