Sunday 24 January 2021

From The Earth Book To Flandry's Legacy

Have we exhausted Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate for the time being? We never reach the limit of what there is to be said about such a volume, just the limit of what I find that I can say about it right now.

To recapitulate again:

the Earth Book collects twelve installments of Anderson's Technic History, including one novel;

these installments cover the period from the first Grand Survey to the early colonization of the Coronan continent on Avalon;

however, Hloch's introductions and afterword are fictitiously written even later than that, after the Terran War on Avalon;

thus, this single volume not only spans the entire Polesotechnic League period but also views League history from the perspective of the early Terran Imperial period.

From the Earth Book, the blog turns, at least for now, to The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume VII, Flandry's Legacy:

this volume collects six Technic History installments, including either two or three novels depending on where we draw the line between a novelette and a novel;

these installments cover the period from Dominic Flandry's later years to a much later and larger set of interstellar civilizations.

Thus, each of these two volumes constitutes a future history series in its own right even though it is only a small part of the Technic History

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

But, chronologically speaking, wouldn't it make sense to reread some of the middle Flandry stories collected in AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE and FLANDRY OF TERRA? Which is what I've started doing.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

Or YOUNG FLANDRY first? Of course that would make more sense but I have more recent memories of rereading earlier and middle Flandry installments. I have to come at a text reasonably fresh to find something to post about it.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Or, first, the three Young Flandry novels. I can see the desirability of letting some time go by before rereading a text, so you would be more likely to find something to comment about.

And there are now two versions of "Tiger By The Tail," "Honorable Enemies," and "Warriors From Nowhere." Stories Anderson thought necessary to revise, to better fit them into the Technic series. Some commentators might find it fruitful to compare how these versions differ from each other and whether the revisions improved the stories (my view is that they do).

Ad astra! Sean