"The Problem of Pain," published five years after Satan's World but set earlier is partly set on Gray/Avalon and partly on Lucifer.
In the original Technic History reading order, we read Satan's World before "The Problem of Pain" whereas, in the chronological reading order, we, obviously, read "The Problem of Pain" first.
When writing "The Problem of Pain," Anderson used a planetary name that he had already referred to. Are "Ahriman" or "Loki" referred to anywhere else in the Technic History?
Ten posts today plus one copied from another blog. It is 9:00 PM here, I am still recuperating and need a break from prose texts and the lap top screen. Graphic fiction is a godsend - literally when it features Thor.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Except for the "Lucifer" mentioned in "The Problem of Pain," I don't recall any planets in the other Technic stories named "Ahriman," "Loki," or, for that matter, "Seth."
Ten blog pieces in one day? No wonder it's so hard to keep up with you! (Smiles)
Sean
Paul and Sean:
In H. Beam Piper's Future History, the Terran Federation had a rule that planets outside the Solar System must be named for figures from mythologies other than the Greek and Roman. This led to there being a Loki in the TFH. Ironically, the natives of Loki were mentioned as "gentle, harmless, friendly people...."
The pattern eventually broke down; by the time of the System States War, at least one cluster of worlds had been named for characters and places in books by the leading colonist's apparently favorite author, James Branch Cabell. The System States planets themselves all seem to have been named for demons: Ashmodai, Baphomet, etc.
Kaor, DAVID!
And that makes sense! I think it would be very likely that some planets WILL be named by their discoverers/colonists after figures and places taken from the works of their favorite authors. To say nothing of names taken from different mythologies of the kind you m mentioned.
Sean
Sean:
At one time, I tried to develop a modified background for the SF role-playing game Traveller, including my own listing of colonized planets. One of the design concepts I threw in was that The Lord of the Rings must have had a surge in popularity about the time certain worlds were named and settled. Planets named Yavanna, Eldamar, Osgiliath, and Dwimordene were all colonized within 80 years of each other. There was also a Melkor, for Tolkien's Lucifer (my own "Satan's World"!), but that was more than four centuries earlier.
Kaor, DAVID!
I like that idea, that planets were named after persons and places taken from Tolkien's Middle Earth legendarium. And an esp. GRIM planet was named "Melkor"? Cool! Or maybe it was called "Morgoth"?
I can only think of one of Poul Anderson's stories which uses a name taken from Tolkien: "Sunjammer," one of the Flying Mountains stories. Mention was made in that story of one of the "herdships" being named "Gandalf."
Sean
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