Although Aeneas is a human-colonized planet, three xenosophonts appear in The Day Of Their Return: a Merseian, a Chereionite and an Ythrian. If we are reading Poul Anderson's Technic History in chronological order of fictitious events, then we have encountered Ythrians and Merseians before. If we are reading the History in its original order of publication, then we have encountered the Chereionite, Aycharaych, in the Captain Flandry series.
The three extra-solar species in question are different from humanity and also from each other. The fact that all three of them are developed in so many instalments greatly enriches this future history series. It is good to be reminded what the Ythrians and the Merseians are like and also to see Aycharaych before his first encounter with Flandry. As the sf bookseller, Pete Pinto, told Anderson, Aycharaych deserved to return after A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows but preferably in an Aycharaych novel, not in another Flandry novel. Even if Aycharaych died on Chereion, his entire earlier life and career could have been a spin-off series. In the Platonic Ideal realm, the Technic History is endless.
2 comments:
That sense that things are happening which we aren't told is a tribute to Poul's talents!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
It was! And that might have been one of Anderson's ways of getting around the irksome word limits for his stories that he had to put up with till the 1970's.
Ad astra! Sean
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