GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
Land covers just 19 percent of Brobdingnag’s surface, so the planet actually contains 29 percent less dry land than Earth, despite its larger size. Five oceans divide the land into eight major continents and numerous islands. All the continents cover less area than Earth’s Asia or Africa, and unlike Earth’s continents, all lie almost entirely within the planet’s temperate zones. Seven of the continents are gathered into three distinct groups, each group being widely separated from the others by water. The eighth continent, Tyndarus, sits in relative isolation. This geographic fact has caused distinct evolutionary patterns within the four regions. Brobdingnag’s axial inclination to its ecliptic plane of 15° makes its seasonal temperature variations less extreme than Earth’s. The planet rotates on its axis once every 14 hours, but its year stretches four Earth days longer than an Earth year. The short day reduces the extremes of daily temperature and keeps the noonday heat over most of the planet from being intolerable.