Arriving On Scotha

"Tiger by the Tail."

The problem with descending from space onto a planetary surface is that we are then enclosed in that particular environment to the exclusion of the rest of the universe which we know is out there although it remains visible on a clear night. But we do not want to remain enclosed in a spaceship indefinitely either. Sometimes this contradiction becomes explicit. In American sf, the ultimate expression of freedom is interstellar travel although too long inside a spaceship becomes the opposite. There are ways around this paradox, of course. An interstellar vessel can be made into something more or other than bare steel cabins and corridors. It can be a moving planetoid instead of a coffin.

An author moves from the abstract, e.g., the general idea of an extra-solar planet, to the concrete, i.e., one specific imagined planet as against any other possibility:

"As expected, Scotha was fully terrestroid..." (p. 255)

- because that is what this particular story requires.

An author has a creative urge to write something, then decides or chooses what to write. Hegelian philosophy begins with what Hegel thought was the most general concept, abstract being, which is nothing in particular, but then the interaction between these opposites, being and nothing, generated their synthesis, becoming, whose outcome is determinate being, something that has become. Every time an sf character lands on another planet, the author has to tell us what that planet is like, thus producing a new independent story or an instalments of a series like Star Trek, the Technic History etc.

In the Technic History, we have seen Iapetus, Ythri, Gray...etc and now Scotha.