plants include bloomgrain, paperleaf, richen and shipwood;
Kalava sails the River Lonna, the Gulf of Sirsu, the North Coast and the Windroad Sea as far as the Ending Islands and visits a port of the people of the Shining Fields;
in Sirsu, he knows the Grand Fountain in King's Newmarket, the Flame Temple, the column in Victory Square, the Helki suburb, docks, workshops, bazaars and inns;
his skin is coal-black, long hair bleached white, mustache dyed red and he is a big man who daunts warriors;
his chariot is pulled not by horses or similar beasts but by four huge, long-legged slaves bred for generations to be draft animals;
his ship is pulled across the sea by a great tailed and flippered blue sea animal called a huukin;
Ruvio the Thunderer is the favorite god of most mariners.
There is more but I am finished for today and hope not to dream about Kalava.
5 comments:
Hi, Paul!
Ha! You hope not to dream about Kalava? I can't recall if I ever had dreams about any of the works of Poul Anderson. I find that rather an interesting idea!
I remember the disconcerting moment I felt on first reading that the "draft animals" pulling Kalava's chariot were not animals but humans bred for generations to be used like that. I needed to realize how poor and impoverished the Earth of a billion years from now had become before I conceded that was at least understandable, though not good. And Kalava at least took pains to take good care of his "horses."
Sean
If you are living in such a poor & impoverished world that you have to use human muscle power for a lot, the information in these articles would mitigate the problem. The author points out that pedal powered machinery uses the strongest muscles of the body in the most efficient way.
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/05/history-of-pedal-powered-machines.html
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/05/pedal-powered-farms-and-factories.html
He has bought into at least some of the anti-nuclear arguments (which I consider mistaken), but he realizes that renewables would produce a relative trickle of power compared to fossil fuels & is looking for ways to have something better than pre-industrial poverty on such a trickle.
Even with plentiful nuclear electricity I think such ideas will be useful for off-grid situations in a post fossil fuel world.
Kaor, Jim!
And I disagree with that kind of attitude. There are better alternatives than reverting to more antiquated forms of technology.
Also, you are overlooking the point Anderson made about Kalava's "draft animals," they were huge, long legged slaves bred for generations to be load pulling "beasts." For them, pedal powered tech has become pointless.
Ad astra! Sean
"There are better alternatives than reverting to more antiquated forms of technology."
For the most part nuclear generated electricity & such technologies as electric rail are those better alternatives. However I can imagine an alternate history in which nuclear was not developed & in such a case such technologies as the author of that website promotes would be the least bad alternative.
It might turn out that we don't get batteries much better than the current best & we don't get a reasonably cheap way to make liquid fuels without using fossil fuels. Then we expand the electric rail system as much as possible & go to muscle power for remote areas if those liquid fuels are too expensive for what we want to do.
See this link for someone who has gone into detail on such issues
http://www.templar.co.uk/downloads/Beyond_Fossil_Fuels.pdf
See this for his analysis of why 'renewables' are inadequate to address the problem
http://www.templar.co.uk/downloads/Renewable%20Energy%20Limitations.pdf
Kaor, Jim!
We agree, at least, about nuclear power. But, I am skeptical of the value of "light rail." Repeated attempts at building such things in the US has failed, due to huge cost overruns, incompetence, and sheer UNPOPULARITY. Mass transit are unpopular due to them being overrun by crime and squalor. It's also unpopular because Americans don't want to give up the freedom and relative ease of movement cars give them. So, forget "light rail."
Ad astra! Sean
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