Multiple Perspectives

Any future history requires multiple perspectives. Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization is particularly rich in this respect.

Anderson, like any competent writer, controls narrative point of view. Thus, whereas Dominic Flandry is the viewpoint character of any passage featuring Flandry, except once when he is seen by a native of the planet Talwin, Nicholas van Rijn is only ever described as seen by someone else. In "The Master Key," a one-off first person narrator describes a small social gathering hosted by van Rijn.

Although the host's quivering body-mass is visibly and audibly present, van Rijn listens attentively while two men recall their mysterious experiences on another planet, then solves the mystery. The story has five layers:

the narrator;
the narrator's friend;
the friend's son;
the son's ensign;
the son's and ensign's employer, van Rijn.

Adzel is introduced in a first person narrative by a fellow student on Earth. Although the core of "The Problem of Pain" is a third person account of Peter Berg's ordeal on the planet Gray, the story begins and ends with a first person account by the colleague in whom Berg had confided.

Mirkheim is an excellent political novel not least because its diverse characters express every conceivable political response to the upheavals that they experience. There are aristocrats, democrats, social campaigners, pragmatists, bureaucrats, conservatives, corporatists, entrepreneurs and a sympathetically treated revolutionary.

Ensign Flandry presents the viewpoints of Mark Hauksberg on Terra, Max Abrams on Starkad and Brechdan Ironrede on Merseia before it introduces its title character. When Flandry and the heroine, Djana, are parted on Talwin, we read long passages from Djana's perspective. We also enter the mind of a Talwinian whose consciousness is merely that of a sea-dwelling animal before he recalls his rational personality.

The Rebel Worlds begins and ends with the viewpoint of a Didonian composite consciousness trying to recall the contact with Terrans that occurs in the body of the  novel. A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows begins and ends with a later Dennitzan celebration of Bodin's raid which occurs in the body of the novel. A Stone In Heaven begins with a contemporary Ramnuan perspective.

Fictitious introductions add yet another dimension of extra perspectives. (To be continued.)