World Dream Bank
home -
add a dream -
newest -
art gallery -
sampler -
dreams by
title,
subject,
author,
date,
places,
names
LYR
Basics for Tourists
by Chris Wayan, 2005
Lyr's home page - Evolution on Lyr - Creatures and peoples - Regional tours - Gazetteer -
Landing on Lyr, you immediately know you're not on Earth. Why?
- Instantly visible: that orange sunlight. Lyr's smaller, cooler sun looks golden at noon, blushing lower in the sky to a pure spectral red Sol never achieves. Lyran days have a warm tone, like perpetual afternoon, or gaslight, or firelight... Your eyes adjust quickly, so you'll see a full spectrum. You won't even be aware it's warmer--consciously. But it shifts your mood.
- Invisible, but in your bones: the extra gravity. If you're in the tropics (and you'll probably start there) you weigh about 25% more (well, your weight gain really ranges from 23% at the equator to a good 40% near the poles--but since there's very little polar land, the low end's more likely. Variable gravity sound absurd? It's common! Here's how). Strangely, many people experience the extra weight as a sort of vigor, at first. It's so evenly distributed your muscles can easily handle it short-term, and they respond forcefully, enjoying the workout. But a few days later you'll get sore and tired--your joints aren't used to the extra load being constant. After a week or two the vigor returns and you'll stabilize in excellent shape (rats raised in high gravity live LONGER--their joints adapt and last, they stay lean, and their hearts strengthen). The big risk isn't falling, breaking bones, or heart attacks--it's that you'll misjudge how fast objects fall! This adjustment is mental--and deep. You aren't weak, you're clumsy. And will be for weeks.
- Visible within hours: the sun races across the sky. Lyr rotates in just 12 hours! Just seven hours of daylight, only five of night. Learn to catnap! (How can day and night be unequal? Lyr's thick and tightly layered atmosphere (thinning fast as you rise) bends light better than Earth's. So at dawn or dusk, sunlight's refracted several degrees around the planet--rarely under five, and up to ten degrees. Result? The sun seems to be shining above the horizon, when it's really just below it. Sound odd? It happens on Earth too, every day. The setting sun you see isn't there--it's several diameters below its image! A few minutes of extra light at dawn and dusk... But on Lyr, it's more than a few.)
- Utterly invisible, but vital: the air's different, different in three ways, all of which affect you.
Gazetteer: index of places, with descriptions. Or...
TOUR LYR! Climb volcanoes, swim seas, meet weird creatures. First: survival tips! Then, pick a region:
Ythri -- Polesotechnic Chain -- Troisleons -- Roland -- Oronesia -- Gaiila -- Flandry -- Diomedes -- Ak'hai'i -- Averorn
This world-model is one of a series, The Biosphere Variations: see Serrana, Lyr, Oisin, Pegasia and Tharn. See also two related series:
Tilt! tours four Earths with our geography but different poles
1: Seapole--a flooded world
2: Shiveria--a steady-state ice age
3: Turnovia--the world on its head
4: Jaredia--a Petri dish for cultural diffusion
|
FUTURES tours three worlds 1000 years from now
1: DUBIA: A flooded, greenhoused Earth
2: MARS REBORN: terraformed, but definitely not Terra
3: VENUS UNVEILED: the ugly duckling became a swan
|
LISTS AND LINKS: other worlds - ecology - climate change - evolution - populations and eco-crashes - natural disasters - terraforming - orbital dreams - sculptures and 3D art -
World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites