Rustumite Plants

There was a reference to grass on Rustum in Orbit Unlimited. Poul Anderson usually describes equivalents of grass on terrestroid planets, e.g., see "Yet Another Grass Equivalent" here and "Ancestral Grass" here. Sure enough, on Rustum:

"Tall, finely fronded blue-green stalks - plants of that varied and ubiquituous family which the colonists misnamed 'grass'..."
-Poul Anderson, "My Own, My Native Land" IN Anderson, New America (New York, 1982), pp. 9-50 AT p. 29.

Anderson also lists Rustumite trees:

goldwood
soartop
fakepine
gnome

Exercise: compare these with Avalonian trees whose names and descriptions can be sought here.

Sol And Grass

The Night Face, V.

The very last word on p. 585 is:

"'Sol..."

Over the page, the sentence continues:

"'...went there with a camera.'" (p. 586)

So this "Sol" is the name of a man, not of Earth's sun.

On p. 590:

"Grass whispered under [Raven's] boots..."

In a narrative set on the surface of another planet, Poul Anderson usually uses some phrase like "pseudo-grass" or "the local equivalent of grass" in order to make the point that, if there is any ground cover there, then it cannot be identical to any kind of Terrestrial grass - and should be shown to be different in any screen adaptation. The entire environment, not just some of its inhabitants, should look extra-terrestrial even in those cases, like the present one, where the planet is described as terrestroid.

The precision of Anderson's texts makes close readers sensitive even to minor terminological issues.

Senses On Nerthus

"The Acolytes."

In Poul Anderson's works, extra-solar planets often have equivalents of grass. Nerthus has just grass although it smells different. 

When Pete sits on a hummock between the meadow and the forest, four of his senses are engaged:

turf is soft;

clouds are white;

the sky is blue;

the sun sinks;

the grass whispers and rustles;

the air carries a murmur and buzz;

green grass smells rich;

sky-blue wild flowers smell sweet;

an insect's wings reflect the light;

a bird sings;

summer is warm;

bells ring.

Only by listing them do we appreciate how many details Anderson incorporates into a descriptive passage.

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? 

More About Grass

On Nike:

"Pseudo-moss grew damp and slippery on the parapet."

-"A Tragedy of Errors," p. 522.

This is a detail that we already knew about:

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

And, at the same time, imported organisms successfully compete:

"...grass had overwhelmed a pseudo-moss that apparently had a competitive advantage only in the shade." (ibid.)

On Lokon, imported clover grows:

"...among the reddish native pseudo-grasses."

-Poul Anderson, "The Sharing of Flesh," IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 661-708 AT p. 665.

On Gwydion, meadows are "...green..." ("The Night Face," II, p. 553) Imported grass? No:

"'The planet was here, with its intrinsic conditions, its native biochemistry and ecology, all eminently suited to human life.'" (p. 554)

Implausible?

The Nifty Details II

This time it is the Wanderer's grandson Hathawulf who must speak privately with one other character. An entire descriptive paragraph precedes their conversation:

"...a ride through the pastures. It was a windy day, abloom and aripple across miles of tawny grass. Clouds scudded dazzling white through the deeps above; their shadows raced over the world. Cattle grazed ruddy, in far-scattered herds. Game birds burst from underfoot, and high overhead a hawk was at hover. The coolness of the wind was veined with a smell of sun-baked earth and of growth." (Time Patrol, p. 438)

Poul Anderson seems to have missed nothing in this description. I think that Hathawulf and Randwar hear the wind rippling the grass and the game birds bursting from cover. Thus, they:

see tawny grass, white clouds, racing shadows, red cows, fleeing birds and a hovering hawk;
hear wind and wings;
also feel the cool wind;
smell hot earth and growing plants.

How often do we think of the sky as deep rather than as high? But this description fits.

We have come a long way from Carl's description of autumn 1935 in New York, let alone discussions of the structure of the Time Patrol, yet this is all one seamless narrative in Poul Anderson's vivid prose.

