The second part of Duncan’s book deals with the origin of the green children . The author speculates that a matter transmitter could have been responsible for their accidental arrival on Earth and the unusual number of strange astronomical events recorded by contemporary chroniclers and observers are suggested as possible side-effects of the use of such a transmitter.

Duncan uses the green girl’s description of her home as the starting point for suggesting the kind of planet she has come from. Her sparce  descriptions of a land perpetually in twilight, but with a bright sunlit country visible across a river , seems a tall order to fulfill, but the author , by a dextrous use of his scientific knowledge and an imaginative speculation , presents us with an ingenious solution   to explain these strange facts.

 

He suggests that the planet in question must be one in a locked orbit   ( i.e. one whose rotational period around its   star is the same length as its day, like the Earth-Moon situation, so the same hemisphere always faces its star.

He speculates that an advanced alien intelligence could have created a valley, by means of asteroid impact , which followed the planet’s terminator along all or some of its length. Duncan discusses in great detail the terraforming processes which would be needed to accomplish this and to furnish the valley with a river and breathable atmosphere.

 

For me, the really brilliant touch is his suggestion that the inhabitants are placed on the side of the valley nearest to the sun-side , sheltered by towering clifs behind them and lit only by the reflected sunlight from the opposite valley cliffs, which would always be in direct sunlight. Thus we have a land always in twilight , but with a bright sunlit land always visible across the river .

The book contains a great deal more, including the speculation that mass abductions of people from the Earth took place in the twelfth century . He goes on to present a theory that the authorities in Europe at the time had knowledge of this activity , and that such alien activity was intimately bound up with the crusades and later, the knights Templar. Duncan also goes on to speculate as to what use the aliens might have had for such abductions and works out in detail the ecology and possible technological possibilities of this valley-world.

“ Children from the sky”, although not an easy read is an exhaustive and ingenious speculation  which combines the discipline of science with the imaginative extrapolation of the sci-fi writer.  Skipper prossitt

 

15 July 2017

“Children from the sky “ was published in 2012 by Duncan Lunan, astronomer and science writer. The book is illustrated by Sydney Jordan with whom Duncan has collaborated on several of the later Jeff Hawke stories. It can be best described as an elaborately researched speculation on the truth behind a medieval mystery.   In some ways it reminds me of a typical Hawke story in that it starts off in a quiet sleepy village in 12^th century Suffolk,   and ends up dealing with intersteller travel , alien terraforming and the abduction of humans for experimental purposes.

The medieval tale of the Green children of Woolpit is the starting point for Duncan’s investigations.   Two children appeared , apparently from nowhere, in the village of Woolpit   on an autumn day in 1173. Apprehended by the locals, the children, a boy and a girl, spoke a strange language , were green in colour and wore strange clothes of unknown material. At first they would eat none of the food offered to them and eventually would consume only green beans. The boy died after a short time but the girl thrived   and eventually learned to speak the local language. She told how she and the boy came from a world which was forever in twilight but from which a sunlit land could nonetheless be seen in the distance. Duncan has sifted through the encrustation of legend and myth which has inevitably grown about the story over the centuries and has gone back to the original chroniclers who first mentioned this odd event. The first part of the book deals largely with tracing the characters mentioned by the chroniclers and the historicity of the green girl herself which he has established convincingly. The research is meticulous but I think Duncan’s editors could have served him better by putting some of the genealogical research in a separate appendix which would have made the narrative thread a little easier to follow. Nonetheless the theme is exhaustively researched and key protagonists and places are convincingly identified. Having established the Dramatis personae he then goes on the speculate on what the story might mean.

Duncan’s arguments are subtle and complex and I cannot do them justice in such a short piece. But briefly , he has taken all the evidence of the story , the mysterious appearance , the strange clothing and language , the description of the childrens’ world, together with other significant events from the period and from this has constructed an ingenious hypothesis as to what all it might mean, a theory involving a matter transmitter and the terra-forming and colonization ( by abducted humans) of another planet by alien intelligences .   Duncan himself writes (p.399) “ I’m not saying that this did happen; only that it might have happened, and wouldn’t it be interesting if it did”.

I will briefly summarise these latter ideas in part two.

 

“ Children from the sky” is not an easy read but is well worth the effort. As stated above the research is painstaking and the clever speculation is immensely intriguing . It must be regarded as the definitive work on the subject.

Published by Mutusliber it is available from Amazon and other outlets.

ISBN -13: 978-1-908097.   Skipper Prossitt