Clement Planetology

For convenience, we have been rereading Poul Anderson's The Man Who Counts in a paperback edition with the alternative title, War Of The Wing-Men. Before that, we had been rereading this novel in the omnibus collection, The Earth Book Of Stormgate. However, if we are to reread an introduction that Poul Anderson, as opposed to Hloch of the Stormgate Choth, had written for the novel, then we must turn back to The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, where the Compiler, Hank Davis, re-presents Anderson's earlier introduction as an afterword. 

Anderson informs us that:

"...Hal Clement's marvelously detailed and believable fictional worlds..."

-Poul Anderson, AFTERWORD IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 513-515 AT p. 513 -

- were one "wellspring" of this early novel. 

This explains why Adzel studies at the Clement Institute of Planetology earlier in the Earth Book and on p. 187 of The Van Rijn Method. 

Anderson's account of Clementian creation:

a star's age, chemistry, mass, luminosity etc

a planet in a given orbit

the length of its year

its irradiation level

its surface features

its kind of life

the evolution of that life

the odour of a flower

that odour's meaning to an individual

A Clementian paragraph in Anderson's text:

"This atmosphere carried the dust particles which are the nuclei of water condensation to a higher, hence colder altitude. Thus Diomedes had more clouds and precipitation of all kinds than Earth. On a clear night you saw fewer stars; on a foggy night you did not see at all."

-War Of The Wing-Men, XV, p. 103.