Mixed Ecology On Ishtar

Fire Time, III.

Mixed ecologies caused by interstellar colonization have become a blog theme. On Avalon, there are native, Ythrian and Terrestrial species.

On Ishtar, one side of a river has wheat, corn, apple trees and grazing cattle whereas the opposite side has scarlet firebloom growing among the ground cover of golden lia, tawny swordleaf trees, ocherous swirlwood and leatherbark trees and wingseed bushes emitting flying pods some of which fly across the river before running out of energy and falling to the ground where, however, they cannot take root in the terraformed soil. 

It all sounds like a real place.

Conditions On Avalon

The People Of The Wind, IX.

Avalon is smaller and lighter than Earth with a smaller core but spins more rapidly which affects its magnetic field, apparently. The planet receives fewer charged particles and less ultraviolet and X rays. These factors enable it to retain a breathable atmosphere. Laura is closer and cooler than Sol with a weaker stellar wind. Morgana is smaller but closer than Luna and raises twice the tides. 

The dense green ground-cover explains the absence of forests and thus possibly also the under-evolution of the hexapodal Avalonian reptiloids which cannot compete with birds or mammals. The biracial colonists established a tripartite mixed ecology but also reserve a great deal of territory, including an equatorial continent.

Local food is either poisonous or edible and dietary supplements are necessary. Work and effort were necessary for colonization. Avalon is now a place where it would be good to live or visit. Terrans find reasons to attack and destroy.

Choth Life

In "Wingless," the Weathermaker Choth is a single extended household, its core families housed in a tall, balconied stone tower overlooking:

a paved courtyard;

rambling wooden buildings;

meadows grazed by meat animals;

a mixed Terrestrial-Ythrian ecology of grass, clover, starbell, wry, oak, pine, braidbark and copperwood;

beyond that cultivated area, native susin, chasuble bush, janie and, when Nat Falkayn looks out from a balcony, a flock of draculas in flight.

In The People Of The Wind, the Stormgate Choth occupies the Andromeda Range and includes Lythran's extended household whose senior members and their children are housed in an old stone tower in the middle of a plateau of Mount Fairview. Unmarried family members and retainers with their families live in lower wooden buildings with amberdragon and starbells growing on their roofs. Between these buildings, and also between the sheds, barns and mews, grow Ythrian trees:

braidbark

copperwood

lightningrod

jewelleaf

- and native flowers:

janie

livewell

Buddha's cup

harp vine

There are no native Avalonians to bestow names like "Buddha's cup"! All the names have to be either Anglic or Planha.

Apart from a few maintenance staff, Lythran's entire household flies under its own power to the regional Khruath on another mountain, the only exception being Arinnian who, lacking wings, flies with a gravbelt. En route, they meet other Stormgate families. At the Khruath, they meet members of other choths. We might have appreciated a description of the territory that they fly over. Instead, we read a traditional carol sung by Eyath and translated into Anglic by Arinnian which contains the memorable line:

"High is heaven and holy." (I, p. 452)

We know that an Ythrian's business activities need not be confined to within his or her own choth because youths from Stormgate, Many Thermals and The Tarns have founded a silvicultural engineering firm. We read in Chapter V that inter-species economic activities are a wonderland.

Environmental Details

Starfarers.

On Earth:

"A hawk swooped low." (5, p. 35)

On Harbor, eleven thousand years later:

"...a sunhawk overhead, watchful for prey, had four wings." (49, p. 472)

Two more birds of prey.

On Harbor, while it is being explored:

"The sward grew low, dense, a mat of minutely convoluted soft nuggets." (2, pp. 23-24)

Another grass equivalent.

On Aerie:

"Terrestrial grass stretched away....

"Northward persisted native forest..." (17, p. 128)

Another mixed ecology.

Jean Kilbirnie discussing starship berths:

"'I'll take whatever I can get, as soon as I can get it.'

"The wind whispered through the leaves." (2, p. 26)

Another instance of the wind seeming to comment on the dialogue.

Ferune Departs Mistwood

The People Of The Wind, X.

"Before sunrise, Ferune departed Mistwood." (p. 338)

In other words, his body is disposed of. We should not say "mortal remains" because the Ythrian New Faith recognizes no immortal part.

Descriptions of his rite are summarized in:

Ferune Of Mistwood

Who Dies?

