Water On Mars

In "The Martian Way" by Isaac Asimov, as far as I can remember, Earth stopped shipping water to Mars so the Martian colonists started to import it from the Saturnian rings.

In Protector by Larry Niven, a human protector exterminated the Martians by deflecting an ice asteroid onto a collision course with Mars.

In The Fleet Of Stars, 5, the Nantai etaine mines a lode of water which is sold by a Lunarian organization called a courai. 

Mars loses water because molecules escaping into the atmosphere are cracked apart by ultraviolet radiation with the oxygen binding to rocks and the hydrogen escaping into space. 

Because the Synesis - the cybercosm-dominated civilization in the inner Solar System - has stopped sending water, the Martians now have four options:

live underground;

leave Mars;

build ships and robots to get ice from the Kuiper Belt;

deal with the Proserpinans.

The fourth option seems best: free human beings together against the cybercosm.

Eos And Belgarre

The Fleet Of Stars, 5.

Eos is a small Martian town at one edge of Margaritifer Sinus and on:

"...the rim of Eos Chasma, near the eastern end of Valles Marineris." (p. 53)

On the Sinus, visible from Eos and beyond the area cultivated with metamorphic species, there are boulders, dunes, craters, basaltic upthrusts, wind-driven dust, a receding road and a remote gleaming laser pylon. 

Below Eos, cliffs and crags descend until the land rises again before toppling into Capri Chasma three hundred kilometers away. The Valles stretches to the west. The area is rich in minerals generated when Mars had had volcanoes, running water and a thicker atmosphere.

Whereas Lunar dwellings are either domed or excavated, the radiation-proof, airtight and biointegrated Martian dwellings stand otherwise unprotected on the surface.

Originally, Martian colonists had sold goods, chemicals, food and biological products to asteroidal workers although that trade no longer exists. 

Mars is a Republic although its two species organize separately. David and Helen Ronay own a plantation and estate at Sananton near Eos and David is a regional deputy to the House of Ethnoi. 

A Lunarian clandom lives in Capri Chasma where, instead of streets, the cliff-top town of Belgarre has a mosaic pavement between widely separated buildings topped by solar collectors and displaying emblems of phyle and phratry.

David's and Helen's daughter, Kinna, befriends Elverir of the Nantai etaine.

Life On Mars

Fictional accounts of Mars:

when first explored;

as inhabited by Martians;

as colonized by human beings.

The second and third kinds can be combined, e.g.:

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury;

Red Planet by Robert Heinlein.

The Fleet Of Stars, 5, describes Mars when it has been colonized for centuries by two human species:

Terrans, who evolved on Earth;

Lunarians, who had been adapted to live in Lunar gravity although not on the Lunar surface so that their entire lives have to be spent inside enclosed habitats, spaceships or spacesuits.

Both species can breed in Martian gravity which is greater than Lunar but less than Terrestrial. Earthlings stride, Lunarians bound, Martians of either species lope.

This might be one of the most carefully contrived accounts of life on Mars as that planet might really be like. It is many years since my single reading of Red Planet and I have not read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy which, I now learn, covers the period 2026-2212.

One Writer Helping Us To Appreciate Another

We have become familiar with Andersonian moments of realization, e.g.: see Ten Years Later. Sometimes this helps us to recognize and appreciate such moments in works by other authors, e.g.: Detective Sergeant Lewis' casual remark about a domestic matter has a dramatic effect on his superior:

"For several seconds Morse sat utterly immobile in his chair, as if petrified before the sight of the Gorgon. And for the same several seconds Lewis wondered if his chief had suffered some facial paralysis."

-Colin Dexter, "The Inside Story" IN Dexter, Morse's Greatest Mystery (London, 1994), pp. 165-218 AT PART THREE, p. 201.

Thus ends that page. Having read Poul Anderson and indeed having also read previous Morse-Lewis exchanges, we can almost write the opening sentence of the following page for ourselves. In it, Morse smiles beatifically and tells his old friend that he has:

"'...done it again!'" (p. 202)

That wind, Storm Dave, will be blowing all night. Do I wander away from the point? Yes, but I always return to it.

Good night.

Sensory Inputs And The Reading Experience

In The Fleet Of Stars, 5, the scene shifts to Mars and it takes several pages for the conversation to get going. I am unlikely to reread any further this evening although I think that we have established that it is worthwhile to persevere with this novel. 

My present intermittent sensory inputs are:

this computer screen;

a TV switched on across the room;

the wind whining and howling outside;

pages of The Fleet Of Stars;

pages of Inspector Morse short stories (having finished the novels).

In my childhood, TV's were new and computer screens did not exist. We live sf. Books had been with us for much longer than that and wind howled outside caves.

We contemplate other reading but also continue to find Poul Anderson worthy of rereading and reflection.

Happy Easter.

The Full Story About The Solar System

The Fleet Of Stars, 4.

I was mistaken when I stated in How It Looks To Fenn that nothing is happening among the outer planets. Fenn again mentally reviews the Solar System:

Mercury and Venus are uninhabitable infernos;

(Mars, which he does not mention here, has been colonized both by Terrans and by Lunarians;)

machines have occupied the asteroids and the outer moons and have long since exhausted their exploitable resources;

Lunarians occupy Proserpina and the comets.

