Many Details, Four Senses And One Metamorphosis

Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER FIVE.

There are more descriptive details than you might expect. On pp. 30-34:

higher country

open forest

meadows

wildflowers

sunlight

lichenous boulders

clumps of trees

hills

purple distance

leaping, flashing streams

rainbows over bluffs

blue kingfishers

soaring hawks and eagles

loud wild geese

reeds in a mere

rabbits

deer

bears

white clouds

cloud shadows

many colours

cool wind

lowering sun

fire-like light on a lake

brant whirring from rushes

good ale

a yellow leopard

evening light golden on a swan's plumage

the swan becomes a woman...

twilit glimmer

darting, swooping swallows

quietness

night

stars

dew

familiar constellations

no mosquitos

The following morning, on pp. 34-35:

higher in the hills

rough land

wind

scarred boulders

waterfalls 

ravines

long, harsh grass

gnarled copses

a dark horizon

a thicket by a cave

a dwarf emerging from the cave...

"'They do say elves an' trolls ha' made allayance,' said Unrich. 'An' when them thar clans get together, 'tis suthin' big afoot.'" (p. 35)

That is of interest to us here, having just read of the elf-troll wars in The Broken Sword!

Ruined City

"The Chapter Ends."

When Jorun flies above the ruined imperial palace:

"An owl hooted somewhere, and a bat fluttered out of his way like a small damned soul blackened by hellfire." (p. 274)

So the Galactics retain myths and metaphors of souls and hell. Is this black bat a fitting image for those who had dwelt in Sol City and its palace? Jorun has just been reflecting on their nobility, splendour, evil and wistfulness. The current dwellers are cats, owls, bats and hawks.

"He didn't raise a wind-screen, but let the air blow around him, the air of Earth." (ibid.)

Jorun wants to experience the Earthly elements like the couple who stepped out into the rain here.

He meets Taliuvenna who:

"...came from Yunith, one of the few planets where they still kept cities, and was as much a child of their soaring arrogance as Jorun of his hills and tundras and great empty seas." (p. 275)

We want to be shown more of this Galactic civilization.

Future histories have different aliens. In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, human beings build a Solar Union, then a Stellar Union, and encounter Nerthusians, Alori etc whereas, in Anderson's Technic History, human beings build a Solar Commonwealth, then a Terran Empire, and encounter Ythrians, Merseians, Cynthians, Wodenites etc but really there is no reason why the same aliens cannot exist in different future histories as human beings do. In James Blish's Haertel Scholium, the inhabited planet Lithia is destroyed in 2050 in A Case Of Conscience but exists millennia later in The Seedling Stars.

In Unknown Roong

The Winter Of The World, XVIII.

(From early Tuesday until late on Thursday or even Friday, we will be out of town and I will be off this blog. A welcome break for everyone.)

Sidir leads his men across tundra, swamp and morraine beside the Ice into Roong in a cleft of the glacier. The Rogaviki mine the Roong "towers" (skyscrapers), salvaging from the top first, in the summer and transport steel beams, copper wire, aluminium sheet and other metals across tundra frozen hard in winter. Sidir climbs a tower and wonders where Donya is so the following chapter opens with her.

Roong is the perfect setting for "giant spiders" (not literally) or other fabulous monsters but the Imperials enter unopposed. Sidir is confident that the Rogaviki will not lurk in ambush and he is right. Roong is common property, not kith territory, therefore not defended fanatically and the Northfolk will not be there while their trade routes are cut off. The Rogaviki have been effective at driving the wild herds beyond the reach of the invaders but Sidir had been careful not to depend on hunting. 

The glaciers went round instead of across Roong because the ancients had struggled to preserve it by digging channels and erecting dams. Windows are empty. Gaps in walls are open to weather and rats. Roofs have fallen through multiple floors. Rubbish and soil have buried entrances. Lichen has ascended walls. Hawks and owls inhabit the highest floors.

