Hermes In The Empire

After finishing Poul Anderson's Mirkheim, the only way to continue reading about the planet Hermes is to skip forward to A Stone In Heaven. The first thing we notice is that the Runebergs are yet another of the several families that survive through successive periods of Anderson's Technic History.

In Mirkheim, the Runebergs were one of the ruling families of the Grand Duchy of Hermes and a member of that family was the Hermetian ambassador to the Solar Commonwealth. In A Stone In Heaven, when Hermes, like many other colonized planets, has come to be ruled by the Terran Empire, Sten Runeberg, consulting engineer and friend of Miriam Abrams, lives with his wife and child (for whom the Runebergs employ a governess) in Starfall, the Hermetian capital city.

We recognize the names of Hermes' sun, Maia, of its main spaceport, Williams Field, and of several other Hermetian locations. From a balcony of the Runeberg's mansion on Pilgrim Hill near the Palomino River, Sten and Miriam see the garden, with its daleflower and roses, trilling tilirra and blinking glowflies, and, beyond that, keeps and spires, Riverside Common, Daybreak Bay and the Auroral Ocean.

I have read A Stone In Heaven more than once not really heeding these details which are in fact strong links back to Mirkheim and yet more evidence that each of the fictitious planets in the Technic History is well realized as a solid location with distinctive features known to generations of its inhabitants.