Extra-Solar
The viewpoint character rides an "orsper." (p. 9)
There are red firestalk blossoms.
Both suns are visible.
"Minos" (ibid.) is waxing.
(It transpires that this planet is a moon of a gas giant.)
Minos has at least two other moons, Ariadne and Aegeus.
A six-hour night is imminent.
Orspers gurgle, squawk and screech.
They have clawed feet, blue-white feathers and large, beaked, crested heads with yellow eyes. Ugh.
Terrestroid
The human viewpoint character wears military garb but not a spacesuit.
She rides down a wooded mountain.
Below the forest, hills are green, apart from the firestalk.
There are snow peaks, a volcano, a river and white clouds.
We get the picture: not Earth but like it.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I don't think orspers would appeal to me as riding animals! But if humans got stranded on a planet like Atlantis, NEEDS much, as the saying goes. Such stranded humans would have to make do with what they could find.
Ad astra! Sean
Incidentally, the Orspers are close analogues of the Phorusrhacids, the "terror birds" of the Americas who were apex predators there up until about 1.8 million years ago.
Ostriches have been tamed and ridden; it's not really practical because they're not quite large enough, and also they're densely stupid.
The terror birds would be better candidates -- social, intelligent. They could be tamed like dogs, and ridden -- the biggest of them were around 10 ft. tall. Essentially a medium-sized predatory dinosaur, like its theropod ancestors.
They could be tamed and ridden? Were they?
I should have said they I thought -could have been- tamed and ridden -- there weren't any humans around then. Australopithecines would just have been tasty prey!
I think that because they're social predators. Those tend to have instinctual social structures that humans can use -- witness wolves/dogs.
And birds can be very intelligent; ravens, crows and some parrots, for instance, seem to be smarter than any non-primate mammal, enough to have a "theory of mind". Crows will spontaneously do favors for a human that feeds them, for example, and they're quite capable of recognizing individual humans -as- individuals, with habits and patterns of associated action.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I don't think I've ever heard of the Phorusrhacids before you mentioned them. Hmmm, interesting that were, in effect, medium sized dinosaurs survived that long. And that "modern men" might have been able to tame and domesticate them.
Ad astra! Sean
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