Sic transit gloria mundi. 

A Cobbled Quadrangle

The Winter Of The World, I.

There is no doubt that Poul Anderson enjoyed writing about certain kinds of societies and also communicated his enthusiasm about them. Donya's wintergarth at Owlhaunt sounds familiar:

sod-roofed timber buildings sheltered by birches, around a cobbled quadrangle;

shed;

smokehouse;

workshop;

stable (horses);

kennel (hounds);

mews (hawks);

clerestory above the underground dwelling;

hounds roaring forth;

descent by ladder to a vestry;

wood floors;

hides;

fabrics;

carved, painted, movable interior partitions;

weapons and murals on walls;

hundreds of shelved books;

a tiled stove;

oil lamps;

fruits and flower sachets hanging from rafters;

a girl singing with a stringed instrument;

kith seated on shelves or cushions.

Not everything is the same, of course, but we remember the Vymezal estate on Dennitza (see In The Kazan) and the Hedin Freehold on Aeneas.

Wind And Hawks

 

Dahut, XI, 2.

Tommaltach and a hooded Dahut walk in the countryside:

"Ys sank from sight. It was as if they had the world to themselves, they and the wind and a pair of hawks wheeling high above." (p. 242)

Significances:

the omnipresent Andersonian wind;

hovering birds of prey;

Dahut beginning to lead her first young man astray.

In Chapter IX, Corentinus foreknew that:

"'If Dahut does not come to the Light, she will do such ill that it were better that she had died in her mother's womb.'" (7, p. 209)

That latter process is just beginning. It is all downhill from here.

The Past In The Time Patrol Series: Miocene-Pliocene Transition

Poul Anderson, "Gibraltar Falls" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 113-128.

Animal species in the Iberian peninsula:

hovering hawks and vultures

zebra-striped ponies

primitive rhinoceros

ancestors of giraffe, resembling okapi

red-haired, large-tusked mastodon

peculiar elephants

sabretooths (also in the Oligocene)

early big cats

hyenas

ground apes, sometimes walking upright

six-foot high ant heaps

whistling marmots

The Atlantic has broken through the Gates of Hercules and will take a hundred-plus years to fill the Mediterranean basin which is ten thousand feet below sea level and has been a desert for a million and a half years. The inflow of 10,000 cubic miles per year makes the transition from Miocene to Pliocene.

Life Forms On Nike

"A Tragedy of Errors."

Never assume that there is familiar green grass underfoot on another planet. On Nike:

"...the ground was densely carpeted with a soft mossy growth." (p. 484)

Another native species is a fronded, pale green, although blue-tinted, gymnosperm plant. Dagny assumes that this plant bears chlorophyll despite its paleness and partial blueness.

However, imported Terrestrial species are more highly developed and efficient and therefore have taken over most of the territory traversed by Roan Tom's wives, Dagny and Yasmin. Grass has displaced most of the pseudo-moss which seems to have:

"...a competitive advantage only in the shade." (ibid.)

There are oaks, birches, cedars, primroses, thrushes, bulbuls, hawks, butterflies, bees, mustangs, carabao and a wild boar. Native forms are represented by large, flying insectoids and awkward amphibians. North American mustangs are feral horses descended from domesticated horses imported from Spain. Thus, Nikean mustangs are even further removed from their domesticated ancestors.

Also imported although not from Earth are:

"...an entire herd of antlered six-legged tanithars." (p. 485)

Such devotion to descriptive details is astounding.

Summer In Haven

War Of The Gods, XIV.

Summer:

grain ripples in the wind;

red cows graze in green paddocks;

storks stalk frogs in a fen;

a wood rustles, bright above, shadowed below;

a hawk hovers, then hurtles.

A description worth pausing at. We have listed hovering hawks and other birds of prey before (see here) and I cannot remember whether this was among them.

Natural descriptions can occur in any fiction: historical, fantasy, sf etc. Poul Anderson never forgets the natural environment.

