Re-Presenting The Technic History

One fascinating feature of Poul Anderson's Technic History is the number of different ways in which it could be presented/published. I value The Earth Book Of Stormgate as a single-volume culmination of the first part of the Technic History even though this involves reading the stories out of chronological sequence, e.g., we read about how van Rijn came to Mirkheim after we have read Mirkheim. Indeed, Hloch, the fictional Earth Book editor, introduces "Lodestar" on that basis. He assumes that his readers already know about Mirkheim and that they can now be told how van Rijn had come to that planet.

Of course, Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga presents the entire series in chronological order of fictional events but also preserves Hloch's introductions which therefore sometimes anticipate later events. This is good too. The Saga is seven omnibus volumes of roughly uniform length. However, suppose the History were to be presented in chronological order but in more regular sized volumes. Thus, the first part of the History would comprise:

one collection of eight stories;

one novel, The Man Who Counts;

a second collection of six stories;

the novel, Satan's World, and two stories, "A Little Knowledge" and "Lodestar," in one volume;

the novel, Mirkheim;

a collection of four stories;

the novel, The People Of The Wind.

That alone is a substantial future history yet it would be followed by a further ten volumes.