Aside from extreme weather patterns, the colonists in The Long Dark have another major problem to contend with. The planet is superficially Earth-like - similar gravity, similar temperature on average, abundant water and an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere. All sounds moderately livable. Except for one thing. Both the air and the water are laced with a cocktail of poisons. Without treatment they are deadly.
OK. I decided the toxins would be large organic molecules and relatively easy to filter out, so there is no shortage of air and water per se, but they do need treatment.
That means you can’t go out onto the surface without a mask, and all living areas need to be enclosed and secured to keep the native atmosphere out.
This isn’t as extreme as living on, say, the Moon, where you have to pressurize living spaces against vacuum, but you do need a reasonably airtight barrier and airlocks everywhere. So, the colonists live in large domes, clustered together into towns and cities.
The dome arrangements of the town of Serendipity, where most of the action takes place. The large ovals are vehicle garages and warehouses. The smaller domes are habitats and workshops. The town is roughly a kilometer across.
The relatively habitable equator is ringed by eighteen large cities. These are occupied year-round, and contain all the major industrial processing and hydroponic growing areas.
Away from the equator, in the twenty to thirty-five degree latitudes, there is a scattering of nearly fifty smaller towns in each hemisphere. These are only occupied during Elysium’s summer months. Half the planet’s population live here, harvesting medicinal products and other useful materials from the depths of the plant mass. At the turn of the seasons they have to migrate across the equator to escape the winter deep freeze - the “Long Dark” of the book’s title.
Map of Elysium showing up to forty degrees north and south. The equatorial cities and the northern towns are marked here.
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8 comments:
Just because there is oxygen doesn't mean it's clean for humans to breathe. Nice touch to the story.
Interesting ecology. The toxic atmosphere reminds me of the planet Grayson in David Weber's Honor Harrington series.
The yearly migration brings to mind Heinlein's _Red Planet_. (Not that there's anything wrong with revisiting these tropes; my free-association module just tends to kick up anything I recall as similar. ;-) )
Rick
Alex, to be honest, finding miraculously breathable atmosphere has always been a bugbear for me in sci-fi.
Rick, as long is it's not an eye roll, and "this is the seventeenth world I've read recently with a migration" then that's OK :)
Hi Ian - it boggles my mind! No wonder Science Fiction sort of passed me by ... but it's always interesting to read how you approach things ... I'm happy in this world! Cheers to you both - Hilary
Hilary, the joy of writing sci-fi is the opportunity to create whole new worlds. The challenge is to convey them to the reader as naturally as possible so they feel like they live there!
I love the way you create such a detailed map (both literally and figuratively) of the worlds you create. The details make all the difference in making those worlds seem realistic.
Susan, most of the details never make it into the story, but I like to think they shape the way it's written all the same.
I'm sure it does.
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