Poul Anderson, "Horse Trader," see here.
One envoy is from Tau Ceti III, the third planet of Tau Ceti, so maybe that is an Earth-like planet? Its envoy sounds humanoid apart from being centauroid (quadrupedal). His English is fully comprehensible despite his pronouncing "monster" and "scum" as "monther" and "thcum." (p. 272)
Another envoy is from 61 Cygni A V, the fifth planet of its star, so maybe that is a gas giant? Sure enough, the planet is called "New Uranus" and its envoy is enclosed in a protective sphere where he, "George," breathes high pressure hydrogen.
Anderson, generalizing from a single instance, is modeling extra-solar planetary systems on the Solar System. However, more recently, large planets have been detected close to their primaries. The universe is one big surprise.
3 comments:
"Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."
-J.B.S. Haldsane
-kh
"Queer," of course, just means contradicting our expectations but our expectations are based on our macrocosmic perceptions at sub-relativistic velocities.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul and Keith!
I had rather vaguely thought the use of "queerer" in this context, meant things like odd, strange, peculiar, etc.
Sean
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