In "Lodestar," the trade pioneer crew is on the planet Tametha. The nearest major League base is on Irumclaw which, later, is on the Terran frontier of the Betelgeuse sector. When leaving Tametha, Falkayn looks at the Crab Nebula which is over a thousand parsecs away.
We are trying to get some sense of where Poul Anderson's fictional locations are in relation to each other and also to real astronomical objects. So far, in our comparisons, the real objects, working backward for convenience, have been:
the Crab Nebula
Betelgeuse
Orion
Taurus
Rigel
Alpha Crucis
Beta Crucis
Beta Centauri
Antares
Hercules
Arcturus
Pegasus
Lupus
the Milky Way
Polaris
That is more than we might have expected, fifteen so far, and might give an astronomer some sense of a vast three dimensional space with fictional spacecraft moving around in it instead of just a list of names.
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I might have included Jihannath, another planet between the Empire and the Roidhunate. Merseia's attempt at seizing it nearly led to war between the two powers, as we see discussed in THE REBEL WORLDS.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Oops, the above comment should have been in the preceding combox.
Ad astra! Sean
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