"The slim higher boughs would each have made a Terran oak; the lowest were forests in themselves..."
-Poul Anderson, "The Plague of Masters" IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 1-147 AT XIII, p. 121.
The huge branches can support their own weight because their cores are nearly as strong as steel whereas most of their thickness is as light as balsa, protected by hard gray bark. Bright, mirror-like upper leaves reflect light down to lower foliage which otherwise would be fatally enshadowed. The planet has only one grove of these Trees because they are succumbing to faster evolving parasites. The Ranauans preserve their grove by living in symbiosis with it.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The descriptions we are given of the Trees of Ranau and how they were preserved and managed by the Ranauans has to be among the most impressive and interesting parts of THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS.
Sean
I confess that I drew on that story for the "flet" community of tree-dwelling Dunedain Rangers in THE DESERT AND THE BLADE.
Mr Stirling,
I remembered that there was something relevant somewhere in the Emberverse but I couldn't remember the word, "flet"!
Paul.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
That I had not known. I thought you drew mostly on the flet dwelling Elves of Lorien, from THE LORD OF THE RINGS. But I can see how the Trees of Ranau would incline you to showing the "neo-Dunedain" of your Change books building flets in redwoods.
Sean
Both, of course. Poul tended to flesh out world-building detail more thoroughly, and in a somewhat different way, from Tolkien. You rarely get much sense of what Elves do for a living in LOTR, some for human beings (Rohan has a coherent economy) and quite a bit for the Shire, which is quite well fleshed out.
(You can do a fairly good socioeconomic analysis of the Shire from the hints dropped in the book.)
So when I was constructing the Dunedain for the Change books, given the way my mind works I had to do a background that accounts for how they live and organize themselves.
They actually do many of the same things as Tolkien's Dunedain, since they were modeled on them, but they have to develop a business model for it... 8-).
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I like that, "develop a business model" for your characters! Yes, painstakingly detailed tho Tolkien strove to be, he could have done some more "fleshing out" in his greatest works. I recall his bemusement, even wonder, at some of the letters he got from fans asking for more details, such as the economy of Gondor. We get a few hints, such as Minas Tirith having a street called "Street of the Lampwrights," indicating the existence of crafts. And Gondor would need to have an advanced economy to maintain the armies and fleets we see mention of, etc.
Sean
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