The trader team are in a forest on Falkayn's home planet, Hermes, where:
the trees include "stonebark" - so named because its wood resembles stone?;
another tree is "rainroof," providing cover with its seasonally yellowed canopies;
flying insects include "buzzbugs";
larger fliers are not birds but "ornithoids" -
- my point being that this scene could not be filmed in a Terrestrial forest without CGI to reproduce these Hermetian details. A cinema or TV audience needs to be constantly aware of visual alienness.
At the same time, it must also be conveyed that this territory is familiar to Falkayn. The Thunderhead Mountains rear in crags and eternal snows but their eastern heights curve down to the Apollo Valley beyond which are the Arcadian Hills, the coastal plain, Starfall and the Auroral Ocean.
The human discoverers of this planet followed the practice of naming a celestial body after a deity, in this case the Greek messenger god who was identified with the Roman god, Mercury. As with "Woden," we soon forget the original meaning of the word and simply apply it to the planet.
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I was wondering just now if scientists will come to prefer calling insect like creatures on other planets "insectoids." There has been some discussion in this blog on whether other planets can have "mammals," or whether that should be used only of Terrestrial animals.
Happy New Year! Sean
Sean,
I would expect extraterrestrial organisms to be very different but, on the other hand, it seems that many of the exo-planets might be quite terrestroid.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Then you seem to be coming close to agreeing we should expect to find both similarities and extreme differences in the life forms other planets will have. And those similarities might be esp. striking on the more terrestroid planets.
Happy New Year! Sean
Sean,
Yes. Parallel evolution. Expect sight, flight, locomotion and manipulation.
Paul.
And communication but a being will not necessarily eat and speak through the same orifice.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, I would not be surprised to find out parallel evolution happens. And that some intelligent races might even look much like human beings. And there will be plenty of differences, of course.
Happy New Year! Sean
We have an analogue on Earth: the dinosaurian extinction when the asteroid hit Earth, and very nearly sterilized the planet -- it would have, if it was only a little bigger.
So animal life was "reset".
And there are indeed very close parallels between the ecologies and species of the dinosaurian era and that of the Age of Mammals.
And fundamental differences, as well (eg., mammals are just smaller -- the biggest mammal ever would be middling by Jurassic standards).
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
The biggest mammal I know is the sperm whale. And I think it's significant that it was only able to get about by becoming a sea going swimming animal.
But perhaps you meant that elephants would be only middling in size when compared to the dinosaurs of the Jurassic era.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Land animals, yes.
And there was a mammal (an early relative of the rhino) that weighed about 17 tons. That's as big as a mammal on land can get without cooking itself. Whales don't have that limit because water is cold and sucks heat out better than air.
The largest dinosaur, Argetineosarus, was over 130 ft. long and weighed over 100 tons, possibly as much as 150.
Really big dinos like that probably started out as endothermic and then switched to being ectothermic as adults.
Mammals can't do that -- nor can birds, the surviving dinosaurs, because their ancestors, the ones that survived the extinction, had small adult body masses.
Dinosaurs all descended, ultimately, from a bipedal predator about 3-4ft long and weighing between 20 and 30 lbs. (A predator so efficient it ultimately emptied the herbivore niches and then evolved forms to fill them.)
Mammals are all descended from something about the size of a mouse or shrew, length a few inches, weight a few ounces, an insectivorous omnivore.
Mammals started out as true quadrupeds, too, while dinosaurs were bipeds -- both evolved quadruped/biped forms, but the origins still show.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I read these comments of yours twice! That's how interesting I found them.
A pity that giant form of the rhino did not survive. It would have been fascinating to see--safely behind a good, stout barrier!
And that terrifyingly huge dino, Argetineosaurus, makes T Rex look like a piker!
And your comments about mammals and dinos even had me wondering about the evolution of Merseians! They are described as a true warm blooded species whose females give live birth, but as showing more traces of reptiloid like ancestry than does mankind. Did their remote ancestors start out as bipedal dinosaurians?
Ad astra! Sean
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