Earth Book And Empire

I am consulting and comparing two volumes of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization:

The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979);
Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011).

Neither is or could have been the entire Technic History, which is way too long to fit into a single volume. Each presupposes the existence of other volumes and represents a different stage of the publishing history. The stages are:

publication at different times and places of disparate works not necessarily seen as connected as yet - and sometimes requiring editing before they can be fitted together;

collections of some of the shorter works - together with the novels, they begin to form a recognizable series;

the Earth Book, a unifying omnibus collection of previously uncollected works set during the first major phase of the History;

a uniform  complete edition of the entire History, of which Rise... is Volume III.

There is more to be said but no time to say it right now.