Beginnings And Endings ( A Familiar Theme)

Poul Anderson's Technic History began with Ythri, in "Wings of Victory," until "The Saturn Game" was added so that now the History begins with the end of the Chaos although The Earth Book Of Stormgate still begins with Ythri. As in some other series, there are two beginnings. The Technic History ends with the discovery, in "Starfog," of descendants of rebels expelled by Dominic Flandry in The Rebel Worlds. Thus, there are some long term historical continuities - very long term: it is down to consecutive readers to recognise that the Kirkasanters must be descended from the exiled Aeneans. So far, this summary of beginnings and endings has made no reference to that most prominent of Technic History phenomena, the Polesotechnic League. The League is founded centuries after the Chaos and dissolved millennia before the discovery of Kirkasant. However, Daven Laure in "Starfog" summarizes four historical periods, more for our benefit than for his:

"'...the League, the troubles, the Empire, its fall, the Long Night...'"

-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 709-794 AT p. 722 -

- and then brings the narrative up-to-date by referring to his own period, that of the Commonalty.

That single phrase, "the League," stands for the sixteen instalments featuring Nicholas van Rijn and his contemporaries. The phrase, "the Empire," stands for seventeen instalments featuring not only Dominic Flandry and his contemporaries but also, before them, two earlier generations. There is one story each for "the troubles" and "the Long Night." That still leaves three instalments at the beginning, two in the middle and three at the end of the History.

It is ironic that the larger than life van Rijn and his dynamic period are referenced in just two words. Olaf Stapledon's cosmic history, Star Maker, refers in a single sentence to the Martian invasion of Earth and to the human colonisations of Venus and Neptune that had formed major sections of his future history, Last And First Men. The Technic History is populated by individuals, not just by species.