AUTHOR’S NOTE
When men attained interstellar travel in the early twenty-first century, they named the planets of other stars after gods of various Terran pantheons, following the analogy of their own system. Tau Ceti, a K-type star like Sol but dimmer and yellower, had its planets named for Hindu gods, the three inhabited planets of the group (reading from the star outward) becoming Vishnu, Krishna, and Ganesha, respectively. Krishna has a climate much like that of Earth; it is larger, but less dense, so that its surface-gravity is a little less though atmospheric pressure is a little greater. It is drier and smoother than Earth, having no true oceans but a lot of small seas; hence its land area is several times Earth’s.
The planet Vishnu, closer to Tau Ceti than Krishna, is hotter than Krishna, though not too hot for unprotected human beings. Osiris, Isis, and Thoth are inhabited planets of the star Procyon (Osiris having the most Earthlike surface conditions) while Thor is a planet of Epsilon Eridani.
As a result of the Third World War, the United States was reduced to a second-class power and the U.S.S.R. ceased to be a power at all. World leadership was taken over by fast-growing Brazil. Hence most early spatial exploration was done by Brazilians, and the government-owned space-transport system, the Viagens Interplanetarias, was largely Brazilian in control and personnel. The word Viagens rhymes roughly with “Leah paints”, with g as in “rouge”: vee-uh-zhainhs.
Don’t worry about pronunciation of Krishnan names, because such is the multitude of languages and dialects that almost any guess will be right in one or another. The symbols: ’, q, and gh stand for (a) a glottal stop or plosive (a cough); (b) a guttural variety of k; and (c) a uvular roll like French r. If you’re no linguist, ignore the first and pronounce the second and third as ordinary k and g. The letter á stands for ah, and final é for eh or ay. Samples: “Qarao” rhymes with “allow”, “Laiján” with “by John”, “Zerdai” with “hair-dye”, “dour” with “slower”, and “Balhib” with “Al Grebe”. “Castanhoso” is about “cas-tahn-yo-soo”; “Katai-Jhogorai”, “cat-eye jug-o’-rye”.
—L. Sprague de Camp