Heh! That one—the “Arcturians”—is another old favorite, but a little digging awhile back revealed something interesting: they may be a reference to an old Heavy Metal comic, “The Long Tomorrow,” written by Dan O’Bannon, which served as an inspiration for several cyberpunk and sci-fi works.
An Arcturian actually appears in said comic (which you can see online, with minimal searching—it’s very NSFW), and seems to answer a whooole lot of questions.
By which I meant, Dunsany does evocative descriptions extremely well, which sometimes makes up for the total lack of characters and plot in his stories.
Our planet Ygam possesses a single satellite, Fantastic Planet. We utilize this uninhabited planet for meditation. Ygam is divided into several Uvas. Two of the Uvas, Strom and Yot are naturally symmetrical. Among the other Uvas are Tanik, the largest. It is completely covered by blue asconic masses, which cause extreme temperature variations, from 8 to 243 likas, and is therefore inaccessible to riprocal exploitation. The Uva of Goham is dominated by an inland fepular sea, which stabilizes the epanic at about 25 likas. Anchor blocks counteract the the process of pontacrebation, while Omalian Globes regularize the pressure. All Uvas undergo a cycle of 3 vestular seasons of unequal duration.
Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the after-bulge of the tranship. One claw dug into the meters-thick armor of pure neutronium, then another. Its terrible xmexlike snout locked on. Its zymolosely polydactile tongue crunched out, crashed down, rasped across. Slurp! Slurp! At each abrasive stroke the groove in the tranship’s plating deepened and Qadgop leered more fiercely. Fools! Did they think that the airlessness of absolute space, the heatlessness of absolute zero, the yieldlessness of absolute neutronium, could stop QADGOP THE MERCOTAN? And the stowaway, that human wench Cynthia, cowering in helpless terror just beyond this thin and fragile wall…
The reason the Kessel run is mumbo jumbo is because it uses parsecs as a measure of time, when in fact a parsec is a measure of distance. Lightyears are also commonly used as a measure of time, when they are a measure of distance.
Itzamna, spirit of early mist and showers.
Ixtab, goddess of ropes and snares.
Ix Chel, the spider web, catcher of morning dew.
Zooheekock, virgin fire patroness of infants.
Odziz, the master of cold.
Kukupuket, who works in fire.
Ixtabdoom, she who spits out precious stones.
Ixchunchan, the dangerous one. Ah Pook, the destroyer.
