Monday, 17 April 2023

Planets Revisited

A Circus of Hells, CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

Suddenly, Dominic Flandry, his hostage, Ydwyr, and Djana, with her now divided loyalties, are in space. The planet Talwin with its long winter and short summer and its two intelligent species locked into their seasonal cycles is left behind. However, Poul Anderson wisely reuses Talwin. The Talwinian winter is the setting for a confrontation with Tachwyr and a conversation with Aycharaych in A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows.

The many concretely realized planets of Anderson's Technic History merit more than a single appearance:

Diomedes appears in The Man Who Counts and in A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows;

Ivanhoe is in "The Three-Cornered Wheel" and "The Season of Forgiveness";

Hermes is in Mirkheim and A Stone in Heaven;

Ansa is in "Sargasso of Lost Starships" and in The Game of Empire;

Gorzun/Gorrazan is in "The Star Plunderer" and The Game of Empire;

Aeneas is in The Rebel Worlds and The Day Of Their Return;

Terra of Flandry's period is shown several times;

there is a sub-series set on Avalon;

Chereion appears only once, in A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, but has been well prepared for.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

A pity we are not told anything new about the Domrath and Ruadrath in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS. What happened to either or both races since Flandry was last there?

Trillia is another planet we see only once, and never during the Imperial era.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

I thought of Trillia but left it for you to mention in the combox. How would you summarize it in a short phrase or sentence?

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Hard to say, even a short story like "A Little Knowledge" has so much packed into it. Something like this: it can be very dangerous to trust first impressions too much. That was the mistake made by the bandits in that story!

Ad astra! Sean