Tuesday, 10 February 2026

Loa And Other Planets

Loa is the name of a moon of the planet Nyanza in Poul Anderson's Technic History and the name of a planet in his "The Chapter Ends." See blog search result for Loa. (Scroll down.) The planet Loa is "...jeweled with islands..." (p. 256) These posts also mention other planets. 

In "The Chapter Ends," the Galactics evacuate Terrans to an unnamed planet which is:

"'...the most Earthlike world we could find that wasn't already inhabited.'" (p. 261)

However, its trees, grasses, soil, fruits, animals, birds, fish and every sensation are subtly different because no two planetary evolutions can be identical.

Here, we are:

writing this post over breakfast;
about to drink a second coffee after beans on toast;
reading Colin Dexter's fourth Inspector Morse novel;
preparing to visit Andrea above the Old Pier Bookshop for most of the afternoon;
appreciating existence.

Onward and upward.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Paul!

This is what I had for breakfast: a bowl of Wheat Chex with milk, half a red bell pepper, an "English" muffin with Swiss cheese, and orange juice.

Not exactly something that would satisfy Old Nick!

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

He would holler with rage.

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Paul!

Absolutely! And we would also get despairing lamentations on how his brutal guardians were starving Old Nick in his poor, lonely, impoverished old age! (Laughs)

You've mentioned Nyanza so this bit from the beginning of Section VII of "The Game of Glory" is appropriate: "With a whole planetful of exotic sea foods to choose from, the Commander hospitably breakfasted his guest on imported beefsteak." Which makes sense, the people of a mostly oceanic world like Nyanza might well consider meat a rare treat needing to be imported.

Ad astra! Sean