"...though the country here was gaunt, they were over the worst. The Waybreak Train was headed down toward the Flone Valley, to reach at last the river itself, its cool green banks and the merry little towns snuggled along it, south of Nova Roma."
-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 74-238 AT 8, p. 133.
It sounds like a real place. We realize that we need maps of Aeneas - and also of Hermes, Avalon and Dennitza. This list could be extended to every fictional planet but here I focus specifically on humanly colonized terrestroid planets described by Poul Anderson. There is not only an alien although habitable environment but also the fact that human beings have lived here for centuries in the cities, Nova Roma, Starfall, Gray and Zorkagrad. The novels are set in (a fictional version of) our future but also show us populations that have lived on their adopted planets long enough to accumulate a rich past. On Aeneas, there is not only the capital city of Nova Roma but also the towns in the Flone Valley.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
At least we do have maps of the planets Imhotep and Daedalus, seen in THE GAME OF EMPIRE.
Sean
It's a good touch that Aeneas, though "dry" on a planetary scale, is not -all- dry. Planets are big places.
There's a good scene in the Stargate TV series where the protagonists come through a Stargate into a giant ice cave, and climb out of it onto the top of a huge glacier. One of them exclaims: "It's an ice-planet!"
Actually they're on Earth, near the American base in Antarctica.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I've seen some of those Stargate TV shows myself, tho I don't recall the one you cited. and those Stargates reminds me of the matter transmitters Anderson used for interstellar travel in THE ENEMY STARS.
Sean
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