Living In Chaos

Today I have spent some time reading about conflicts on Earth Real, 2023, rather than about the Patrician System and the Terran Empire. (The difference is that fiction is enjoyable.)

At the midpoint of The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume III, Rise of the Terran Empire, Hloch closes The Earth Book of Stormgate, then Donvar Ayeghen, President of the Galactic Archaeological Society, introduces Rear Admiral John Henry Reeves' account of Manuel Argos, Founder of the Terran Empire. At a major turning point in Volume VII, Flandry's Legacy, we finish reading Poul Anderson's final account of the declining Terran Empire and turn to his single narrative set during the Long Night that follows the Fall of the Empire. Meanwhile, Anderson's readers are currently living during the Chaos that precedes the opening story of Volume I, The Van Rijn Method. Our experience can still - just - connect with this fictional future timeline. Thirty-two years separate us from "The Saturn Game." I hope to survive for at least another twenty-one years. During that time, will new space technologies ease the demand for resources and energy and permit exploration of the Solar System? - to paraphrase Sandra Miesel's introduction to her CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION.