On careful examination, each detail of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization turns out to be just right, exactly appropriate. The eleven installments collected in Volume I of Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga, compiled by Hank Davis, plant solid foundations for the pyramidally-structured future history that reaches its apex in "Starfog" at the end of Volume VII.
I have listed some of these foundations before but by no means all:
the transition from current affairs (references to mid-twentieth century psychiatry and television) to near future history;
the Jerusalem Catholic Church;
first contact with Ythri;
Captain Gray, after whom an Avalonian city will be named;
early references to Cynthian trade-routes, Wodenite hexapods, a Hermetian farm, the University of Nova Roma on Aeneas and the steppes and rings of Altai;
early exploration of Avalon;
the Ythrian Faiths, Old and New;
the League;
Adzel;
van Rijn;
David Falkayn's early career;
the planet Ivanhoe that will later join Falkayn's Supermetals Company together with Woden, some of the Cynthian trade-routes and many other planets;
the planet Diomedes that will be a source of unrest in Flandry's time;
van Rijn's relationship with the future Duchess of Falkayn's home planet, Hermes;
Emil Dalmady, some of whose children will move to Avalon with Falkayn;
the planet Babur that will wage war against Technic civilization;
bipartite intelligences, discovered by van Rijn, comparable to the tripartite intelligences studied by the Aeneans and later encountered by Flandry.
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