Slowing Down

I am slowing down. Although I can still with pleasure reread passages from the Poul Anderson works in my possession, it is less easy to find new things to write about them - although the mere passage of time will allow a fresh approach. I have yet to acquire:

the NESFA Collection Volumes 2 to 5;
Multiverse;
any further collections or anthologies that may be planned (?)

- so there will be more to post although not immediately.

Meanwhile, I remain impressed by the fact, noted recently, that, whereas Robert Heinlein's original Future History comprises five, or just four and a half, volumes with no series characters to speak of, Anderson's Technic History, over three times as long, introduces one of its three main continuing characters with an entire trilogy of novels.

Further, the Young Flandry Trilogy is preceded by, and builds on, an already complete future history, mainly the Rise and Decline of the Polesotechnic League but, before that, interplanetary exploration and the Grand Survey and, after it, the joint human-Ythrian colonization of the planet Avalon, the Time of Troubles, the early Terran Empire and the Terran War on Avalon.

Also, Flandry himself does not come onstage until Chapter Four and is even believed to have died in action. Before his appearance:

the Terran Emperor Georgios has a Birthday, celebrated throughout his realm;

on Terra, Lord Markus Hauksberg, Viscount of Ny Kalmar, Second Minister of Extra-Imperial Affairs, and Lady Hauksberg attend a party at the Coral Palace, where they are received by Crown Prince Josip, the Imperial Heir;

Hauksberg plots beneath the Palace with Lord Advisors of the Policy Board;

on Starkad, Commander Max Abrams, Imperial Naval Intelligence Corps, confers with the greenskin cinc, Fodaich Runei, and catches a Merseian spy;

on Merseia, Brechdan Ironrede, Hand of the Vach Ynvory and Protector of the Roidhun's Grand Council, confers with his Heir, Elwych, on a terrace of their hereditary seat, Castle Dhangodhan.

A rich text, indeed.