The Hedin Freehold II

The Day Of Their Return, 4.

Aeneas, like Mars, has dried up but has not gone as far yet. The Antonine Seabed, a former sea, remains wet with canals, marshes and salt lakes sending moisture and occasional rain via westerly winds onto the edge of the Ilian continent where the Hedin Freehold is located. This plus the proximity of the Wildfoss River enables the family to farm and ranch.

 

The Hedins' staff have a feudal relationship to them just as the Hedins and other Hesperian yeomen have to the Firstman of Ilion in Windhome.

The Hedins' courtyard bustles with:

overseers

housekeepers

smiths

masons

mechanics

field hands

range hands

children

dogs

horses

stathas

hawks

farm machinery

ground and air vehicles

sounds and scents, also listed

Ivar, hidden in a storeloft, watches the oldest tenant's birthday party:

glowing house

floodlit yard

leaping, stamping Ilian dances

music whooping from a sonor

shared flagons

In any milieu, Anderson shows us human life.

Birds And Other Life

The Shield Of Time, PART THREE, 13,212 B.C.

Wanda Tamberly, She Who Knows Strangeness, and Aryuk of the Tulat walk inland across open marshy country carpeted with herbs interrupted by occasional willows, reindeer moss and invasive birch:

 "Two hawks cruised the wind, theirs the only wings in sight; grouse, ptarmigan, and the rest must be lying as low as the muskrat and lemmings. The mammoths moved slowly, feeding..." (I, pp. 145-146)

As ever, we appreciate Poul Anderson's descriptions of nature, of abundant life long before the advent of civilization and of yet another two hovering birds of prey.

(Hopefully, problems with the New Blogger have ended.)

A Condor Wheeled

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacock."

"A condor wheeled huge, on watch for any death." (p. 276)

There have been a lot of hovering predators and scavengers:

Hawks (scroll down)
Fangryfs (scroll down)
Spearfowl
Swordbeaks (scroll down)
Crows
A Cainite Bird Of Prey
Vultures
An Eagle
A Vulch on Aeneas
A Dactosauroid on Bellevue
Falcons

- and maybe more that I can't remember.

"Gibraltar Falls": Scene-Setting

"Gibraltar Falls."

"Hawks and vultures were always at hover in cloudless heaven." (p. 113) (Scroll down)

Other Predators And Scavengers
sabertooths
hyenas
ground apes, sometimes erect

Prey
zebra-striped ponies
primitive rhinoceros
okapi-like ancestors of giraffes
mastodon
"peculiar elephants" (p.114)

Terrain
steep hills
low mountains
canyons
dry country
shrunken streams
burnt grass

Widely Separated Trees And Shrubs
thorn
mimosa
acacia
pine
aloe
palm
fern
orchid

Smells
hay
scorch
baked dung
warm flesh

Sounds
whistling marmots
booming wind
resounding hoofs
clamoring birds
trumpeting beasts
the beginning of a hundred years of thunder

Other Sensations
dust and heat in the face by day
sudden chill at night
many stars in alien constellations
six foot ant hills

We have had two posts about "Gibraltar Falls" but not yet got to the characters.

On Mount Taylor

Operation Luna, 39.

Mount Taylor is sacred in Native American traditions.

In Mike Carey's Luficer, the title character, with a local guide, descends through four levels of mythological underworlds from Mount Taylor.

In Operation Luna, Virginia Matuchek and Fjalar the dwarf depart for the Norse mythological universe from Mount Taylor. Before their departure:

"Two or three vultures hovered on broad wings." (p. 349)

- suggesting that they might not return alive.

For other hovering birds in Poul Anderson's works, see:

Hawks
A Hawk High Overhead

Some Details On Aeneas

The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER SIX.

"A vulch wheeled into view, wings across heaven." (p. 422)

Compare Hawks.

