The Eastern Edge Of Ilion

The Day Of Their Return, 4.

(Tomorrow will be taken up with a funeral, then an evening meeting, so there might not be much blogging. There was a guy that I had expected to meet at the funeral but I read his obituary today.)

We realize that Aeneas is not just an empty stage where Poul Anderson's characters strut and fret their hour but an imaginatively constructed planetary environment:

there are canals, marshes and salt lakes on the Antonine (former) Seabed;

westerly winds blow moisture from the Seabed onto the eastern edge of the continent of Ilion where there is "...actual rain two or three times a year." (p. 100);

also, the Wildfoss River helps to maintain a water table that supplies a few wells;

consequently, generations of the Hedin family have been able to farm and ranch;

their settlement has a windbreak of Aenean delphi and rahab, Terrestrial oak and acacia, Llynathawrian rasmin and Ythrian hammerbranch;

their flowerbeds have to be extra-planetary because no flowers evolved on Aeneas.

Think about all that detail, then contemplate not just the Hedins but an entire population living in Ilion and in other parts of Aeneas.