Avalonians Learn Their History

In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, we read:

about Nicholas van Rijn in Trader To The Stars;

about David Falkayn in The Trouble Twisters;

about both in Satan's World and Mirkheim;

and about the antecedents and origins of the Avalonian colony in The Earth Book Of Stormgate.

The series progresses and broadens out instead of remaining focused on a single individual.

The Avalonians learn about van Rijn and Falkayn in reverse order. They already knew about Falkayn because he had founded their colony but, in the Earth Book, they must be informed or at least reminded that Falkayn had been a protege of van Rijn. This explains why Hloch, editing the Earth Book, includes within it the first van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit." The real world reason why "Margin of Profit" had not been included in Trader To The Stars, although it was quoted there, was that its text had to be revised to make it consistent with the rest of the Technic History.

Hloch writes:

"You may well be surprised to learn that on numerous other worlds, it is [van Rijn] who lives in folk memory, whether as hero or rogue."

-Poul Anderson, INTRODUCTION MARGIN OF PROFIT IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 135-136 AT p. 136.

This is a timely reminder not to Hloch's Avalonian readers but to Anderson's Terrestrial readers that the history which is known to us is not automatically transparent to subsequent generations.