Multiple Perspectives II

Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization is immeasurably enhanced by the many fictitious introductions presenting wider perspectives on the individual works. "The Saturn Game" not only describes a psychological crisis experienced by interplanetary explorers but also intersperses this account with extracts from a later report on the crisis.

The several works originally collected as The Earth Book Of Stormgate are each introduced by the Ythrian Hloch of Stormgate Choth on Avalon. Hloch recounts the sometimes complex ways in which his sources were acquired and adapted for the Earth Book.

The introduction to Trader To The Stars not only quotes, "The world's great age begins anew..." but makes us feel that this is true. The three stories originally collected as The Trouble Twisters each have an "introduction" that is in reality a separate work centering around the mysterious "Noah Arkwright."

When Manuel Argos announces the Terran Empire, we read an introduction written from the much later perspective of a Galactic Archaeological Society and feel that this Society could have done for the Terran Empire and its successor civilizations what Hloch did for the Polesotechnic League.