Lunarians On Proserpina

Originally published on Poul Anderson Appreciation, 24 August 2012.

Proserpina, a ferrous spheroid two thousand kilometers across, is on an eccentric two million year orbit that takes it between the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. Cometary impacts have deposited frozen water, organics and metal.

Lunarians, adapted to live and breed in lunar gravity, have inhabited Proserpina, now prosperous and populous, for centuries, covering its surface with domes, roofs, towers, masts, roads, rails and spacefields where ships come and go like fireflies. It is surrounded by satellites, habitats, factories, entrepots, supplementary harbours, naval bases, research centres and antimatter production facilities. A majority of Proserpinans are in lesser colonies on smaller bodies or in mining bases on comets.

Related families and their retainers form phratries. Related phratries form phyles to act cooperatively. Seigneurs, holding the balance of wealth and power, have strong bonds with their subordinate "companions." "Courai," either owned by seigneurial families or drawing their members from a single phratry, conduct most major enterprises. Because population is concentrated  on Proserpina, its phratries elect a Council of Forerunners which, by electronic consultation, sets policies, enacts safety regulations and organizes public undertakings, paid for by levies on their beneficiaries. The Council chooses a Convener. The Consultancy of seigneurs leading the phyles can review and veto the Council's acts.

Here is yet another of Anderson's carefully detailed future environments and societies.

Lunarians On Proserpina II

Originally published on Poul Anderson Appreciation, 24 April 2012.

The Proserpinans have revived the old title of Selenarch because they still claim the Moon, now inhabited entirely by Terrans who must give birth in higher gravity in the orbiting Habitat. Three Selenarchs greet download Guthrie newly arrived from Alpha Centauri:

Velir, Convener of the Council of Forerunners, seigneur in Phyle Aulinn, Warder of Zamok Drakon, shareholder in spaceships and industries;
Catoul of Phyle Randai, who attends the Council for the Consultancy;
Luaine of Phyle Janou, Wardress of Zamok Gora, who attends for the Captains of the Outer Comets.

The tall, thin Lunarians usually stand in their low gravity, a telling detail that I have forgotten to mention till now. Of course, download Guthrie in his robot body does not sit, eat or drink.

Most Proserpinan buildings are on the surface because it is difficult to excavate in iron. Across the entirely urbanised surface, there are cultural and commercial nodes. Parks have outsize flowers, low gravity trees and fountains of water, fire or lightning. Passages and arcades with tiers of slender arches and colourful mirages on the ceilings are filled with softly moving Proserpinans accompanied by pets - birds, a squirrel, a monkey, a ferret, greyhounds, a dwarf bear, a leopard. Slowly falling water curtaining a door before flowing into a channel containing phosphorescent snakes stops falling when Guthrie approaches the door and resumes when he has entered a meeting room with an alabaster ceiling and gold-leafed walls where gems form calligraphic patterns.

The Proserpinans, who must always be inside an artificial environment, spaceship, spacesuit, space station, enclosed lunar or asteroidal dwelling, have moved to the cold and dark of the Outer System. Despite all this, they have materials, energy, technology, social and individual dynamism and ingenuity. Thus, they create and inhabit the kind of environment described here.

Lacking the copious solar energy of the Inner System, they must use all their fusion-produced antimatter except a reserve for emergencies and "defence" although it remains to be seen why defence is necessary.

Since the Oort Cloud overlaps with the cometary clouds of nearby systems, could the Proserpinans begin the colonisation of the Alpha Centaurian system in incremental stages falling short of a direct interstellar crossing?

Human beings by now inhabit six volumes of space, the inner and outer regions of the Solar System and four other systems, but it has not been easy and Anderson shows us this by taking four volumes to move his characters to this very early stage of galactic colonisation. 

Inside Perun

Poul Anderson, Harvest Of Stars, 52.

When the interior of the asteroid has been fully developed, birds, moths and bats will fly free. There will be flowering vines and a stream running through a trench along a passage. Rock passages are "...polished glass-smooth..." (p. 451) and lit in changing colors. Sculptured pillars, "...studded with gems and crystals...," (p. 452) are animated by the variable light. In the light gravity, Lunarians jump between platforms in a downward shaft. Spreading his cloak, Rinndalir floats like a leaf. His spacious chamber has a viewdome ceiling showing the heavens, including Alpha Centauri A and B. As on Luna and Proserpina, the Lunarians transform stone chambers into paradisal habitats.