There is a reason for everything.
The planet, Atlantis, is one of several moons of the giant planet, Minos, in a binary star system. Thus, there are several gravitational and tidal effects. On Atlantis, tides are diverse and high, oceans are turbulent, low shores are salt marshes, high shores are pounded by surf, bores are common, volcanic and earthquake regions are extensive and cyclonic storms are both frequent and violent. Such conditions tend to kill new land-based species before they can become established whereas birds can more easily escape from cataclysms. Therefore, only a few primitive mammals have evolved on the outer hemisphere of Atlantis, permanently turned away from Minos, where the greater oceanic surface stabilizes the weather. Minoan gravity makes the Atlantean inner hemisphere bulge outward in a major mountainous continent, colonized by human beings, where, between cataclysms, birds proliferate into multiple species, including some that are large and flightless. Hence, no mammals and many birds in the humanly colonized region which is why I said above that there is a reason for everything.
According to Anderson's AUTHOR'S NOTE, Strand discovered a giant extra-solar planet in 61 Cygni C in 1944. However, see the Wikipedia article here.
3 comments:
Note that similar conditions can produce very different ecological outcomes -- witness the difference between the dinosaurian period and ours, mediated by a giant rock.
Oddly enough, before the asteroid Earth -was- dominated by birds -- dinosaurs, and birds -are- dinosaurs.
Kaor, Paul!
Besides what Stirling said, I also thought of how VIRGIN PLANET must have been influenced by the example and work of Hal Clement. Anderson was inspired by Clement's stress on careful scientific extrapolation of fictional planets.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Anderson mentions Clement in his AUTHOR'S NOTE and, of course, in the Technic History.
Paul.
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