Tuesday 1 May 2018

Eight Planets Introduced In Three Short Stories

Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009).

The Planets
Ythri
Cynthia
Woden
Hermes
Gray/Avalon
Aeneas
Gorzun
Alfzar

"Wings of Victory," pp. 75-102
"In youth he'd done excellent field work, especially in the trade routes of Cynthia..." (p. 83)

"True, you get considerable variation. Like, say, hexapodal vertebrates liberating the forelimbs to grow hands and become centauroids, as on Woden." (p. 93)

"...a backwoods colony on Hermes..." (p. 96)

"We next sought the folk of Ythri, as the planet is called by its most advanced culture..." (p. 100)

"The Problem of Pain," pp. 103-134
"I already knew he wasn't from Earth, had in fact never been there, but from Aeneas..." (p. 109)

"'Offhand, the world - our group called it, unofficially, Gray, after that old captain - the world looked brilliantly promising." (p. 115)

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," pp. 175-197
"(Oh, treetop highways under the golden-red sun of Cynthia! Four-armed drummers who sound the mating call of Gorzun's twin moons! Wild wings above Ythri!)" (p. 183)

"'...I've got this friend from Woden, name of Adzel...'" (p. 181)

"...a stocky blueskin of Alfzar..." (p. 184)

"...[Adzel] was the one Wodenite on this planet." (p. 188)

All these planets are important later in the Technic History.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Mentioning "The Problem of Pain" reminded me of how DANGEROUS even highly terrestroid planets like Gray/Avalon (or our Terra, for that matter!) can be. And even teams of scientists TRYING to be careful are very likely to suffer losses investigating such planets.

Sean