"A wyvern flew up in a thunder of splendid wings."
-Poul Anderson, "The Faun" IN Anderson, The Queen Of Air And Darkness and other stories (New York, December 1973), pp. 86-91 AT p. 86.
Extraterrestrial birds and animals can be named after mythological beasts.
I want to check stories in a couple of other Anderson collections but a house guest is sleeping in the room with the books. Meanwhile, I also want to reread some more Stieg Larsson before turning in. This weekend, "Heritage" events continue in Lancaster: concerts in churches etc.
Onward, Earthlings.
See also:
blog search result for wyvern (scroll down)
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Occasionally Anderson thought it right to add some prefatory commentary to some of his stories (as he did for "Night Piece"). Does your copy of THE QUEEN OF AIR AND DARKNESS AND OTHER STORIES preface "Queen" with the comments he pub. with it for the April 1971 issue of F & SF?
Gregg Press pub. THE QUEEN OF AIR AND DARKNESS in 1978 collecting these stories:
"The Queen of Air and Darkness"
"Home"
"The Alien Enemy"
"The Faun"
"In the Shadow"
"Time Lag"
I'm sorry "Terminal Quest" was not included. Because "Queen," "Home," and "Terminal" examines from different angles the rightness or wrongness of humans settling on planets which had native intelligent races.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
My copy does not have those comments.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Which I regret, because those comments are interesting and illuminating.
I recently completed rereading TALES OF THE FLYING MOUNTAINS and one interesting point I belatedly realized was how Anderson included with "Sunjammer" a complete poem/song that could be titled "Song of the Transporteers." A rousing and amusing piece that might have become a filk song.
One Anderson rarity I have is a collection of his poems called STAVES. Alas, "Mary O''Meara," "The Battle of Brandobar," "The Queen of Air and Darkness," and the above mentioned transporteer ballad was not included in it. One volume of a COMPLETE COLLECTED WORKS OF POUL ANDERSON should contain his poems. Admittedly a rather short volume.
Ad astra! Sean
I think "In the Shadow" is the story in which astronomers detect a mass passing 'close' to the solar by it perturbing the motion of known planets, but do not see anything where it should be. The mass is large enough for a star. A crewed spaceship is sent to investigate what may be a black hole. Instead they find a star & planets made of stuff that doesn't interact with normal matter or photons but do interact via gravity and neutrinos. One of the planets turns out to have a technological civilization which is detected by neutrinos from their nuclear reactors.
This may be the first SF story to use the Dark Matter mystery as a major plot point.
Kaor, Jim!
I have to admit I don't understand "dark matter." I should probably reread "In the Shadow."
One of the earliest SF stories to use black holes was Anderson's "Kyrie." It was so early that "black hole" is not used at all in that story.
Ad astra! Sean
Nobody has a really convincing explanation for what dark matter is. All the astronomers know is that there is something that doesn't interact (directly) with light but does exert gravitational pull. Somethin with those minimal properties is needed to explain the observed motion of stars in galaxies and galaxies in clusters. There is also the gravitational bending of the path of light around galaxy clusters, that is too much to be explained by the observed stars, gas, and dust in the galaxies.
IIRC Anderson used the term 'shadow matter' for whatever made up the star and planets of that invisible system. Also I don't think the current evidence fits 'shadow matter' explaining the dark matter gravity.
Kaor, Jim!
So Anderson's speculations about "shadow matter" in his story are still as good as anything else thought up by other writers/astronomers.
Ad astra! Sean
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