A Mixed Ecology 

Bodily Disposal

 

I will probably not find anything to add but, if I do, then it will be in a subsequent post.

Wunderlander Mixed Ecology And Kzinti Pronunciation

"The Asteroid Queen," Chapter VII.

As at the beginning of Poul Anderson's The Day Of Their Return, guerillas wait to ambush an occupation force convoy. In this case, the occupation force is kzinti and the guerillas hide above the valley of the Donau River on Wunderland where dust and vapor kicked into the stratosphere cause a cold summer. Brown squidgrass struggles to survive under heavily scented wild rosebushes.

Green mutant alfalfa feeds:

six-legged garumphers;
cattle;
beefaloes;
bison;
orange kzinti raaairtwo.

(Kzinti pronunciation is sometimes conveyed by triple Roman letters. See Non Sequitur.)

As ever, we feel that this is a real planet, as if the authors have been there.

One of the kzinti is called Chmee-Sergeant (p. 127) and there was an ancient epic called Warlord Chmee at the Pillars (Chapter V, p. 104) whereas the kzin who goes to the Ringworld, when he has earned a name, is called Chmeee.

Whose POV?

"The Asteroid Queen," Chapter II.

The conversation between Traat-Admiral and the Conservor is recounted from the Admiral's point of view. We are told how he feels. When the Conservor says that the Slavers perished at least 2,000,000 years ago, we think, "Longer," but the omniscient narrator then interrupts the Conservor to directly inform his audience that the Kzin year is longer than the Terrestrial. Quotation marks are closed, then reopened, in a single paragraph - an incursion into the Admiral's pov.

The following chapter begins with a description, like others that we have read, of a mixed ecology (scroll down) on a colonized terrestroid planet. Trees include:

featherleaf ("...trembling iridescent lavender shapes ten meters tall...," p. 66)
gumblossom
sheenbark
lapisvine
oaks
pines
frangipani

Air is warm and fragrant.

In Search Of The Mixed Ecology

The Hammer.

"'...they do tend to react like a bull stung by a pihkador, sir.'" (CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 489)

Not much of a clue but it is a native organism stinging a Terrestrial bull. Googling pihkador, I found that it is mentioned again later in the series. See here.

There are also downdraggers. Dead bodies dumped from a dock are consumed by glistening, humped, beaked, fluked, tentacled shapes with large, unwinking, intelligent eyes cruising just below the surface. (CHAPTER FIFTEEN, p. 540) This, like the two moons, reminds us that Bellevue is not Earth.

The Mixed Ecology

The Hammer, CHAPTER NINE.

Winged Creatures (p. 465)
dactosauroids
bird-like gliders
Terrestrial birds

Battlefield Scavengers (p. 467)
dactosauroids
gulls
knee-high, fanged carnosauroids

Probably a picture of the Bellevuean ecology can be built up from background details although the foreground action remains men killing each other. The human race survives as long as new generations continue to be born, whether men die old at home or young in battle.

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.

More On The Mixed Ecology

The Hammer, CHAPTER FIVE.

Returning from Poul Anderson's 1950s San Francisco to SM Stirling's and David Drake's colonized planet, Bellevue, we find more evidence of the mixed ecology. A mountain forest contains:

"...reddish-brown native whipstick and featherfrond..." (p. 379)

- alongside imported beech and fir.

Lower down, there are "russet grass," olives, cork-oak, coconut, sisal plantations, cotton, indigo, sugar and rice. Is the "russet grass" native or Terrestrial?

Further on, we read that:

"...tall reddish-tawny three-leafed native grass rippled, under the twisted little cork-oaks and silver-leafed olives men had brought here a millennium and a half ago." (p. 388)

We remember Poul Anderson's mixed ecologies and many local equivalents of grass. Will there really be any extra-solar planets that can accomodate human colonists and Terrestrial organisms as easily as this? 

Extraterrestrial Trees And Bushes In Two Timelines (Probably Not A Complete List)

See recent discussion of trees in Thongtree.