Mary And Grass

I am rereading certain chapters of A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows to find the truth abouth Kossara Vymezal's mission to Diomedes but I keep finding other passages to blog about, e.g.:

"She ought to kneel for a prayer, but she was too tired; Mary who fled to Eygpt would understand. Kossara sat down on what looked like pale grass and wasn't..." (Chapter IX, p. 467)

Poul Anderson always tells us that the ground-covering plant on terrestroid planets is not grass.

I read in a New Testament commentary that:

the OT verse, "I have called my son out of Egypt," meant that God had called His collective adopted son, Israel, out of bondage in Eygpt;

however, NT writers interpreted such verses as prophecies about the Messiah;

therefore, the author of Matthew's Gospel invented the story of the Holy Family fleeing into Egypt so that they could be called back from it.

On p. 468, Mary becomes almost a sky goddess when the blue of the summer sky over the Kazan is compared to the blue of her cloak.

Lodestar II

A point I missed on Ythri:

underfoot, a red carpet unlike either grass or moss;
but the Ythrian equivalent of grass;
later in the History, imported to Ythrian areas of Avalon as grass and clover are to human areas, whereas uncultivated areas retain their native ecology;
not something every sf writer would think of;
but necessary for verisimilitude when imagining other planets in living detail.

But now we are in an Ythrian spaceship in "Lodestar." Ythrians, unlike human beings, need an otherwise extravagant viewport in a corridor. Sky dwellers cannot be enclosed in metal and remain sane. Anderson, having created the Ythrians, deduces that in this way their spacecraft would have to differ from those of other species.

And, since it is now 01.03 on this part of Earth, I will temporarily suspend my reflections on the Ythrians.

Rugi's Thoughts

"Terminal Quest." 

Rugi's inner thoughts as human children and their dogs torment him:

"Night and rain and the west wind crying in high trees, a cool wet softness of grass and the wavering little fire, the grave eyes of my father and the dear lost face of my mother - Out of the night and the rainy wind and the forest they hewed down, out of the years and the blurring memories and the shadowland of dreams, come to me, mother, come and take me in your arms and carry me home." (p. 12)

Points To Note

(i) Two references to wind.

(ii) "...grass...," not pseudo-grass etc on another planet, as in many later texts.

(iii) Dreams are a shadowland. Rugi does not know the difference between "I dreamed about my mother last night" and "My mother came back last night."

(iv) He prays to his dead mother.

(v) Anderson writes in the introduction that:

"Times change, you can't go home again..." (p. xiii)

See also this theme in earlier posts.

Some evenings, I want to write one last post before reading about the Spanish Civil War, rereading Stieg Larsson and flaking. Tomorrow, another public talk of local interest.

Rufous Carpet And Reddish Mat

Poul Anderson always tells us what another planet has instead of grass. On Ythri:

"...rufous carpet underfoot, springy, suggestive more of moss than grass though not very much of either..."
-Poul Anderson, "Wings of Victory" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. 3-22 AT p. 8.

That and many other details make it sound as if he has been there.

On Avalon, jointly colonized by human beings and Ythrians:

"...the reddish mat of native susin..."
-Poul Anderson, "Wingless" IN The Earth Book..., pp. 409-433 AT p. 414.

So the Ythrian home planet has a reddish-brown or brownish-red carpet and an Ythrian colony planet has a reddish mat. I had to check to confirm whether susin was native to Avalon or imported from Ythri. Imported plants include:

"...Terrestrial grass and clover, Ythrian starbell and rye, Terrestrial oak and pine, Ythrian braidbark and copperwood..."
-ibid.

Clover accompanies human beings to many planets, e.g., see Lokon, which also has red pseudo-grasses.

Concluding Details, Josserek And Van Rijn

Poul Anderson, The Winter Of The World.

Is this yet another description of the Milky Way?:

"...beneath a winter-stark Argent Way." (XXI, p. 190)

Sensory Descriptions
In XIX, p. 173:
the myriad greens of the prairie grass pale and shine almost silver;
the wind smells of grass and of sunlight;
red-patched blackbirds cry sweetly;
high above, swans are white amidst blue.

