Land And Sea

One of the greatest environmental contrasts in our experience is between sea and land: two realms each lethal to most of the organisms living in the other; perhaps our closest approach to visiting another planet without leaving Earth. Compare diving suits and submarines with spacesuits and spaceships.

In the first Biblical creation myth, water covers the earth whereas, in the second, the earth is dry, without rain. In some sf works, e.g., Poul Anderson's "Sister Planet," Venus is oceanic whereas, in others, e.g., Anderson's "The Big Rain," it is a hot desert.

Dominic Flandry travels from the cold, dry planet Altai to torrential rain and Swamp Town on Unan Besar and later to Nyanza, almost completely covered with water. Another oceanic planet in the Technic History, although not visited by Flandry, is Kraken.

Of course, there are also many other planets, like Jupiter and Mirkheim, that are simply not comparable to anything on Earth. Over many works, Poul Anderson shows us the universe.