Thursday 24 August 2017

Imperial Galactography And More Dennitzan Geography

In Poul Anderson's A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, the planet Esperance is said to be close to the Domain of Ythri. Of course this planet is close to that Domain. The Terran attack on Ythri and its colonies was launched from Esperance in The People Of The Wind. From Diomedes to Dennitza is a month by hyperdrive even in Dominic Flandry's super-fast Hooligan. Again, this has to be the case because the Zorian System is on a march of the Wilderness between the Empire and the Roidhunate so that it has got to be very far away from most other places in the Empire.

Ythri and Esperance contribute passively (not actively) to the plot of A Knight... Their mere location makes them important.

"On the tundra far north of the Kazan, Bodin Miyatovich kept a hunting lodge." (A Knight..., Chapter XII, p. 506)

Bodin and his guests:

hunt gromatz, yegyupka or ice troll on horseback with hounds;
sail on wild waters;
ski on glaziers;
sit comfortably by a great hearth fire during blizzards.

The lodge, built of granite blocks, is surrounded by:

red-purple mahovina;
clumps of firebush;
windblown plume;
blinking pools.

Visible from a slate terrace that juts from the lodge is the two kilometre high shimmering ice cliff worldwall from which a river of melt water brawls nearby while a sheerwing flock cries remotely overhead.

Are there really such terrestroid planets out there? So many extrasolar planets are being discovered that maybe the answer is yes.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I agree, we know now of so MANY extra solar planets that I simply don't believe it is plausible that ALL of them will be unsuitable for human colonization.

Sean