(Since wind is felt as well as smelled, this paragraph evokes four senses.)

In XXII, p. 200:
ridges and valleys glitter;
warmth grows;
mists glimmer and vanish;
the breeze ruffles pools in hollows;
grass is intensely green;
forget-me-nots are blue;
pines abide;
willows shake;
new birch leaves dance;
sun, wings and song fill a cloudless sky;
cows are red;
hares bolt;
pheasants fly;
bees and dragonflies quest;
eddying air smells of earth or of river.

(Again, four senses.)

Josserek concludes that "...Rogaviki are wild animals." (XXII, p. 207)

- whereas all other human beings are domesticated.

In Anderson's "The Master Key," Nicholas van Rijn concludes that, on the planet Cain, the dominant species, the Yildivians, are intelligent wild animals - wild in the way that tigers or buffalo are - whereas the subordinate species, the Lugals, are not slaves but intelligent domesticated animals. Van Rijn concludes the story by claiming that he and his friends are wild animals doing what they want or what is right but that most human beings are domesticated at heart:

"He glared outward across the city, where it winked and glittered beneath the stars, around the curve of the planet. 'Do you think they yonder is free?' he shouted. His hand chopped downward in scorn."
-Poul Anderson, "The Master Key" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 273-327 AT p. 327.

I quote this passage partly because I like the image of the city winking and glittering beneath the stars around the curve of the planet, especially since we know that these characters travel to those stars and that their lives are a single phase in a long History.

Van Rijn is at least partly wrong. Wild animals do what they want but not what is right. Doing what is right, or even just knowing what is right and not doing it!, is specific to human beings and therefore is something that van Rijn shares with the scorned "domesticated" human beings who must include many of his co-religionists. The collective labor by hand and brain of human beings who stay at home and raise families builds and maintains a city that curves around the planet so I feel solidarity with them as well as with van Rijn's little band of wild adventurers.

In The Winter Of The World, at the end of Chapter XXI, Captain General Sidir, unwillingly plunged into a river, draws his saber and swims to the shore where his Rogaviki enemies wait. Will his story continue? Will the Rogaviki take him prisoner, then send him home to bear their defiant message to his Emperor? We should know better than that by now. The Rogaviki do not take prisoners.

On the concluding page, XXII, p. 208, the Rogaviki woman, Donya, demonstrates her "inhumanity" by tearing up the letter from her former human lover, saying that his words want their freedom.

This has been a long morning of blogging. My agenda for the rest of today is:

lunch with Ketlan;
start rereading and posting about Anderson's Twilight World;
read Leon Trotsky's My Life.

Onward, Earthlings!

Cainite Scenery

"The Master Key."

When the narrator studies a photograph of two Cainites:

"The background was harsh plutonic hillside, where grass of a pale yellowish turquoise grew between dark boulders." (p. 283)

Poul Anderson often describes extraterrestrial equivalents of grass. The Cainite growth is described as "grass," not as "psuedograss," but is a slightly unusual color.

The background is harsh, dark and "plutonic," an adjective that is significant in Classical mythology just as "Cain" is in Biblical mythology.

The rest of the environment visible in the photo comprises "...a densely wooded valley...," (ibid.), a wan sky and orange sunlight that is said to distort colors. We are looking into the scene of dark and distorted events.

Vikings And Nerthus

Today, we attended an annual Viking Festival with two ships, a tent village, costumes, handicrafts, a battle and a talk on Viking funerals which included a reference to the unrestful dead as in Poul Anderson's "The Tale of Hauk."

Back to the Psychotechnic History -

Nerthusian grass is green but does not smell like Terrestrial grass. We have seen that many other Andersonian planets have alternatives to grass.

"The Acolytes" is yet another juvenile story and has definite parallels to Anderson's "The Queen of Air and Darkness."

