Element-poor planets? (was Return of Things I never want to see in SF Again)

From: Danny Sichel (dsichel_at_canada.com)
Date: 09/09/04 

Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2004 10:00:41 -0400

Paul F. Dietz wrote:

>>>>>> Large portions of Darkover are probably much more habitable

> What I want to know is why metal is so uncommon. If iron (or zinc, or
> copper, or manganese, but iron in particular) were so rare, people couldn't
> survive there.

Mm - I'm recalling Godsworld, from LWE's _Shining Steel_, where sulfur
is so rare that, before the evangelical raiders attack the village of
heretics, their leader gives them each *one* bullet. If sulfur is so
rare that your military can barely afford to make *gunpowder* (and this
was explicitly stated), then how feasible is human biology?

To be fair, the planet was settled by ultrafundamentalist Christians
straight out of the Bible Belt (where LWE lived at the time) who planned
to lead a life of saintliness with none of that evil sinful 'science'
tainting what would surely be a world united in the One True Path Of
Jesus (the first schism was less than a year after planetfall). So
clearly the Godsworlders wouldn't have noticed something wrong.

(Actually, that might not be a glitch after all, thus the crosspost to
sci.chem - how much sulfur is there in a standard heretic? Enough to
make it worthwhile to render them for gunpowder?)

Relevant Pages