Heidhin's House

(Heidhin is Veleda's foremost man but, since he is entirely fictional, we stay with images of Veleda.)

"Star of the Sea," 18.

The fire in a trench down the middle of the floor scarcely warms the house, its smoke hazes the air and its red light does not penetrate the darkness between pillars and beams yet, despite all this, Heidhin's house is "...as grand as many a royal hall"! (p. 616)

The historical Burhmund and the fictional Heidhin discuss a political intervention by Everard whom we but not they know to be a Time Patrolman. At this stage, we read pure historical fiction. However, before long, Veleda arrives mysteriously, having been borne on the timecycle/holy bull. The diverse genres blend seamlessly.

Veleda's tower and Heidhin's house deserve our attention as well-realized settings.

Veleda's Dwelling II

(I have just returned from an evening meal in the White Cross with two beautiful former work colleagues, Rachel and Caz.)

See Veleda's Dwelling.

Veleda, on her high stool, wraps her cloak around her, hood up, against the chill. Heidhin, visiting, sits on the floor with his back against the shut-bed. Veleda's breath is visible when she speaks.

On a later visit, they walk around her grounds between respectful field workers and the dark holy grove. She will withdraw into her tower to think, brew witchcraft and call the goddess while Heidhin carries her word to the tribes.

Later again, when the war goes badly, she walks alone, broods under a tree and returns from the halidom to her tower where she sits on the three-legged witch-seat, cloak tight, peering into the shifting shadows. Gloom makes objects look like trolls. The floor groans and light shines as the goddess arrives...

Veleda's Dwelling

(A statue of Veleda.)

"Star of the Sea."

Let us stretch the scope of the phrase, "Cosmic Environments." It is usual to contrast the cosmic with the mundane but, of course, this world (mundus) is part of the cosmos. In this sense, perhaps, everything is cosmic, especially when it is given some transcendent significance. An organism's environment is everything surrounding it, whether natural or artificial, thus including human dwellings.

Veleda dwells in a tower:

"...heavy-timbered, iron-bound, raised for her to dwell in alone with her dreams." (3, p. 497)

It is guarded by a man with a spear. Servants abide in the single chamber on the ground floor. Veleda dwells in the loft-room approached by a ladder. She sits on a high stool while a lamp casts wavering shadows among beams, chests, pelts, hides and instruments of witchcraft. Perhaps there is a cosmic connection?

Going out for the evening. To be continued...

Atlantean Tides

Virgin Planet, CHAPTER XVI, p. 115.

See:

Atlantean Astronomy
The Astronomy Of Virgin Planet
Religion, Astronomy And Society

Astronomy affects tides:

Atlantean tides vary but are "...always enormous..." (p. 115);
up to seven times Terrestrial;
a bore is like a tsunami;
shores are either cliffs or salt marshes fading into ocean;
estuaries are swamps, shifting between flooded and merely drenched;
seabirds seek stranded fish;
the damp wind smells of decaying kelp;
trees grow above high tide;
grass is amphibious;
there are feathered, flippered seal-equivalents;
a few women -

live in huts on high ground;
hunt and fish in pirogues;
catch rainwater;
are weaker families living where no one else wants;
have a neolithic culture;
earn trade goods as guides.

Solis Township

"The Chapter Ends."

Dornford Yates' novels, set in Austria in the early twentieth century, describe narrow winding cobbled streets with overhanging buildings such that, in one case, it would have been possible to pass a basket from an upper window to someone reaching across from the facing house.

In Poul Anderson's "The Chapter Ends," the far future Earth wallows in archaisms:

houses low, white and half-timbered;
roofs thatched or red-tiled;
smoking chimneys;
carved, overhanging galleries;
narrow, cobbled, twisting streets;
wooden clogs;
the ruined walls of Sol City;
wooded hills;
fields;
orchards;
distant sea;
farm buildings;
cattle;
winding roads;
marble and granite walls;
"...all dreaming under the sun..." (p. 196);
smells of leaf, earth, trees, salt, kelp and fish.

Jorun's Home Planet

"The Chapter Ends."

The planet is at the Galactic center where "...uncountable hosts of suns..." (p. 198) are visible;

it is a "grim world," niggardly by contrast with the life-covered Earth;

it has moors, crags and spindrift seas;

its features are also described as "...hills and tundras and great empty seas..." (p. 211);

because everyone controls cosmic energies, there is no need to live close to others;

from his home, Jorn sees only moors;

some nights are very dark because there are no visible lights on the planetary surface although (see above) there are many stars in the sky.

I would like it because I appreciate solitude and, at the same time, rapid communication and transportation mean that Jorun has easy access to company and to civilization.

The Light

Anderson, Poul, "The Light" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 164-181.

Anderson's "The Man Who Came Early" is a first person narration addressed to a single auditor, a priest. "The Light" is another first person narration addressed to a single auditor, this time a historian who is being told government secrets - and the surprise ending of the story reveals why. Someone reached the Moon before the Americans. (The background of da Vinci's The Virgin of the Rocks does look as if it might be a Lunar landscape, doesn't it?)

"The Light" is a first Moon landing story published in 1957, so how much did it get right? Americans, three of them, previous circum-Lunar missions, an embarrassing "first man on the Moon" speech written in advance by someone else. However:

they set off from a space station, not from the Earth's surface;
all three go down to the Lunar surface;
they have no radio or television link back to the Earth.

Thus, the first to step onto the surface can get away with:

"'May I suggest that the captain write in the log that the speech was delivered?'" (p. 170)

Description of the Lunar surface:

eerie;
bright;
dead;
huge, razor-cornered rocks;
horizon near;
deep, sharp shadows;
cracked, ocherous land;
indescribable light;
a lava plain like polished black metal;
oven in sunlight, freezing in shade;
a mysterious mist;
meteoric dust;
a familiar fog-glow;
prints of hob-nailed boots worn by a tall man...

The First Man on the Moon learns the identity of the real First Man on the Moon.

In a pre-Apollo cinema adaptation of The First Men In The Moon, a UN Moon expedition discovers that Cavor and Bedford were there before them. A post-Apollo TV adaptation asks us to accept that Wells' account of Cavor and Bedford and the TV transmissions from Armstrong and Aldrin both happened, then ingeniously fits both of these "first Moon landings" into a single narrative.