Surprisingly, "The Green Thumb" is a continuation of "The Acolytes." An alien has learned Terran "...by psychophonic means..." (p. 22) Having read later installments of this future history, I know that the alien is not what he seems. Now I must read the rest of this story.

Like Grass

Star Prince Charlie, 2.

Poul Anderson often states that terrestroid planets will grow not grass but, probably, some equivalent.

Anderson and Dickson seem to ignore this point when they describe the New Lemurian landscape:

feathery, fragrant trees;
flying insects;
singing birds;
"...a grassy slope..." (p. 21);
sparkling sea;
fishing boat;
red sail.

However, in the very next paragraph, Charlie reflects that "...words like 'insect,' 'bird,' or 'grass...'" (ibid.) are not really appropriate. There are close parallels but many biological differences. Unscientifically, he thinks, "fish." Scientifically, he would have to think, "ichthyoid." (ibid.) So perhaps there is really a "grassoid" slope?

I have not yet mentioned the plot because I find plenty of interesting details to discuss. Blog readers should read or reread the novel, of course.

Grass And Three Senses On Harbor

"Gypsy."

When the narrator lands his interplanetary space boat on Harbor:

"...long grass rustled in the wind, gardens and wild groves, sunlight streaming out of a high blue sky. When I stepped from the boat, the fresh vivid scent of the land leaped to meet me. I could hear the sea growling beyond the horizon." (p. 256)

We notice:

grass, not psuedograss;
three senses;
a high blue sky. (High is heaven and holy.)

The few public posts are spare-time occupations for whoever wants them and machinery is "...owned in common." (ibid.) Let us hope that this will be the model for future extra-planetary colonies. Harbor is idyllic and, of course, will prove to be too idyllic for some Andersonian characters.

Ancestral Grass

Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), Part Two, IX.

We have remarked that Poul Anderson realizes that grass as we know it cannot be expected to grow on every terrestroid planet but that there will probably be some equivalent, a plant that grows across the surface and that can be cropped to ground level without being killed.

Now Anderson applies the same thought to Earth a billion years hence:

"Here every tree, bush, blossom, flitting insect was foreign; grass itself no longer grew, unless it was ancestral to the thick-lobed carpeting of glades; the winged creatures aloft were not birds, and what beast cries he heard were in no tongue known to him." (p. 207)

The continents are entirely unrecognizable, the equator is uninhabitably hot, the desert advances perceptibly, destroying cities, and trees grow to the tops of the Arctican mountains. Like Wells in the The Time Machine, Anderson imagines Earth close to the end of life.

Grass And God

Starfarers, 23-24.

On Tahir:

"A large structure stood a hundred meters aside, surrounded by well-tended sward." (24, p. 229)

On another planet, nothing should be taken for granted so what is "sward"? Do not imagine a green lawn. We have already been told that:

"A mossy turf seemed to play the basic role of grass." (23, p. 215)

We have lost count of Poul Anderson's extraterrestrial grass equivalents.

When Zeyd confirms that Tahirian antennae are compasses, he exclaims:

"'Manifold are the works of God.'" (24, p. 230)

But how long will it be before he can express that thought to the Tahirians and hear their equivalent? Communication is not so difficult in CS Lewis's Solar System. Elwin Ransom has to learn a language, of course, but then the Malacandrians/Martians ask in astonishment:

"'Did people in Thulcandra not know that Maleldil the Young had made and still ruled the world? Even a child knew that."

-CS Lewis, Out Of The Silent Planet IN Lewis,  The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 1-144 AT 11, p. 59.

 

And Lewis, incarnated as a character in his own fiction, later reflects:

 

"I did not even doubt the reality of that mysterious being whom the eldila call Maleldil and to whom they appear to give a total obedience such as no Tellurian dictator can command. I knew what Ransom supposed Maleldil to be."

-CS Lewis, Perelandra IN The Cosmic Trilogy, pp. 145-348 AT 1, p. 155.

 

We cannot be as confident about the Tahirians' metaphysics.

