In Poul Anderson's Technic History:
Adzel studies at the Clement Institute of Planetology;
a trade pioneer crew comprises a Master Merchant, a planetologist and a xenobiologist;
Adzel still reads planetological journals even when in a monastery.
In Dune:
Liet-Kynes is "'...His Imperial Majesty's Planetologist...planetary ecologist for Arrakis.'" (Dune, p. 259)
We also find references to planetography which might correspond to planetary geology. The latter is a planetary science, thus a kind of planetology.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I think planetology already exists, at least in embryo, with those scientists who study the other planets of the Solar System.
Ad astra! Sean
"Clement Institute of Planetology"
I've always thought that is a shout out to Hal Clement. ;)
Can't be anything else.
Kaor, Jim!
I agree, I too immediately thought of Hal Clement, a writer whose works were greatly admired by Poul Anderson. All true SF fans should read at least Clement's MISSION OF GRAVITY. And he helped to inspire Anderson in writing THE MAN WHO COUNTS.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that the main constraint on planetology now is the limited number of planets we can study "close up".
Now that we're discovering planets around other stars, it turns out that violently different arrangements are common and that the 'laws' that were deduced from our solar system's arrangements weren't valid.
Generalizing from a single instance was never a good idea!
Paul: exactly. People tried anyway -- working with the data they had. But it's a fool's game.
Poul turns out to have been more right than wrong about most stars having planets. Even blue giants!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Even with only the single example of the Solar System, "planetologists" had to try deducing, from only this small sample, what might be true elsewhere. But they should have been less confident about it.
And it still seems so odd to me that so many astronomers were once convinced that planets were rare!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
There was a theory of planetary origin that would have made them very rare.
Paul.
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