"Some cosmic accident must have caused..." the eccentric orbit of the Xenogaian moon (p. 554). How many cosmic accidents and eccentric orbits are there in Anderson's hard sf? For some, see here.
The Allosan mother ship, orbiting well beyond the moon, has a living interior. Hanno and Yukiko reside there long term as guests of the Alloi for study and exploration. The Alloi preserve a simulated vista of a planet with rainbow rings where they left colonists. Meanwhile, the other six Survivors build the settlement of Hestia on Xenogaia where they farm, explore, start families and interact with the Ithagene, exchanging objects and ideas. Each of these posts reads as if it summarizes an entire novel.
Anderson uses the word, "'...the sapients...,'" for intelligent beings on p. 562 and "'...sapience...'" for intelligence on p. 577 but also reverts to "'...the sentients...'" for intelligent beings on p. 577.
To catch up with more of Anderson's rich vocabulary, we find:
malapert on p. 550;
calyx on p. 569;
coralline on p. 578.
Both Hanno and Yukiko have "...an intuition that often overleaped jumbled, fragmentary data to reach a scheme that gave meaning." (p. 557)
Anderson lists earlier individuals who had gone straight to inexplicably explanatory and predictive insights:
Newton
Planck
Einstein
Darwin
de Vries
Oparin
"perhaps," Gautama Buddha (p. 557)
I have linked the two names with which I was unfamiliar.
2 comments:
Of the many 'de Vries' listed by Wikipedia the one I had heard of was Gustav de Vries for his work on the Korteweg–de Vries equation.
Whether that is the one meant by Anderson I do not know.
Kaor, Paul!
And we sometimes see "xenosophont" used for non-human intelligent beings in the Technic stories.
Ad astra! Sean
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