Established Characters

A series of novels set in successive decades of the twentieth century shows its readers several generations of one or more families - one exception being the novels of Dornford Yates, too appalled by modern decadence to allow his characters to procreate. Poul Anderson's Technic History presents four successive generations of Falkayns as well as some other family interactions. However, this series, a future history, covers not just decades but centuries and millennia. English becomes Anglic which becomes a dead language. Languages last longer than four generations of a single family!

Anderson earned the right to refer to his established characters when introducing a new edition of a novel. Sf readers understand when, introducing The Night Face, its author tells them that:

"...Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn, Christopher Holm, Dominic Flandry, and quite a few more characters lived in its past."

-Poul Anderson, The Night Face IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 541-660 AT INTRODUCTION, p. 543.

 

(David Falkayn marries van Rijn's granddaughter and Christopher Holm marries their descendant, Tabitha Falkayn.)

 

Well known fictional characters are referred to in later works of fiction, e.g., Sherlock Holmes in several works by Anderson. However, uniquely (I think), Lewis Carroll concludes Alice in Wonderland first by listing the White Rabbit etc as if they were already familiar characters, then by returning to "dull reality" and finally by referring to Wonderland itself as a "dream...of long-ago." Carroll looks forward to someone looking back...

 

We appreciate cross-reference and self-reference in works of fiction but Carroll, who was appreciated by Anderson, does something special.