Schotani,first appearance, "Tiger by the Tail" Planet Stories (January, 1951), pointed ears, horned;
Merseians, first appearance, "Honorable Enemies" Future combined with Science Fiction (May, 1951), green, tailed;
Gorzuni, first appearance, "The Star Plunderer" Planet Stories (September, 1952), gray-furred, four-armed, tailed;
Ythrians, first appearance, "Wings of Victory" Analog (April, 1972), feathered, winged.
The first three species were created as space opera villains but became more:
in "Hunters of the Sky Cave" Amazing Stories (June, 1959), Schotanians fight for, not against, Terra;
in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows (If: Worlds of Science Fiction, 1974), descendants of Merseian immigrants live peaceably on an Imperial planet;
in The Game Of Empire (Baen Books, 1985), a Gorrazanian female rocks and sings to her dead child after a Merseian raid.
The Ythrians differ in that they were published later in a serious sf mag and were an exercise in evolutionary speculation.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
But "Wings of Victory" was not the first time in Anderson's stories that we see the name "Ythri." Anderson coined that name long before "Wings" in the original version of "Honorable Enemies" (FUTURE combined with SCIENCE FICTION, May 1951), as seen in this bit from that story: "And there were the rival imperia out in the darkness of space, Gorrazan and Ythri and Merseia, like a hungry beast of prey--"
Fortunately for his later purposes, nothing was said in "Hororable Enemies" about the Ytrians in ways which might well have prevented him from reusing that name.
Ad astra! Sean
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