Yesterday And Tomorrow

In our common experience of lived time, we can look either back to all our yesterdays or forwards to all our tomorrows. Obviously, as we get older, there is more of the former and less of the latter. Poul Anderson's works celebrate beginnings and endings. Manse Everard "...had entered something new and exciting..." (Time Patrol, p. 13) when he joined the Time Patrol. The theme of the series is innocence lost but there is also the glorious future of the Danellians.

In the Technic History, there are beginnings:

The Young Flandry Trilogy;

The Trouble Twisters (a shorter "Young Falkayn" trilogy);

"The world's great age begins anew..."

- and endings:

van Rijn is already old in his first story;

Mirkheim is all about the ends of careers and of an era.

At the end of the first encounter between Dominic Flandry and Aycharaych, the latter says:

"'There will be more tomorrows. Tonight let us enjoy our truce.'"

-"Honorable Enemies," p. 302.

Here, near the beginning of a series, one continuing villain anticipates many future encounters with the series hero although in fact they will meet in only two further instalments.