Monday 27 May 2013

Reorganizing The Technic History

The first three volumes of Baen Books The Technic Civilization Saga by Poul Anderson, compiled by Hank Davis, are called:

The Van Rijn Method
David Falkayn: Star Trader
Rise Of The Terran Empire

The first two titles are unhelpful because both of those characters are in both of those volumes and the third title is questionable because the League still exists in the first half of the volume and the Empire does not exist until the concluding two items in the volume. In accordance with recent posts on this blog, I suggest that these volumes, with a slight re-arrangement of contents, could instead be called:

Rise Of The Polesotechnic League
Decline Of The Polesotechnic League
Rise Of The Terran Empire

or, more succinctly:

League: Rise
League: Decline
League And Empire

Previously, I agreed with seven volumes for the entire History but disagreed with volumes of uniform length, suggesting instead that the concluding three Dominic Flandry novels would make sense as a single volume to be called Children Of Empire and that the seventh volume could be a much shorter After The Empire containing no Flandry items.

However, I now think that my idea for the fifth volume might be too long. Also, it would include disparate materials and should therefore be split into a very short Outposts Of Empire, to contain only "Outpost of Empire" and The Day Of Their Return, and the shorter Flandry works collected as Flandry And Empire. The existing fourth volume, Young Flandry, would remain as it is.

This list of eight titles would more clearly display the historical development in the series.

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