Thursday 7 September 2017

Transition

How much do we know about the transition from the Wang Dynasty to the Molitors in the Terran Empire? The civil war occurs between volumes although there is a flashback in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows. This period is discussed in The Widow of Georgios. Apparently the Policy Board split on the succession. I will have to reread the relevant passages but not tonight.

Long though Poul Anderson's Technic History and, within that History, the Dominic Flandry series are, we are left with the feeling that there is a lot more that could have been recounted although Anderson would have had to devote his entire fiction writing career to this single fictional history as Tolkien almost did with his.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I'm being kept busy tonight, by you and Mr. Stirling, replying to comments and looking up appropriate texts from Anderson's works. But, I don't mind, it's fun to be fan boy sometimes! Also, I'm off from work this week, so I have time to be a geek! (Smiles)

I really should have included in my note "The Widow Of Georgios" the bit from Chapter I of A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS about the "splitting" of the Policy Board at the end of Josip's reign. Here goes: "When Josip died, and the Policy Board split on accepting his successor, and suddenly all hell let out for noon, the Gospodar declared for Hans Molitor." Plainly, something went wrong on the Policy Board, if there was a Wang prince with the RIGHT to succeed Josip. My guess is that enough members of the Board wanted to place their own candidate on the throne even if he was lower in the line of succession. Then suddenly everything fell apart!

Sean