Mixed Ecologies

"Woodlots were the deep green of Terran oak and the orange-green of Kzin, tall frondlike growths in Wunderland's reddish ocher."
-Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling, "The Hall of the Mountain King" IN Larry Niven, Ed., Man-Kzin Wars V (New York, 1992), pp. 5-202 AT p. 38.

Human colonists and kzinti conquerors have imported trees to the Alpha Centaurian planet of Wunderland. Thus, the vegetation is green, orange and red.

For similar scenes on the human-Ythrian colony planet of Avalon, see here, then follow the link to a post on the human colony planet of Aeneas. On Nike (see also here), there is blue-tinted pale green native vegetation but:

"Otherwise, the country had been taken over by the more efficient, highly developed species that man commonly brought with him."
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 484.

These are:

oak;
birch;
primrose;
grass overwhelming pseudo-moss that thrives only in shade.

On Lokon:

"Clover was another of those life forms that man had brought with him from Old Earth, to more planets than anyone now remembered..." (Flandry's Legacy, pp. 665-666)

However, either the life forms adapt to alien environments or genetic drift changes them at random. Thus, they are often unrecognizable, as humanity must eventually become. We think of man the conqueror but it seems that we should add oak, grass, clover etc to the list.

Prehistoric POVs

Sometimes modern authors imaginatively present prehistoric perceptions and thoughts. This can only be an imaginative exercise but night be intellectually interesting. Our three examples in this post are:

Alan Moore, Voice Of The Fire (London, 1996), Hob's Hog, 4000 BC, pp. 9-56.

Poul Anderson, "The Little Monster";

Poul Anderson, "The Forest" IN Anderson, All One Universe (New York, 1996), pp. 161-188.

A Pithecanthropus:

"First light. Wind cold over skin, ruffle hair, whistle from gray-before-sun till stars go. Dew shiny on thorn wall, tree leaf; wet smell. Nest rustle soggy. Warm bodies, flesh smell, dry grass smell, mold-underneath smell." ("The Little Monster," p. 146)

In "The Forest," a man sometime between 16,000 and 9500 BC sees the Horned One. Anderson explains in an after-note that this is not necessarily fantasy because people do have panic attacks and this one is described from the point of view of a primitive man who would have made less distinction than we do between inner and outer.

Moore's narrator lived a mere six thousand years ago but also was of limited intelligence:

"There is not grass on high of hill. There is but dirt, all in a round, that hill is as like to a no-hair man, he's head."

-Voice Of The Fire, p. 9.

 

His equivalent of thinking that he sees a man, then realizing that it is a tree, is that a man changed into a tree. He does not understand the concept of telling a lie. He is not glean that one can say of thing when thing is not.

Clover And Other Exported Species

On an extrasolar planet thousands of years in the future:

"...plants with green trilobate leaves, scattered low among the reddish native pseudo-grasses... Clover was another of those life forms that man had brought with him from Old Earth, to more planets than anyone now remembered, before the Long Night fell. Often they were virtually unrecognizable; over thousands of years, evolution had fitted them to alien conditions, or mutation and genetic drift had acted on small initial populations in a nearly random fashion. No one on Kraken had known that pines and gulls and rhizobacteria were altered immigrants, until Donli's crew arrived and identified them."
-Poul Anderson, "The Sharing of Flesh" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 661-708 AT pp. 665-666.

This was why I mentioned clover as accompanying human beings to many planets here. Donli is a one-off character. Our series characters are long dead but four post-Imperial installments are scattered across several centuries and millennia in the further future.

Elsewhere, on the planet Nike:

a dense mossy carpet;
native fronded gymnosperm plants, green with presumed chlorophyll but also pale and bluish;
imported oaks, birches, cedars, primroses and grass which overcomes pseudo-moss except in the shade.

Anderson describes conflicts not only between Terrans and Merseians but also between grass and pseudo-moss. (And that reminds me that the Merseian Roidhunate has imported tea.)