Sunday 16 October 2016

Beginnings

The Technic Civilization Saga, which is Baen Books' complete collection of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, begins with The Van Rijn Method, containing eleven installments, and David Falkayn: Star Trader, containing seven installments. I would prefer The History Of Technic Civilization to be the series title and:

Volume I, The Rise Of The Polesotechnic League, nine installments;
Volume II, The Decline Of The Polesotechnic League, nine installments.

The opening nine installments comprise:

an exploration trilogy - Iapetus, Ythri, Gray/Avalon;
two stories set in the same year - the first van Rijn and Adzel stories;
a Falkayn-Ivanhoe triad - Falkayn on Ivanhoe, Falkayn elsewhere, others on Ivanhoe;
a van Rijn novel.

According to the Chronology, the Polesotechnic League is founded before the third story but we receive no information about the League until the fourth and fifth stories. Having recently reread the opening van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," we will shortly reread the opening Adzel story, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson." Whereas the exploration trilogy is set entirely off Earth, the fourth and fifth stories both begin on Earth.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

A minor correction, you meant Volume 1, THE RISE OF THE POLESOTECHNIC LEAGUE, not THE RISE OF THE POLYTECHNIC LEAGUE.

The second Ivanhoe story, "The Season of Forgiveness," interests me. Not only in Poul Anderson showing us how Christianity continued to exist and AFFECT people centuries from now, but also in how that might affect non human intelligent beings. Another point Anderson was making was to warn against trying too hard to be only pragmatic and businesslike in our dealings with non humans. The danger in overlooking what they would regard as sacred AND the need for them to them realizing humans also have beliefs they consider sacred.

Sean