World Mill (also Heavenly Mill and Cosmic Mill)

[The Perilous Dreamer]

World Mill (also Heavenly Mill and Cosmic Mill), a theme suggested as recurring in Indo-European and other mythologies. It involves the analogy of the cosmos or firmament and a rotating millstone. (Proto-Indo-European religion)

[The Perilous Dreamer]

World Mill

Not mentioned at this link is The Star Mill by Emil Petaja.

Of Finnish descent, Petaja's best known works are a series of science fiction novels based on the Kalevala, the Finnish verse epic. Petaja's series brought him readers from around the world,[1] while his particular mythological approach to science fiction has been discussed in scholarly publications[2] and included in related anthologies.[3]

Emil Petaja (12 April 1915 – 17 August 2000) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer whose career spanned seven decades. He was the author of 13 published novels, nearly 150 short stories, numerous poems, and a handful of books and articles on various subjects. Though he wrote science fiction, fantasy, horror stories, detective fiction, and poetry, Petaja considered his work part of an older tradition of "weird fiction." Petaja was also a small press publisher. In 1995, he was named the first ever Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Petaja, being of Finnish descent, is best known for works making up a series based on the Kalevala, the Finnish verse epic. In each of the books which comprise the "Otava Series" – Saga of Lost Earths (Ace Books, 1966), Star Mill (Ace Books, 1966), The Stolen Sun (Ace Books, 1967), and Tramontane (Ace Books, 1967) – an Earth descendant of one of the four main heroes of the Kalevala is reborn into an avatar's role in order to re-enact adventures on Otava, the planet of origin of the Kalevala pantheon. The series brought Petaja readers from around the world; while his mythological approach to science fiction – an early example within the genre – was discussed in scholarly papers presented at academic conferences.[2] In 1979, two omnibus editions of the "Otava Series" were published by DAW Books. A fifth novel in the cycle, Return to Otava (1970), remains unpublished. Another novel unconnected with the series but related to the Kalevala is The Time Twister (Dell, 1968).