Life On Amaterasu

Poul Anderson, The Fleet Of Stars, 1, pp. 1-3.

Downloaded human personalities and robots begin to terraform Amaterasu, Beta Hydri IV, so that "...about fifty Earth-years later..." (p. 1), the subtropical island of Tamura holds the small town of Port Kestrel, named after Kyra Davis' torchship, which has:

bright buildings;
boats;
bridges;
a communications mast;
trees;
a path between poplars and the Lily River to the park by the sandy beach of the Azurian Ocean with a view of the small islands where grass now grows.

The sea still bears dark patches of native thalassophyte. However, there are gulls overhead and plantations and industry to the north while, elsewhere on the planet, machines and microbes directed by Amaterasu Mother continue to terraform deserts beneath glaciers.

The current human version of Anson Guthrie is seventy two Earth-years old, having begun life as an adult, so he must have been involved in the terraforming of the island. His current project, a shipyard, had prevented him from traveling with his wife, Demeter Daughter, to visit their son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren on the terraformed east coast of the Northland continent.

And that is a lot of information in just three pages.