Poul Anderson's Technic History is not linear but somehow dynamic. Sub-series proliferate and overlap: League, van Rijn, Falkayn, trader team, with Adzel and Ivanhoe off-shoots .Nearly every one-off instalment is a proto- (potential) series. Many one-off characters could have become series characters. I need hardly list the names. Reflecting on the connections between any two parts of the History, we remember other connections and wind up thinking about the whole History but always seemingly from a new perspective. The series never becomes just a static list of titles. In fact, we never read the full list of forty three titles except in the Chronology where they are surrounded by other information. A Wellsian future history, fictitious historical text, could be written about the Solar Commonwealth, the Terran Empire, the Domain of Ythri, the Dispersal of Ymir, the Roidhunate of Merseia, the Realm of Gorrazan, the Betelgeusean System, Hermes, Dennitza, Aeneas, the Commonalty etc. A step has already been taken in this direction with the contributions of Hloch and other commentators. No discussion ever exhausts all the possibilities. Is this true of any other future history?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree it's a pity Anderson never either pub. a Wellsian fictional history or added appendices to the Technic series like Tolkien's famous appendices to THE LORD OF THE RINGS (esp. Appendix A). Andersoinian fan will have to make do with your blog pieces or some my own guest articles, such as my "The Imperial Gardener," "The Widow of Georgios," "God and Alien in Anderson's Technic Civilization," etc.
Ad astra! Sean
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