Simplicity And Complexity

We can aesthetically appreciate both simplicity and complexity. I was a James Blish fan before I became a Poul Anderson fan. I used to appreciate the fact that Blish had:

a four-volume future history, Cities In Flight;

a one-volume future history, The Seedling Stars;

a short interstellar trilogy that did not even fill a single volume.

That trilogy, "Common Time," "Nor Iron Bars" and "This Earth of Hours," has since become part of the longer but non-linear Haertel Scholium. I used to appreciate the contrast between the complexity of Cities In Flight and the simplicity of the trilogy which described two interstellar test flights and culminated with the beginning of a galactic conflict.

There is a similar contrast between Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic and Technic Histories. The former, when republished in a completer form, still begins with a volume collecting four stories. By contrast, The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, collects:

the previously uncollected "The Saturn Game";

the first seven of the twelve works previously collected as The Earth Book Of Stormgate;

the first two of the three stories previously collected as The Trouble Twisters;

the first one of the three stories previously collected as Trader To The Stars which had originally been the opening volume of the series.