A Parallel With Heinlein II

D.D. Harriman is the title character of "The Man Who Sold The Moon," thus also of The Man Who Sold The Moon, the opening volume of Robert Heinlein's Future History. Nicholas van Rijn is the title character of Trader To The Stars, the first collection in Poul Anderson's Technic History, and also of The Man Who Counts, the first novel in the Technic History. Both Harriman and van Rijn are entrepreneurs. Harriman gets mankind into space and van Rijn, in his different timeline, exploits some of the possibilities when mankind is in space.

Jetman Rhysling is not a title character but is connected to a title. He writes and sings the song, "The Green Hills of Earth." That song's title became the title of the short story about Rhysling and thus also became the title of the second collection in the Future History. Rhysling himself became the Blind Singer of the Spaceways, thus a prominent successor of Harriman albeit in a completely different walk of life. A future history series has to display every aspect of  future societies.

Harriman, van Rijn and Rhysling remain important sf characters despite the passage of decades since their stories were first published. Poul Anderson beautifully brought together the Future History and the Technic History with other fictional universes when van Rijn, Rhysling and many others were seen in his Old Phoenix, the inn between the universes.

My mind, if no one else's, returns to comparisons between the classic future history series whenever current rereading reveals a particular parallel, in this case one that I had not noticed before.