A school bus on Rustum is a flying vehicle. When it takes off, its driver, Jan Svoboda, sees:
the school's sod roofs and dusty playing field;
the timber village of Anchor;
the Swift and Smoky Rivers descending from the Centaur Mountains to join as the Emperor;
land green with some blue;
dark woods;
corn and rye;
murky forest;
hills rising into the Hercules range;
reddened Centaur snowpeaks;
a big, bright, slowly descending, orange sun in a wan blue sky.
Children born on Rustum accept this environment as natural and know Earth and Sol only as history lessons.
Every fictional Andersonian planet is described in detail.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Another convincing detail was mention of children being bored as they listened to adults droning on about how much better life on Rustum was compared to the drawbacks of life on Earth! (Laughs)
Ad astra! Sean
Yeah, late adolescents are rebels by inclination.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That's certainly true of many teenagers. The primary thought I had was Anderson being realistic when he showed how children could be spiteful bullies, as when those kids started hitting Dan Coffin in the air bus. Another piece of evidence for how imperfect human beings are, that children can be nasty. Good parents will "socialize" them, as the hominins of your Mars would put it.
Ad astra! Sean
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