"Starfog": Some General Observations III

"Starfog."

"'Once a given star disappears in the fog, we can't find it again. Not even by straight-line back-tracking, because we don't have the navigational feedback to keep on a truly straight line.'
"'Lost.' Demring stared down at his hands, clenched on the desk before him." (p. 764)

Spaceships get lost in the "starfog" until Laure solves the problem. But the galaxy and the universe are so big that ships might get lost, anyway. This is the origin of the Nomads in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History and there is also a TV series called Lost In Space.

"'...we didn't make this universe. We only live in it.'" (p. 771)

We have heard this before. See here.

A lifeless planet is:

"...a stone spinning around a star." (p. 777)

- which recalls the title of a novel set earlier in the Technic History.

"The sun stood high in a deep purple heaven." (p. 778)

To me, this recalls:

"Snowpeaks flamed. The sun stood up in a shout of light.
"High is heaven and holy."
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT XIX, p. 662.

- Poul Anderson's best ending of a novel.

The wind has its say:

"The wind yelled." (p.782)
"Wind hooted." (p. 783)
"...the wind had dropped...," "...the wind filled the air outside with dust...," "The wind yammered." (p. 785)

The yelling wind on p. 782 drives dust "...in darkling whirls..." (Scroll down.) "Darkling" is a Wellsian/Andersonian adjective.

Large-scale extraction of minerals from oceans would generate:

"'...so much heat that planetary temperature would be affected.'
"'That sounds farfetched.'
"'No. A simple calculation will prove it. According to historical records, Earth herself ran into the problem, and not terribly long after the industrial era began.'" (p. 790)

"According to historical records..." Thus, a future history series completed thirty-five years ago comments on Earth in 2020. The calculations, made decades ago, were ignored and are denied.

Jaccavrie would like to have grandchildren and Laure replies that no doubt one day she will but he is trying to laugh down his disappointment. In Heinlein's Time Enough For Love - not that I want to promote that novel - a self-conscious "computer" has some of its memories and its sense of identity transferred into a living female human body. It, or rather she, would then be able to have children and grandchildren.