The blue giant star, Beta Crucis:
"Those flecks on the photosphere were vortices that could each have swallowed a planet like Jupiter. That arabesque of filaments comprised the prominences - the mass equivalents of whole Earths, vaporized, ionized, turned to incandescent plasma, spewed millions of kilometeres into space, some forever lost and some raining back - yet given its faerie patterns by magnetic fields great enough to wrestle with it." (p. 434)
First, we appreciate Poul Anderson's descriptive prose and there is a lot more of it here but I cannot quote it forever. Secondly, we recognize the phrase "forever lost" which we have met twice before. See Forever Lost. Carthage is lost forever in time, van Rijn would have been lost forever in space and stellar plasma is lost forever in space. Three very different lost forevers but all highly significant.
11 comments:
And it turns out blue giants can have planets, though really strange ones (where iron is a gas, for instance).
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I thought the fictional planet Mirkheim was odd, with shuddering STEEL soil!
Ad astra! Sean
"Not only stranger than we imagine, stranger than we -can- imagine."
This is a major reason behind the truth of the old SF writer's saying: Worldbuilding is good occupational therapy for lunatics who think they're God.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Re strange stories: absolutely!
And Poul Anderson mentioned that maxim about world building being good therapy for deluded persons in his article about future histories.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: that's precisely why writers mine history. If you try to make everything up, it has a non-realistic sameness to it.
It's also important to keep in mind that a lot of human existence is "performance". People play roles, both consciously and unconsciously. Human communities are a mutual performance -- they exist because people believe they do, and act (and act out) accordingly.
Poul's work mentions this fairly often -- people are living roles ("hardy space pioneer/explorer").
That's how people operate. Eg., I've done some research on the Spanish Conquistadores, and it's undeniable they were acting out their conception of "dauntless Christian champion", often drawn from the fantasy-fiction of their time, the tales derived from the chansons du geste.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And writers who "mine" have to be careful how they do that. I think one reason why I came to be so dissatisfied with Asimov's FOUNDATION books was because his Galactic Empire was too obviously derivative of the Roman Empire. Unlike Anderson's Terran Empire, it wasn't different enough to make the "echoes" from the past feel real or "lived in."
Yes, I agree we all plays roles, for protective reasons as well! And if the Spanish Conquistadors who, with reckless daring, overran so much of the Americas were passionate fan boys of works like AMADIS OF GAUL, I can see them striving to emulate the courage and daring of their heroes!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: it's a feedback cycle.
Eg., the way the Heike Monogatari "Tale of the Heike", the story of the Genpai War, became a template for samurai behavior in succeeding ages of Japan...
... and the "Tale" is the story of the rise of the samurai and their warlord leaders, and the rise of the first Shogunate, the Kamakura, and the eclipse of the Imperial court.
So life imitates art, and art derives from life, and the cycle goes on and on.
Actual cowboys in the 1880's often read 'penny dreadfuls' about cowboys.
I remember in THE SKY PEOPLE, people on Venus knew they were heroes of works of fiction on Earth and, in EMBERVERSE, stories/songs (?) were composed about the hero's foreign adventures.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Yes, I can see life imitating art, and vice versa! And Elon Musk seems to have been inspired by Heinlein and other SF writers. More imitating of art by life!
Ad astra! Sean
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