Seas

On Earth, the World Ocean covers two thirds of the planetary surface.

On Poul Anderson's fictitious planet, Nyanza, a single ocean covers everything except one island and some tidal reefs.

Anderson's fictitious planet, Kraken, is also described as oceanic so it is appropriate that, late in the Flandry period of the Technic History, a Krakener man is married to a Nyanzan woman.

By coincidence, I have interrupted rereading Anderson's "The Game of Glory," set on Nyanza, to start reading China Mieville's The Scar, only to discover that this fantasy novel begins with a four page section describing a sea, the life in the sea and an event affecting one specimen of that life. This section has no speech, just sights, sounds and sensations of the sea.

I am getting the message that the sea is important. One of Anderson's Time Patrol stories hauntingly links the deaths of seafarers, spacefarers, timefarers...

Another Note On Other Reading

I read one China Mieville fantasy novel a while back and have just been given two more. In Iron Council (see here), according to the blurb, "...a mysterious masked figure spurs strange rebellion..." This sounds familiar to fans of Alan Moore, whose "Codename V" now inspires British demonstrators. If I continue to post about Mieville's novels, it will be on one of the other blogs.

A pause in rereading Poul Anderson's works seems advisable although I will meanwhile continue to reread at least one short story, "The Game of Glory," in order to relate it chronologically to Edwin Cairncross' Naval career. See recent posts here and here.

I did not realize until it happened that rereading a passage about Flandry in Archopolis would lead to a reexamination of the Chronology of Technic Civilization with reference to events on Nyanza or that this in turn would recall how imaginatively rich a fictitious world Nyanza is. It remains possible to wander back and forth through the Technic History noticing new details and interconnections.