From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis@sirius.com>
Subject: (urth) 5HC: hiding which celestial
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 08:28:40 

Rostrum wrote:

>Reading "A Story," I got the impression that the field was hiding St. Anne
>from an already-settled-by-humans St. Croix, not shielding the whole
>system from Earth.  In the story, the humans show up almost instantly
>after Shadowchild terminates the song (which seems odd, even if they were
>just on the sister planet), and I also thought it odd that no one on
>St. Croix mentions St. Anne suddenly appearing out of nowhere - if that
>had happened, you'd expect it to be known as "the planet that suddenly
>appeared out of nowhere."  On the other hand, I guess the astronomers
>might have thought they simply hadn't noticed it until then.
>
>Am I misinterpreting all this?

Granted many details: the "just in time" arrival of the French greatly
strains realism; that the inhabitants of Ste. Anne sense the cloaking
effect as something in the sky (makes it seem located more in the
atmosphere than in far orbit); and probably more.  It is just a story
(anthropological reconstruction/romance), even within the context of the
larger story of Ste. Anne/Ste. Croix.

Still, the place is called "Frenchman's Landing."  The system had been
passed over for worlds many light-years further away (i.e., Ste. Croix by
itself would not have been passed over).  The cloaking itself may have only
changed the appearance of the star rather than actually hiding the planets,
but as I'm saying, since the sun looks the same cloaking on/cloaking off,
then the cloaking effect must be projected beyond the orbit of the twin
planets (they orbit inside the field and see the star as it really is).
The rest of the universe sees the system as completely incapable of having
habitable planets.

While I can understand the notion that the cloak just hides Ste. Anne from
Ste. Croix, built from those details (and convincing within the confines of
"A Story"), I never really considered it for long.

=mantis=



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