On SM Stirling's And David Drake's Bellevue
thongtree

In Poul Anderson's Technic History
On Aeneas
starkwood
daggerbush
delphi
rahab

On Avalon
king's-crown
chasuble bush
boomer tree
surgeon tree
hell shrub
ironleaf tree

On Ythri
braidbark
copperwood
windnest
lightningrod
sword-of-sorrow
hammerbranch

On Llynathawr
rasmin

Sources:

Life On Aeneas
Who Knows Of Avalon?
A Mixed Ecology, 3 July 2014
Another Mixed Ecology
Trees
A Mixed Ecology, 11 November 2014
Some Remaining Details Concerning Aeneas

Thongtree

Poul Anderson fans are on familiar territory when they read this description of a scene on the planet, Bellevue:

"It was in heavy forest, oak and wild cherry and pine..."
-The Forge, CHAPTER SIX, p. 77.

We might think, "Oak, cherry and pine? This is an extra-solar planet!" However, the sentence continues:

"...and native thongtree, tall reddish-ochre things with smooth bark and a cluster of thin whippy branches on top, big sword-shaped leaves set like feathers along the edges of each." (ibid.)

That is more like it: the by now familiar mixed ecology - which was already evident in CHAPTER ONE, p. 3, the opening page of the text, where a spersauroid killed a rat:

"One of the few pleasant things about living in East Residence was that Terran life had mostly replace the local. But not in the catacombs, it seemed." (p. 3)

Here is a quiz for Poul Anderson fans:

How many extraterrestrial trees are there in the Technic History?
On which planets?
And which of them has lethal thin whipping branches?

After The Fall

The Forge is set long after the fall of technological civilization on a human extra-solar colony planet with a mixed ecology, thus in a period similar to the Long Night in Poul Anderson's Technic History.

"...New Residence was the largest city on Earth."
-SM Stirling and David Drake, The Forge IN Stirling and Drake, Warlord (Riverdale, NY, 2003), pp. 1-305 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 4.

Is the word "Earth" correct here? (On first opening a futuristic sf novel, we have to learn the context and can be disoriented for the first few pages.)

A voice that addresses Raj Whitehall confirms that it is a computer although not as he uses the term and further explains that it is:

"...a sentient artificial entity of photonic subsystems..." (p. 14)

OK. The AI issue has (probably) been addressed sufficiently for fictional purposes. A mere computer like this laptop is not conscious whereas a sentient artificial entity is by definition conscious and might also perform computer functions. A mere computer function is programmed processing of symbols without any knowledge of their meanings whereas a sentient entity is capable of knowledge.

Another Mixed Ecology

See mixed ecologies here.

Near Admiral Sir Olaf Magnusson's home on Daedalus, the land has been terraformed with Terrestrial, Ythrian and Avalonian organisms:

grass
roses
hollyhocks
Buddha's cup (also here)
livewell
oaks
maples
braidwoods (see braidbark here)
etc

Beyond:

native leaves gleam green, without flowers;
wings, not of birds, shine in the evening light;
the setting sun spreads into an arc on this horizonless planet.

Trees

On Aeneas, the Hedin Freehold has a windbreak comprising:

Aenean delphi and rahab;
Terran oak and acacia;
Llynathawrian rasmin;
Ythrian hammerbranch.

That is a very mixed ecology although not the only such in Technic civilization. When Flandry was on Llynathawr, trees were mentioned although they were not identified as "rasmin." The Hedins' flowers, cultivated with difficulty, are all extra-planetary because blossoms did not evolve on Aeneas.

Wind brings moisture from canals, marshes and salt lakes so the Hedins farm and ranch. The remainder of the account of the Freehold is familiar from many similar passages in Anderson's works:

manse
cottages
barns
sheds
workshops
paved coutyard
mosaics
machines
many kinds of people and animals
sounds
generations of leadership and loyalty

While rereading The Day Of Their Return, I do not summarize the plot, which is there for anyone to read, but instead try to highlight details that might be missed while merely following the plot. Ivar Frederiksen is on the run from the Impies but we can pause to appreciate the trees of four planets.

A Mixed Ecology

Ferune is an Ythrian:

his ancestor's shields hang in his house;

outside grow Ythrian trees - thick hammerbranch, high lightningrod and water-gathering sword-of-sorrow;

a trumpet calls his sons and chothmates to fly with his litter, led by his widow and torch-bearing daughters.

However, Ferune has lived on Avalon, where his choth is Mistwood:

cold, wet fog blows from the sea;

inland is Old Avalon;

the noise of a boomer tree frightening away animals rolls beneath the house and echoes from the shields;

flying as high as they can, the litter-bearers see on the horizon the sunlit snow peaks of the Weathermother;

at sunrise, the new Wyvan of Mistwood blows the horn, calls the dead and speaks the New Faith;

the litter is tilted above crags, boulders and streams;

Ferune's widow leads a sky dance by a hundred Ythrians watched by hovering human Avalonians.

