Beginnings

"'Every end,' Wagoner wrote on the wall of his cell on the last day, 'is a new beginning.'"

-James Blish, Year 2018! (London, 1964), CODA, p. 156.

And that is a good opening sentence for a single-page "Coda." The words, "cell" and "last day," indicate what is to happen to Wagoner.

Not only every end but also every moment if we can see each moment as the starting point of what is to follow. Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization can boast an embarrassment of beginnings. Its first book is either Trader To The Stars or The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method. Nicholas van Rijn is the title character of both. The first story in Trader... is "Hiding Place" but the first van Rijn story is "Margin of Profit," collected in The Earth Book Of Stormgate. The first story in the Technic History was and the first story in the Earth Book is "Wings of Victory" whereas the first story in the Technic History and in The Van Rijn Method is "The Saturn Game."

Let's now dispense with where the instalments were collected because that is becoming complicated. The first published Dominic Flandry story was "Tiger by the Tail" but the chronologically earliest Flandry instalment is Ensign Flandry but the first Flandry story to mention van Rijn and thus to combine two otherwise independent series into a single future history series is "A Plague of Masters." And, finally, the last Technic History story, "Starfog," recounts a new beginning for interstellar civilization.

That is a lot of beginnings but then every moment is one.