Thursday, 5 December 2019

Ythri Seen From Space

When we read sf comics at school, someone remarked that other planets were shown as mostly land with a few seas, not like Earth with mostly ocean interrupted by continents. Ythri seems to belong to the former category:

"...bodies of water existed which could be called modest oceans."
-Poul Anderson, "Wings of Victory" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. 3-22 AT p. 4.

The planet is described as lovely. It is not blue, green and white-clouded but blue, tawny, rust-brown and white-clouded. There are two small moons which puts Ythri in the same category as Mars and the Solar gas giants. Some outer satellites are planet-sized but small in relation to their primaries whereas the Earth-Moon double planet is unique in the Solar System.

Ythri is again seen as tawny, rusty and lovely when attacked by Terrans in The People Of The Wind.

1 comment:

  1. Kaor, Paul!

    I've thought of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea as fitting that description of "modest oceans." Ythri seems to be drier than Terra.

    Ad astra! Sean

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