Some Remaining Details Concerning Aeneas

Aeneas has a mixed ecology. Imported Terran oak and acacia, Llynathawrian rasmin and Ythrian hammerbranch grow beside native delphi and rahab. (The awkward names of the planet Llynathawr and its city, Catawrayannis, reflect the fact that the planet was discovered by, then purchased from, Cynthians.)

A delphi is described as "...low, gnarled trunk, grotto of branches and foliage."
-Poul Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2010), p. 76.

That grotto sounds inviting and Anderson's characters indeed make use of it. A man and a woman "...went into the moon-dappled grotto of the delphi. The luck [a pet] stayed outside, waiting." (p. 150)

When tinerans pass relics of La-Sarzen, the High Ones (Builders, Elders, Ancients, Old Shen, Foredwellers etc), they dismount from stathas, kneel, lift arms, chant, rise, cross themselves and spit. That last touch is a sacrificial act on the Dreary of Ironland as on Frank Herbert's Dune. This is entirely a pagan ritual except that they have incorporated the sign of the cross. However, the same author's Time Patrol series informs us that this sign was originally a Mithraic sun symbol. That origin would subsist across the timelines.

The king of a tineran band has to be of a certain family although not necessarily an eldest son. His women are chosen with a view to breeding and the heir apparent serves an apprenticeship in another Train. Individuals from different bands meet and marry at assemblies called Fairs. Kings, royal wives and concubines have orgiastic fertility rites in shrines and holy caves at the Fairs. Trains include Waybreak, Brotherband, Dark Stars, Gurdy Men, Magic Fathers and Glorious.

A Mixed Ecology

Poul Anderson conveys the richness of the Avalonian environment with detailed descriptions of what can be seen from particular vantage points. From a balcony of the tower of the Weathermaker Choth, Nat Falkayn sees, first, the imported organisms:

meadows full of grazing meat animals brought from Ythri;

Terrestrial grass, clover, oak and pine;

Ythrian starbell, wry, braidbark and copperwood -

- then, beyond the cultivated area, native Avalonian organisms:

the red mat of susin;
intensely green chasuble bushes;
delicately blue janie;
a flock of leather-winged draculas.

Susin must be the local equivalent of grass, surface-covering vegetation that can be cropped down to ground level without being killed. Anderson always describes this on each colonized planet.

Again, the view from a hospital window displays the mixed ecology:

"...a lawn and tall trees - Avalonian king's-crown, Ythrian windnest, Earthly oak - and a distant view of snowpeaks. Light spilled from heaven. The air sang."
-Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2012), p. 321.

These are the moments to be savored in Anderson's works. There are many such passages, to be found when rereading since they are usually forgotten soon after a single reading.

(Ythrian hammerbranch has found its way to Aeneas: see here.)

Terraforming Venus

In Poul Anderson's "The Big Rain," more than a million complicated airmaker machines on the Venusian surface break down paraform, yielding water. The formaldehyde reacts with ammonia and methane to produce hydrocarbons, carbohydrates etc for food, fuel and fertilizer. Carbon dioxide is broken down into soot and oxygen, the latter to be bottled for industrial use. Other substances are separated and collected to be processed in cities.

When seven million airmakers have been built, the atmosphere will be changed in twenty Earth years plus another decade due to factors like the law of diminishing returns and stratospheric gas never reaching the surface.

Artificially mutated, solar powered bacteria, living off carbon and silicon, release oxygen from rocks and ores. Pulverized stone and sand mixed with fertilizer become soil. Other engineered organisms will provide an ecology. Water brought to the surface by volcanoes is extracted from magma and hydrated minerals.

Hydrogen bombs exploded at selected locations will ignite the volcanoes while platinum catalyst sown by aircraft and Venusian lightning will attack the remaining poisonous gasses that will then fall as compounds in "the Big Rain," lasting ten Earth years to yield rivers, lakes and seas. With soil spread, bacteria, plants and animals released and heavy rain falling for centuries, reclaimed sections will get close to Terrestrial conditions in a hundred years and Venus might become a Paradise in five hundred.