Thursday, 25 June 2026

Details On Aeneas

Extrasolar terrestroid planets colonized by human beings in Poul Anderson's Technic History - there are a few:

Hermes
Avalon
Dennitza
Aeneas
Nyanza
Altai
Unan Besar
Vixen
Imhotep
Daedalus

Some are realized in minute detail. Frex, in Nova Roma on Aeneas:

"...the gray ashlars bore a veneer of carefully chosen and integrated slabs, marble, agate, chalcedony, jasper, nephrite, materials more exotic than that; and often there were carvings besides, friezes, armorial bearings, grotesques; and erosion had mellowed it all, to make the old part of town one subtle harmony."
-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-240 AT 3, p. 87.

There is much more - statues and plants among fishponds and fountains in vitryl-roofed courts, cramped and twisted streets where countryfolk ride horses or stathas - but I don't want to quote lengthy paragraphs. As I always say, read Anderson.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Paul!

That mention of fishponds and fountains in vitryl-roofed reminded me of the fountains protected by glass containers in Stirling's IN THE COURTS OF THE CRIMSON KINGS. For similar reasons.

Ad astra! Sean

Jim Baerg said...

The materials mentioned imply some things about the geologic history of Aeneas.
Marble is formed from limestone metamorphized by heat & pressure. So Aeneas had large enough seas for limestone to form and then have some limestone be buried deeply enough for long enough to be turned into marble.