Dido And Aeneas

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 29 Sept 2014.

Dido and Aeneas, the third and fourth planets in the Virgilian system, are like a (barely) habitable Venus and a habitable Mars with no Earth between them. See here and here.

Dido has no moon but its eccentric orbit with average radius of one a.u., extreme axial tilt of 38 degrees and rapid rotation period of 8 hours, 47 minutes, cause turbulent seas and weather. Approaching the planet, Flandry sees dazzling, stormy white clouds on the dayside and aurora and lightning on the night side.

The oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere is unacceptably hot and dense, although breathable, but the tropics are lethal to unprotected human beings. Tectonic activity is intense. Vegetation is brown, red, purple and gold. The ground cover, "carpet weed," resembles small red-brown sponges.

Yet again, Poul Anderson imagines a planetary environment differing in fundamental details from the terrestrial: different colors and ground cover and a much shorter day - also, very dissimilar inhabitants. See here and here. 

Diomedean Geograpy

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, Wed 29 Oct 2014.

More maps of planets in Technic Civilization would be helpful.

The Holmenach archipelago, stretching north for hundreds of kilometers from the Britain-sized island of Lannach, separates the Sea of Achan from the colder Ocean. The north coast of Lannach slopes in broad valleys from the uplands towards the Sea and Sagna Bay where the Flock of Lannach have several towns:

Ulwen;
Mannenach;
Yo of the Carpenters.

Fish called trech have changed their habits and moved from Draka waters (where?) to the Sea of Achan.

Well to the north of the archipelago is the ice-covered island of Dawrnach. The Flock of Lannach takes several Earth-days to fly there, resting on skerries usually visited only by birds. Somewhere to the south of Lannach are the jungles of Swampy Kilnu.

Thursday Landing, the League trading post across the Ocean, deals with the Tyrlanian Flock.

There may be a little more geographical information in the text, which I have not yet reread in full.

Diomedes

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 18 Sept 2014.

See here.

Large flying animals evolved in the dense Diomedean atmosphere. Flocks of intelligent Diomedeans winter in the tropics. The exertion of a long flight causes hormonal changes so that, upon arrival, there is a mating orgy. Females are pregnant when they return home in spring and give birth before the next migration when parents carry infants who can fly independently the following year.

Towns, vacated every autumn but reoccupied every spring, are centers of stone working, ceramics, carpentry and limited agriculture although the main economic activities are hunting and herding. The Great Flock of Lannach is indolent, artistic, ceremonious and matrilineal whereas Diomedeans of the Fleet of Drak'ho have abandoned annual migration in favor of fishing and seaweed harvesting from large, oceangoing rafts where the exertion of navigational activities exercises the body, maintaining year-round sexuality and reproduction and patriarchal monogamy. The Fleet, able to accumulate stores, machines and books, is richer but authoritarian.

On Starkad (see here), land-dwelling and sea-dwelling intelligent species were natural enemies. On Diomedes, Flock and Fleet are the same species but initially regard each other with mutual horror although extra-planetary traders encourage tolerance and cooperation. In the Imperial period, Drak'ho can adapt to living on land and to engaging in new economic activities whereas the migratory Lannachska culture, used to summer time indolence, cannot survive the introduction of high-energy technology but, without it, must remain poor and powerless.

Two Unusual Planets Early In The Nicholas Van Rijn Series

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation, 23 Oct 2014.

"Diomedes' poles are in the ecliptic plane. Each spends half the year in winter and night. Intelligent Diomedeans are winged migrators."
-copied from "Unusual Heavenly Bodies" (see here). 

For more information on Diomedes, see here. 

In the second installment of the Nicholas van Rijn series (see attached image), Old Nick is stranded on Diomedes. The third installment, "Hiding Place," briefly mentions yet another unusual planet:

"'They're under three Gs...Even so, their planet has oxygen and nitrogen rather than hydrogen, under a dozen Earth-atmosphere's pressure. The temperature is rather high, fifty degrees. I imagine their world, though of nearly Jovian mass, is so close to its sun that the hydrogen was boiled off, leaving a clear field for evolution similar to Earth's.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 596.

Large planets made habitable by cosmic accidents are among those listed in "Unusual Heavenly Bodies." Although they begin to sound familiar, each is a unique creation of Anderson's scientifically informed imagination. I may be posting more about events on Diomedes.

Babur

The sub-Jovian planet Babur:

is more than six a.u.'s from its sun, Mogul (more than six times as bright as Sol);
is twelve and a third times as massive as Earth and two and four-fifths times as large;
has -
four moons,
a hydrogen/helium atmosphere,
red clouds in a purple sky,
eight times the Terrestrial surface, most of it land because ammonia is less plentiful than water,
large arid continents,
ice mountains,
melting volcanoes,
black vegetation,
hot underground ice that explodes with changes of pressure, causing some lands to sink beneath the ammonia seas while others emerge as yet lifeless,
a three-sexed, sex-changing, four-eyed, octopedal dominant species, living in buildings of ice.

Each Baburite "Band" is an association of beings united but not subordinated into a single personality by what might be telepathy with traditions neither oral nor written but perceived. Bands recruit by reproduction and adoption. The Imperial Band of Sisema leads a united planet without a government. 

Ivanhoe

Ivanhoe is not very odd as Andersonian planets go:

in the Pleiades region;
a cold planet of a red dwarf star;
air pressure higher than Terrestrial;
at least two moons;
no food edible by Terrestrials;
used by the Polesotechnic League only as a site for an emergency repair depot until, between stories, a valuable herb is discovered and a trade base established.

The two stories set on Ivanhoe are about interactions with the natives: furred, tailed, three-fingered bipeds with below-jaw breathing apertures instead of noses and leonine manes on males. Like the Merseians and the Ythrians, the Ivanhoans encountered in the first story are monotheists. When their Chief Consecrate bans a new idea that threatens his preferred social structure, he must show from scripture, tradition or reason that this new idea contradicts the Word of God.

To this extent at least, the Ivanhoan Sanctuary sounds like the Catholic Church. A wily Jewish trader disrupts Sanctuary theology by introducing the Kabbalah. Later, other traders disarm native hostility by introducing the idea of the Christmas truce. Thus, both stories could be included in an sf anthology on religion, as could the earlier "The Problem of Pain" about the Ythrian New Faith of God the Hunter. (We learn that the word "God" can have different connotations.)

In Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009):

"...a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League..." (p. 178);
"...Master Polesotechnician Martin Schuster [on Ivanhoe]..." (p. 204);
"...Master Trader Thomas Overbeck [on Ivanhoe]..." (p. 319)

Are Merchant, Polesotechnician and Trader three ranks or three different translations of a single Anglic term into English?

The first Ivanhoe story serves to introduce the series character, David Falkayn. However, both stories are also rich in other characters like the two named Masters.

Other Environments

Two other Technic History planets meriting discussion and documentation are Ivanhoe and Babur:

"The Three-Cornered Wheel" and "The Season of Forgiveness," both set on Ivanhoe, are collected in the first Technic Civilization Saga volume, The Van Rijn Method;

Mirkheim, with a passage set on Babur, is collected in the third volume, Rise Of The Terran Empire.

My next agendum is to reread these two stories and the relevant passage of the novel, then to summarize details of these planetary environments here on Poul Anderson's Cosmic Environments. Meanwhile, however, blog readers are of course welcome to preempt me with any information on either of these planets?

18 Oct 2014: See Ivanhoe and Babur.