Dominic Flandry's spaceship, the Hooligan, has landed half way up a mountain on the large Diomedean island of Lannach:
above, an overhanging cliff;
below, sea gleaming on the horizon;
amethyst sky;
towering clouds;
crags;
boulders;
waterfalls;
talus slopes;
murky scraps;
grass-like growth;
grey thorn bushes;
low twisted trees;
forest in misty valleys;
cruising flyers, either Diomedeans or predators;
yowling wind.
Regular Anderson readers might think, "Yes, the wind must of course be heard and, on this occasion, should sound slightly threatening." Must Flandry and Chives face off against armed rebels? (No. Something worse.)
3 comments:
Diomedes is also -bigger- than Earth by a considerable margin. I remember from THE MAN WHO COUNTS that the horizon was different for that reason.
Oh, yes. And we have discussed the psychological impact of that further horizon before. We are getting to a stage where there can be (quite a lot of) repetition on this blog but there is so much in Poul Anderson's works that I don't think that the repetition matters much - yet.
Here is some commentary & a tribute to Poul Anderson, by Chris Wayan who does SF worldbuilding, but writes guided tours rather than stories set on his worlds. It was Diomedes that got him interested in Anderson's work because Diomedes was very similar to Lyr a world Chris had devised, so Chris chose Anderson's works as a source for placenames.
http://www.worlddreambank.org/L/LYR1POUL.HTM
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