Rumours circulate, causing unrest on Earth and Luna. On Mars, Terrans have heard from Lunarians who have heard from Proserpinans that there are Life Mothers and life everlasting in the extra-solar colonies...

We need a Volume V of this future history series.

Three Beings

The Fleet Of Stars, 4.

Two human beings and one metamorph. No extraterrestrials in this future history.

Iokepa:

big

brown

round-faced

wide-nosed

black haired

seafarer

wears blouse, sarong and sandals

Fenn:

sixteen

Luna-dweller

blue-eyed

short-cropped yellow hair

centrifuge-maintained terrestrial-Terran physique

wears coverall and soft boots

He'o:

an intelligent seal

uses a motor cart with arms, hands, synthesizer, wheels and legs

wants to get back in the water

Good guys. Different.

The Technic History And Real Life

OK. We have got drawn back into Poul Anderson's Technic History (History of Technic Civilization).

Years ago, I enjoyed Wagner's Ring Cycle on TV because I was able to follow the plot thanks to sub-titles. (I would not have been carried along by the music alone.) Adzel, a Wodenite who resembles a dragon, sings Fafner when he is a student on Earth.

In The Earth Book Of Stormgate, Chinese New Year is celebrated in San Francisco Integrate and Christmas on the planet Ivanhoe. We celebrate both in Lancaster.

We recognize Sikh men by their turbans and their karas. Ensign Flandry takes orders from Commander Singh when no superior officers survive in a space battle.

Kossara Vymezal encounters an extremely unpleasant human subject of the Merseian Roidhunate named Muhammad Snell (Eriau name: Kluwych). We are more fortunate in our Muslim neighbours who share food at Eid. 

Kossara, later canonized, lies in state in St. Clement's Cathedral in Zorkagrad on Dennitza. In Lancaster, we have a Priory Church, a Cathedral of St. Peter and a Polish language Catholic Church among others.

The Terran Emperor celebrates his Birthday by following daylight around the globe. The King of England visited Lancaster where he is Duke.

Our multi-cultural society prefigures their multi-species society. 

Humanity will survive the Long Night but might not survive the Chaos.

Sayonara. 

Names

Coya Conyon:

"My grandfather's generation seldom bothered to get married. My father's did. And mine, why, we're reviving patrilineal surnames."

-Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 333-367 AT p. 342.

Coya's grandfather is Nicholas van Rijn. Her husband will be David Falkayn. Their grandson, Nathaniel, will grow up alongside young Ythrians on Avalon. A direct descendant will be Tabitha Falkayn, brought up by Ythrians, who will marry Christopher Holm so that maybe the Falkayn name then ends? We don't know. History can take us only so far.

What happens with names in a later future history series? 

When Fenn docks his jetsled on the Habitat orbiting Luna, he must identify himself and his two passengers who are visitors from Earth:

Fenn

Iokepa Hakawau

He'o

The two from Earth are of the Lahui Kuikawa although Iokepa is human whereas He'o is a metamorph, specifically an intelligent seal who EVA's in a legless spacesuit. Human Lahui and Terrans on Mars retain surnames possibly because they are not fully integrated into the Synesis.

The Lahui Kuikawa polity and culture covers the mid-Pacific where they have:

"...immense aquacultural ranges and ranches..."

-The Fleet Of Stars, 4, p. 45.

I quoted "Lodestar" because I wanted to compare names in two future histories but now I want to re-immerse myself in the Earth Book, in the generation gap between van Rijn and Coya and in the cartelization of the Polesotechnic League. We appreciate a multiplicity of future histories but can't help having preferences.

How It Looks To Fenn

The Fleet Of Stars.

We have read about:

the colonization of the Alpha Centaurian system;

the exploration of 82 Eridani, Beta Hydri and HD44594;

the colony at Beta Hydri IV;

download Guthrie's journey from Beta Hydri to Alpha Centauri, then to Proserpina in the outer Solar System.

Now we learn how news of these interstellar events filters through to Fenn in the inner Solar System:

"...few people ever came to space any more. Those inside Luna or the Habitat, even those on Mars, they didn't count, not really. The Lunarians at Proserpina and Alpha Centauri - and now fugitive stories of Terrans at three new suns, whole new worlds, and the galaxy open to them -" (4, p. 44)

Fenn wants to be out there and has to choke back his craving.

Most Lunarians in the outer System are not on Proserpina but:

"...in lesser colonies on smaller bodies and in mining bases on comets, thinly spread across immensities that dwarfed the inner Solar System, but growing, venturing, driving their frontiers ever outward, starward." (17, p. 213)

These Lunarians have far more solitude than among the crowded asteroids at Alpha Centauri. One Selenarch, Luaine of Phyle Janou, Wardress of Zamok Gora, represents the Captains of the Outer Comets. There is more activity in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud than among the inner planets and there seems to be none among the outer planets. (Addendum: This last statement is mistaken. See here.)