Saturday, 18 April 2020

Learning To Walk

"The Snows of Ganymede," VII.

"You learned walking all over again, the first time you were on a low-gee world - a long, flat glide which ate the kilometers." (p. 190)

This story was published in 1955. Somewhere else on the blog, I have discussed how Poul Anderson anticipated the Apollo astronauts' experience of walking on the Moon.

Also on Ganymede:

"When Jupiter was close to full, its radiance was enough for human color vision, though the hues had a dreamlike distortion.
"Near the banded giant, no stars were visible, they were drowned out. When you looked away, you could see them over the sharply curving horizon. They glittered through the tenuous, unbreathable air with a cruel wintry brilliance." (ibid.)

Again, this reads as if he had been there.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

As regards how accurately Anderson was able to describe the right way of walking on low gee worlds, that is no surprise! He was able to infer or deduce the needed methods from what was then known about the Moon or Ganymede.

And the first version of THE SNOWS OF GANYMEDE was pub. in magazine form in 1954.

Ad astra! Sean