Tau Ceti II, like some other planets known to us, has "...hurtling moons..." (p. 28) (Scroll down.)
My blog search for "hurtling moons" found Rustum and Gorzun but not Barsoom. An Aenean moon also moves visibly. See here.
Interstellar explorers instruct newly contacted industrialized and outward-looking races:
"From these newly awakened worlds, then, a second generation of explorers went forth. They had to go further than the first; planets of interest to them lay far, far away, lost in a wilderness of suns whose worlds were barren, or savage, or too foreign for intercourse. But eventually someone, at an enormous distance from their home, learned space technology in turn from them." (p. 33)
Regular readers might recognize that it was the recurrent phrase, "wilderness of suns," that drew my attention to this passage. However, the passage was worth quoting at greater length and will generate another post.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, I think I remember the bit about "hurtling moons" from ERB's Barsoom stories. And I can see Poul Anderson, with his fondness for colorful turns of phrase, using that metaphor in his own works.
And the description of how interstellar technology spread from world to world in AFTER DOOMSDAY strikes me as very plausible. But I think the similar process as described in the Technic stories was more carefully thought out and yet more likely. That is, we see explorers, missionaries, merchant adventurers, conquerors, etc., all contributing in their different ways to spreading interstellar technology.
Sean
Post a Comment