Introductions

(I might see the new Star Trek film, Into Darkness, with burning buildings instead of the Enterprise on its posters, but meanwhile I am appreciating a much better and more substantial future history series here on this blog.)

Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization can be divided into two long periods. The first period extends from exploration of the Solar System, including Saturn, in the mid-twenty first century until the war between the Terran Empire and the colonized planet of Avalon in the twenty ninth century. The second period begins perhaps two centuries later with the birth of Dominic Flandry and ends, several millennia later, with the return to civilization of descendants of rebels expelled from the Terran Empire by Flandry.

Thus, the Empire spans both periods although it is long fallen and replaced by other forms of interstellar organization by the time of the exiles' return. The Earth Book Of Stormgate covers almost the entirety of the first period. Although it ends with the colonization of the Avalonian continent in the twenty sixth century and thus stops short of the founding of the Terran Empire in the twenty seventh century, its interstitial material refers to the Terran-Avalonian war. Thus, The People Of The Wind, about that war, both ends the first period of the History and generates the narrative framework for the Earth Book.

The Earth Book begins with first contact between human beings and Ythrians, ends with the independence of the joint human-Ythrian colony, Avalon, and is compiled by an Avalonian Ythrian. Ythrians play a lesser role in the second period: the Imperial era is dominated by Terrans and Merseians; in the post-Imperial period, we learn only of human beings - and only of populations that are a long way from Terra, in the final story in another spiral arm.

Only one story, about interplanetary exploration, precedes the Earth Book. It is introduced not, of course, by Hloch of the Stormgate Choth on Avalon, but by Francis L Minamoto's dissenting view in a report either presented to and/or published by Apollo University Communications, Leyburg, Luna, 2057. Not many dates AD are given in the History but here is one. Indeed, are there any others in the texts?

We usually skip over details like Minamoto's name when reading a story. In this case, we know of Minamoto only because extracts from his dissenting view are used to introduce the four sections, I-IV, of "The Saturn Game." Or rather, I know this because I have been interested enough to check back through the story. The characters and perspectives disclosed by Anderson's fictitious Introductions amount almost to a parallel narrative, one warranting further investigation.