Stepping Stones And Patterns

20 Sept, 2014: This kind of Internet self-publishing (blogging) makes it possible to revise posts after they have been published. In the present post, I tried to show, first, how the events in Poul Anderson's fictitious history are interconnected and, secondly, how often certain key characters contribute to the course of events. I have thought of further connections and will now add more.

Tracing the major lines of development in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization reveals a pattern.

We see -

(I) van Rijn as a Master Merchant,
Adzel, a Wodenite convert to Mahayana Buddhism, as a student,
Falkayn as an apprentice on Ivanhoe,
Falkayn as a journeyman for van Rijn and
later events on Ivanhoe -

- before we see Falkayn and Adzel working in a team for van Rijn and, later, a Wodenite convert to Jerusalem Catholicism;

(II) van Rijn's factor outwitting the Baburites on Suleiman,
Falkayn discovering Mirkheim and
Vixenites planning to build weather stations with their share of the wealth from Mirkheim -

- before we see the Babur War for Mirkheim and, later, Flandry in a Vixenite weather station;

(III) interplanetary exploration,
discovery of Ythri,
Ythrian-human exploration of Gray/Avalon,
van Rijn's belated arrival at Mirkheim in an Ythrian spaceship,
human and Ythrian colonization of Avalonian islands led by Falkayn,
later colonization of an Avalonian continent and
proclamation, then expansion, of the Terran Empire -

- before we see the Terran Imperial War on Avalon and, later, an Avalonian Ythrian spy for both Ythri and Terra exposing a Merseian plot on Aeneas;

(IV) Falkayn saving Merseia,
Merseian mercenaries working for Babur and
the Merseian Roidhunate expanding -

- before we see the Roidhunate as a threat to the Terran Empire in Flandry's time;

(V) Freehold, Atheia and Kraken as colony planets in the Terran Empire -

- before we a see a Krakener woman hunting her Atheian husband's killer with neo-Freeholder techniques in the post-Imperial period;

(VI) Flandry exiling Aenean rebels and 
the aftermath of the Aenean rebellion -

- before we see a New Vixenite man helping the rebels' descendants in a later interstellar civilization.

I leave it to the interested reader to count how many times particular individuals, races and planets contribute to the History.