in Poul Anderson's "Delenda Est," Venus, presumably habitable, has been colonized;
in Anderson's "The Big Rain," a desert Venus has been colonized but has yet to be terraformed;
in his "Sister Planet," an oceanic Venus has yet to be terraformed and colonized;
in his Technic History, Venus has been colonized despite incomplete terraforming;
in SM Stirling's "A Slip in Time," we retroactively learn that the colonized Venus of "Delenda Est" had been paradisally terraformed - lawns, gardens, vines, flowers, trees, a canal, bioengineered colorful singing birds and a cat-dog-chimp hybrid companion-nurse.
Surely a civilization with the power and wealth to effect this transformation would be able to solve all socioeconomic problems? Despite this, conflicts and wars continue for many millennia - although not indefinitely.
In "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks," we learn that the Time Patrol suppresses the Trazon matter transmuter, able to transform any material object into any other...
3 comments:
Hi, Paul!
And in his book THE SKY PEOPLE, by S.M. Stirling, we see a Venus which had been terraformed many thousands of years ago by unknown aliens for unknown reaasons. A Venus stocked with dinosaurs and both Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapiens.
I don't want to say too much more about THE SKY PEOPLE because that would reveal too much about the plot for people who have not yet read the book. But, my view is that S.M. Stirling is a worthy colleague of Poul Anderson in many ways.
Sean
I took it that as powerful as those aliens were, they did not have time travel, so Venus stocked with dinosaurs meant the terraforming had been done no later than the Cretaceous.
Also IIRC from reading the novel the geologists from earth investigating Venus had dated the transformation of Venus to sometime in Earth's Mesozoic.
So many millions of years, not many thousands of years
Kaor, Jim!
That is corrected, I understated the time span used by the "Lords of Creation" for their mysterious work.
Ad astra! Sean
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