Friday 20 November 2020

Two Ways To Write A Series

See The Two Ways Into The Technic History.

The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes IV-VII, correspond to the nine-volume Flandry Period and to one collection of four post-Flandry stories. The Flandry Period sequence, apart from one novel and one shorter work, is entirely about Dominic Flandry. A future history series that had been planned in advance would probably not have devoted just under half of its total length to a single fictional biography. However, in the Technic History, we appreciate a major series that had not been pre-planned, like Anderson's Psychotechnic History or his The Last Viking Trilogy or like Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys Tetralogy, but that grew unpredictably, like Anderson's Time Patrol series or his Maurai History.

Wherever there are two ways to do something, Anderson gives us both.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Yes,, it was unpredictable, how the Technic series developed! It sprang from Anderson whimsically throwing in a chance reference to "Polesotechnarch van Rijn" in THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS, a fold hero/villain who lived centuries before Flandry's time. This sense of unpredictability helped to give the Technic stories unexpected depth and solidity.

Ad astra! Sean