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sessifetI've remembered a book I read in high school and I can't for the life of me remember the title or the author.
I think it may have been called Ganymede or had Ganymede in the title. The protagonist was a human space traveller. He got stranded on a planet (or possibly landed okay, but was seperated from his ship or something). The planet may have been called Ganymede.
I remember it was covered in tall grasses (or at least huge plains of them) and there were perpetual winds.
The protagonist encounters and befriends an intelligent cat-like creature with a prehensile tail. The tail has a bony hook on the end, which they use to quickly change course while hunting and to anchor themselves in the wind. One scene I remember clearly is them on a sail ship that the protagonist has constructed and the cat gets scared because of the speed. He hooks his tail into the ground while they're speeding along and he gets jerked off the platform.
There was also a cultural clash between the two of them, because the protagonist is used to scratching cats behind their ears, whereas for these creatures it is actually foreplay. Also, there was cat-on-cat sex later on in the novel. I read this between 17 and 12 years ago.
It may have been a translation into Dutch or it may have been written in it.
I think it may have been called Ganymede or had Ganymede in the title. The protagonist was a human space traveller. He got stranded on a planet (or possibly landed okay, but was seperated from his ship or something). The planet may have been called Ganymede.
I remember it was covered in tall grasses (or at least huge plains of them) and there were perpetual winds.
The protagonist encounters and befriends an intelligent cat-like creature with a prehensile tail. The tail has a bony hook on the end, which they use to quickly change course while hunting and to anchor themselves in the wind. One scene I remember clearly is them on a sail ship that the protagonist has constructed and the cat gets scared because of the speed. He hooks his tail into the ground while they're speeding along and he gets jerked off the platform.
There was also a cultural clash between the two of them, because the protagonist is used to scratching cats behind their ears, whereas for these creatures it is actually foreplay. Also, there was cat-on-cat sex later on in the novel. I read this between 17 and 12 years ago.
It may have been a translation into Dutch or it may have been written in it.
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Date: 2009-12-09 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-09 04:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-09 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-09 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-09 07:11 pm (UTC)Before the mention of sex it was sounding rather like something Andre Norton might have written, but sex tends not to feature largely in her books...
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Date: 2009-12-09 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-09 09:12 pm (UTC)To be honest I can't remember much of Decision at Doona at all, and I did have the suspicion that the word 'Ganymede' would have ruled it out anyway... :-)
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Date: 2009-12-09 11:20 pm (UTC)There's a story where a man is captured and left as a "prisioner" on a primative Kzin world. He befriends a female Kzin, and has a flying sailship sort of thing. But, my memory is hazy, and I don't remember Kzin having hooked tails.