We are told that Colin is Hugh McCormac's oldest son and therefore will be the next Firstman. He will not - but the consecutive reader does not know that yet.

Colin saw crowds of ordinary citizens beat Snelund's political police to death. It happens.

"Trees grew about, not only the low iron-hard native sorts but imported oak, cedar, and rasmin. The wind carried their fragrances." (p. 423)

I could look it up but am recovering from a busy day so can someone remind me where rasmin comes from?

More On The Mixed Ecology II

The Hammer, CHAPTER FIVE.

Bellevuean dactosauroids:

are the size of a man's hand;

have fangs, jewel-like scales, skin wings and long tails with diamond-shaped rudders;

live in nests;

hiss;

fly near a man's face;

bank and glide;

eat insects;

are eaten by red-tailed hawks.

(Google has pictures of red-tailed hawks but not of dactosauroids.)

See Mixed Ecology.

I admit to being less interested in the close details of military life and organization but nevertheless can unreservedly recommend SM Stirling's and David Drake's The General series, of which The Hammer is Volume II, to fans of military sf.

Spearfowl

See Hawks and compare:

"A spearfowl, big as an Earthly condor, hovered out there. Its feathers were like shining steel."
-Poul Anderson, Orbit Unlimited, part four, 5, p.120.

Yet another passage that resonates with passages already read. If I remember correctly, a spearfowl will play a more active role as the narrative proceeds.

There are Terrestrial hawks, Merseian fangryfs and Rustumite spearfowl. The fictional fangryf obviously borrows part of its name from the mythological gryphon.

Hawks

"From behind a ridge, a hawk swung to hover where the sun turned its wings golden."
-Poul Anderson, The Avatar, L, p. 404.

"Far above them, a hawk at hover caught glow on its wings."
-Poul Anderson, The Winter Of The World (London, 1980), I, p. 9.

Compare:

The End Of A Stone In Heaven
Belated Blogging And The Spiral Arm

There is:

a fangryf with light burning gold off its feathers on Merseia;
a bird of prey, its wings made gold by sunlight, on Unan Basor;
a hawk with wings aglow above the High Sierra;
a hawk with wings turned golden by the sun in Ireland;
a hawk catching glow on its wings during the Ice Age.

These hunting birds reflect what intelligent beings are doing on the ground below. 

Bird II

Poul Anderson, The Avatar, XXI, p. 185.

The avatar of Bird, a crow, relates that:

he dreamed;
his universe became empty;
hungry and angry, he tapped and broke the shell;
his eyes were dazzled;
opening his mouth, he was fed but was also crowded by others;
plumed, then shoved from the nest, he learned to fly;
he possessed the sky and raided the earth (Anderson fans remember Ythrians);
belonging to the flock, he watched for hawks or men;
the flock enjoyed life;
caught by a fox, he escaped but lost the power of flight;
darkness approached but the Summoner came and kept him alive for a while. 

Life On Nike

A dense carpet of a soft mossy growth;

fronded pale green-blue native gymnosperm plants;

imported oaks, birches, primroses and grass;

pseudo-moss flourishing only in shade;

native insectoid flyers and awkward amphibians;

imported thrushes, bulbuls, hawks, butterflies, bees, boars, mustangs, carabao and six-legged antlered tanithars.

Thus, not all imported species are terrestroid.

(Poul Anderson, "A Tragedy of Errors.")

Falconry In 1245beta AD And in Change Year 46, Part II

Crown Princess Orlaith and her party hunt wild turkeys with Harris' hawks (see image), then Orlaith is attacked by two tigers and I am about to go out for the evening so I will learn the outcome later.

They ride through a swale with earth dams, silver ponds, green grass, reeds, willows, cottonwoods, black hawthorn, wild rose, wax currant, crimson sumac and purple-flowered thistle - game food and shelter.

If I were there, I would enjoy the scenery but not the hunting. Sorry to be hasty, folks.