A very rich chapter about Proserpina and its Lunarian colonists.
In James Blish's Cities In Flight, the tenth Solar planet has been discovered and named Proserpine. The US Army Space Corps has a base on its moon. In Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars future history, a small but heavy and eccentrically orbiting planetoid is called Proserpina and colonized by Lunarians adapted to live in Lunar gravity.
Download Guthrie has taken thirty five years to travel from Alpha Centauri to Proserpina in the outer Solar System. In order to update Guthrie as much as possible, the Centaurians have beamed an encrypted message to overtake his ship as it approaches its destination. The news from Alpha Centauri is over four years out of date and any relayed from Sol twice that. The Centaurians have told Guthrie the little that they know about Velir, Convenor of the Proserpinan Council of Forerunners, seigneur in Phyle Aulinn, Warder of Zamok Drakon and industrial and commercial shareholder.
The Convenor holds office for as long as the Council permits and Velir is in his nineties so maybe Guthrie's update about him is not hopelessly out of date.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Politics on Proserpina seems to have become somewhat more formalized on the planetoid than it had been on Luna. I mean, they now had a council of Forerunners headed by a Convenor; on the moon it seems to have been every magnate for him or herself.
Ad astra! Sean
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