History
Nothing is known of the pre-history of Mercury before the arrival of the Terrans. There is evidence of an ancient, long-lived race of silicon-based life-forms, but their day had passed long before the Terrans came (Shannach-The Last). The only intelligent forms of life found on Mercury were small furred humanoids, who lived a Stone-Age existence among the rocks of the Twilight Belt by hunting the rock-lizard.
The Terrans who came to Mercury were primarily involved in exploiting Mercury's rich mineral resources under the auspices of various companies, such as Mercury Metals and Mining and the similarly named (if not identical) Mercurian Metals. Few of them were adequately prepared for the rigors of the life; the brutal climate of Mercury, its swings between heat and cold, its electrical storms, and its severe exposure to solar radiation caused a terrible mortality. Terro-Mercurians tend to have ebony-black skin and dark hair, by which they can generally be recognized throughout the Solar System (Shadow over Mars; Queen of the Martian Catacombs).
Read more about this topic: Mercury In The Fiction Of Leigh Brackett
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.”
—G.M. (George Macaulay)