Tuesday 21 December 2021

Earth Seen From The Moon

Mirkheim
, III.

In the Technic History, Nicholas van Rijn sees:

"...Earth's heart-snaring loveliness hung blue and white in the south." (p. 65)

And a century and a half earlier in the Time Patrol timeline, Carl Farness sees:

"...heaven black but reigned over by an Earth nearly full. I lost myself in the sight of that glorious white-swirled blueness. Jorith had lost herself there, two thousand years ago."
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 2319, p. 375.
 
Time travelers have a different perspective.
 
There is artificial gravity in Lunar facilities in both timelines. Farness sees only mountains and craters but van Rijn looks out on trees growing high under a forcefield.
 
Apart from this, it is the same Earth and Moon in our timeline and in the two fictional timelines.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And in "Strange Bedfellows" we see Anderson's speculations about how the Moon just MIGHT be terraformed.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Terraforming the moon would probably require abilities we can't extrapolate from current science; thought that can change, of course.

But terraforming large segments of it -- by doming over big craters, frex -- could be done with engineering which can be extrapolated from current knowledge.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

And I hope that someday mankind might be able to terraform the Moon! And, I like that idea of terraforming parts of the moon by doming over the craters. I assume the first attempts would start with the smaller craters.

Ad astra! Sean