Tuesday 2 August 2022

Earth

In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, Earth is seen twice from space and once from the Moon.

During training in the Oligocene:

"Everard said nothing. He was too captured by the spectacle of Earth, rolling enormous against the stars."
-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 14.

Before the attack on the Exaltationists in Machu Picchu in 1610:

"[The spacecraft] was orbiting dayside when Everard arrived, and the planet stretched vast, blue swirled with white around the ruddinesses that were continents."
-Poul Anderson, "The Year of the Ransom" IN Time Patrol, pp. 641-735 AT 15 April 1610, p. 719.

On the Moon:

"...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 Time Patrol, pp. 333-465 AT 2319, 375.

1 comment:

S.M. Stirling said...

A lot of SF authors didn't realize what Earth would look like from space -- that is, blue and white, mostly (the white being clouds and ice), with patches of brown.

Even if the landscape is green at ground-level, it doesn't look that way from orbit. It looks like various shades of grey-brown.