The Turning Point

Rise Of The Terran Empire is the turning point volume of Baen Books' Technic Civilization Saga by Poul Anderson. This volume begins in the period of the Polesotechnic League - politically, the Solar Commonwealth - and ends in the Terran Empire. At the mid-point of the volume is the single story set during the Time of Troubles between the collapse of the Commonwealth and the founding of the Empire.

The six works collected in the volume comprise:

one last van Rijn/Falkayn/League novel, a sequel to the trader team series that had culminated in "Lodestar";

a juvenile short story featuring Falkayn's son and grandson on Avalon during the colonization of the islands;

a second juvenile short story about a later generation on Avalon during the colonization on the Coronan continent;

the story about the Troubles, featuring the Founder of the Empire;

a story about the early Empire;

the novel about the War between Avalon and the Empire.

All of this has paved the way for the biography of Dominic Flandry, defender of the Terran Empire, beginning in the following volume. However, each of these intermediate works also stands on its own merits and would have done so even if there had never been a Dominic Flandry series. In fact, Rise Of The Terran Empire is a particularly rich collection, even incorporating a literary contrast between the cruder earlier stories and the more sophisticated later works.