Learning

Poul Anderson learned while writing his Technic History and I have learned from some of these posts about the Technic History while writing them. The History grew over three and a half decades and was not even recognized as a future history series for the first decade. It grew into a Heinlein-model future history without having been planned as such. Its philosophical rationale was not preconceived but was discovered while the series was being written. John K. Hord's theory made sense of:

the decline of the Polesotechnic League;
the transition from League to Empire;
the changes in the Empire during Flandry's lifetime;
the almost inevitable Fall of the Empire;
the possibility of free growth in post-Imperial history.

I have not finished posting about the Technic History but am still revisiting the character of Nicholas van Rijn who appears in ten of the forty three installments of the History. His character is consistently presented but new details are still there to be found like throwing crockery. The planet discovered in the van Rijn story, "Hiding Place," is later named Vanrijn, (scroll down) as we learn in the Dominic Flandry novel, The Rebel Worlds. There is no end to the History's solidity and internal consistency.