Galactic Civilization

We have perhaps three sources of information about the galactic civilization that will exist long after the Terran Empire and the Long Night:

"Starfog";

Donvar Ayeghen's Introduction to "The Star Plunderer";

Michael Karageorge's Introduction to "Sargasso of Lost Starships."

It was inappropriate that The Long Night (see image) included "The Star Plunderer," about the founding of the Terran Empire, and "Outpost of Empire," set during the Imperial period, since the Long Night is precisely what happens after the Fall of the Empire.

Strictly speaking, the Long Night is the period between the Fall and the restoration of civilization. However, an Imperial might use the term more loosely just to mean anything and everything happening after the Empire. In that broader sense, the Introductions to "The Star Plunderer" and "Sargasso" are written during the Long Night. Ayeghen and Karageorge must be later even than the Commonalty described in "Starfog" because that organization serves just one spiral arm of the galaxy whereas Ayeghen, to whom Karageorge refers, is the President of a Galactic Archaeological Society.

Winston P Sanders was a pen-name of Poul Anderson and a character in Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains and now we learn that a Winston P Sanders IX is a contemporary of Ayeghen and Karageorge! However, since Karageorge's Introduction is neither written by Anderson nor even intended seriously, perhaps we should treat it with some skepticism? Fortunately (?), it does not tell us a great deal except that the history and literature of the early Empire remain well known in that remote period.

Since Ayeghen refers to the Empire founded by Manuel in "The Star Plunderer" as the First Empire and since Laure in "Starfog" reflects on strange forms of humanity in other spiral arms, we might deduce that some of those strange forms remain Imperialist?