The Hidden Folk II

The Hidden Folk have worked for generations to construct a half-mile-wide town of nests from hovering plant bladders. Females and young spread meat out to dry, husk the fruits of aerial vegetation and spin cord. Containers are woven baskets. Tools are chipped bone. A harpoon is bone sections with a tusk for a head.

Catching Theor with ropes, the Hidden Folk take him to their town. A mile below, he recognizes familiar territory. A mile up, above half the atmosphere and many clouds, the aerial pastures with their monstrous browsers and the Hidden Folk nests are permanently concealed from ground dwellers. Only a rare disaster would force Hidden Folk down into the heat, darkness and thick air and maybe those few would never return. These sky dwellers know less than the Terrestrials about the Jovian surface.

Sky dwellers have no streams or rivers to drink from. They must get ammonia from food or absorb it from clouds. The Hidden Folk give Theor meat and pulpy spheres containing quenching juice.

Only a few pages describe this life in the Jovian sky.

The Hidden Folk

Carried aloft, half conscious (see here), Theor sees:

ammonia smoke;
winged shadows, weaving and vanishing -

- and hears:

flutings and chimings from the flying creatures;
booming wind;
the thrumming of the cords binding him to his improvised parachute.

Borne down by the wind out of the smoke, he sees:

the sky as "...an immense black vault..." (p. 96);
the sun, for the first time in his life;
red clouds below him;
umbras and penumbras;
a circular rainbow caused by ice crystals;
mountains;
lilla and pirell-brown forests;
a volcano;
around him, the flying "Hidden Folk" -

- three feet high;
slender;
fluke-tailed;
broad membranous wings;
two legs with grasping toes;
sharp noses;
curving necks;
small eyes;
arms with hands and opposable thumbs;
some carrying ropes or harpoons;
lacking throat pouches or gills;
calling from their mouths;
breathing like human beings.

Another race of Flying Men.

Life In The Jovian Atmosphere III

Which book am I describing? -

an imaginary world;
diverse kinds of intelligent beings;
a major conflict;
fantastic events;
a long, perilous journey.

Three Worlds To Conquer by Poul Anderson.

Theor's progress along the top of a very high cliff is impeded by a wall - natural or artificial? I think that it must be the former. Blown against the wall is a strange organism:

a tough, ragged, square sheet, twenty feet on a side;
thick, fuzzy strands joining the corners of the sheet to something resembling a large, heavy, wart-covered log.

Theor deduces that:

usually, the organism drifts;
the top absorbs energy;
the cilia absorb ammonia and minerals;
the sheet and the log balance each other;
the organism is a druga species, currently encysted (in a cyst) during metamorphosis.

Theor tries unsuccessfully to open the shell - presumably the "log" or cyst - for meat. Then he tries to parachute down the cliff with the sheet but instead is pushed upward by a thermal updraft. Updrafts, weak and infrequent near the surface, are powerful when pressure and density are lower and the temperature gradient is greater.

Life In The Jovian Atmosphere II

(Unsightly and I apologize but it is the Jovian atmosphere photographed from the Juno probe.)

Terrestrial spectroscopy had indicated dense microbial life in the upper Jovian atmosphere but Theor is the first to discover that those microbes support larger species. Thus, his planet is surrounded by life:

the high atmosphere is dense enough to support objects of large specific gravity;

minerals are suspended in the clouds;

the atmosphere, energized more than the planetary surface, supports hydrogen-ammonia photosynthesis;

Jovian life probably originated and remains more abundant up there;

in fact, surface life is probably critically dependent on what drifts down.

The reader learns with the characters.

Life In The Jovian Atmosphere

Life has not adapted to high Jovian mountain tops but has adapted to the upper atmosphere. On a very high mountain top, Theor sees swarms of flakes, grabs one, finds that it is lacy and star-shaped, touches it with his antennae, swallows it, then finds that, although it is oily and strange, his stomach accepts it. Next, hearing a whistle and turning around, he sees a vast, long-finned, fine-tendrilled whale-like organism "swimming" while eating the living flakes.

His people, dwelling in the dark depths, have never known of this upper life zone except as a legend. Theor is about to meet the Hidden Folk.

Life On Jupiter II

See Life On Jupiter.

Because high mountains are rare, Jovian life has not had time to adapt to them. Theor climbs with all six limbs over rattling talus slopes - another indication of how Earth-like this version of Jupiter is. I tried to find an image of talus with as little life as possible.

Ammonia vapor blown from the sea condenses into rivers. Cloud banks are brown, onsy or tawr and Theor's feelers detect unfamiliar taste-odors. Thus, three senses, two combined.

A friendly voice on the communicator would have comforted Theor. I think that about mobile phones. Texting a friend is like praying, knowing that the prayer is heard and might be answered.

On the subject of prayer as such, a Mormon missionary advised me to ask God the Father in the name of His Son for the truth on religious matters so I did, before meditating. What answer I received is between me and God, of course.

A Fantastic World

Do the newspapers show us a world as fantastic as the future societies of Poul Anderson's sf?

In Britain, we have:

not an Empire any more but certainly the relics of one, including current plans for a Royal Wedding;

a Christian Church that has been in place since the sixth century;

not a multi-species civilization but certainly a multicultural society with a majority of non-whites in the City of Birmingham which has two Cathedrals, a Central Mosque and a Buddhist Centre;

international conflicts, including major threats to peace and security;

the world-wide web, including not only financial institutions and news media but also this blog which mainly concerns itself with exotica like a fictional Jupiter and the Terran Empire.

Like the Polesotechnic League, we do not know where we are going but we are on our way.

Life On Jupiter

Theor climbs a mountain, hears a stream and wonders if he should try to catch a fish. In other words, when Poul Anderson wrote Three Worlds To Conquer in 1964, it was still thought possible that Jupiter was like a big Earth.

Differences:

a fall is more serious on Jupiter, even for a Jovian;

under Jovian gravity, the change of air pressure with altitude is several times greater than on Earth - a mile above sea level, Theor's spiracles get less than half the hydrogen that they need;

erosion and gravity counteract orogeny so that most mountains are low;

energies bursting out of the compressed core and mantle cause not only quakes, volcanoes and geysers but also a thirty thousand mile long permanent storm, the Red Spot.

NGC 5457

(I have copied this post from the Poul Anderson's Cosmic Environments blog because more people read this one.)

The image shows NGC 5457.

Poul Anderson tells us how the universe looks and sounds.

Janne Floris of the Time Patrol has on her wall not only:

"...a copy of a Cuyp landscape..."

but also:

"...an astronomical photograph of the Veil Nebula."
-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 467-640 AT p. 482.

In a picture on the wall in the Ganymedean colony:

"NGC 5457 coiled stark and glittering in space."
-Poul Anderson, Three Worlds To Conquer (London, 1966), Chapter 12, p. 87.

The universe is the constant background of all fiction and Poul Anderson regularly reminds us of it.

Cosmological SF

We watched Jim Al-Khalili (see image) on the beginning and end of the universe. This made me think about which works I classify as "cosmological sf."

(i) There is a lot that I have not read.

(ii) Both The Triumph Of Time by James Blish and Tau Zero by Poul Anderson feature an intergalactic journey and the end and beginning of a universe.

(iii) In The Avatar by Poul Anderson, a T-machine enables a spaceship to visit different galaxies at different stages of cosmic history and eventually to arrive at a monobloc.

(iv) I also include works that show stellar processes, e.g.:

Sol has become a red giant in the "Further Vision" of HG Wells' The Time Machine;

Anderson's "Lodestar" and Mirkheim deal with the stellar synthesis of heavier elements.