"The red sun climbed from the east with a glow like dying coals. Though its apparent diameter was nearly half again that of Sol seen from Earth or Pax from Esperance, the light was dull to human eyes, shadows lay thick in every dip and gash, and the horizon was lost in darkness. The sky was deep purple, cloudless, but filled to the south with the yellow plumes of a dust storm. Closer by, the plain stretched bare, save for sparse gray vegetation, strewn boulders, a coldly shimmering ice field not far northward. One scavenger fowl wheeled overhead on leathery-feathered wings."
-Poul Anderson, "Territory" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-76 AT p. 17.
Nicholas van Rijn, Catholic and religiously observant, might think of Hell. Human beings will carry their myths and beliefs to other planets. Powerful myths express fundamental issues. I do not believe in Dante's Inferno but do agree that there are wrong ways to live and that we can obscure the light here and now if not also in a hereafter.
Anderson describes planetary environments. His readers respond philosophically and emotionally.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Well, Dante insisted in his "Letter to Can Grande Della Scala" that he had received a genuine vision of the afterlife in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. But I can agree that the way he described that vision could have been done using mythological, legendary, historical, Biblical tropes, forms, metaphors, etc.
Sean
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