Reinterpreting Texts

When an originally independent work is incorporated into a series, its new context changes its significance. I am still discussing Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization but first I will compare it with two other bodies of work, another future history and a scriptural canon.

To begin with the lesser example, in the Foundation Trilogy, the Second Foundationers were the ultimate manipulators of civilization. Decades later, two new novels revealed two levels of manipulation beyond them! The Trilogy presented the first four centuries of a thousand-year Plan. The new novels did not progress this Plan but completely changed direction. Seldon's Plan was relegated to a subsidiary, "second best," role in relation to Robot Daneel Olivaw's machinations involving his artificially generated planetary organism, Gaia.

I do not encourage anyone to read Asimov's series in its entirety but I do draw attention first to its ideas about robotics and psychohistory and secondly to its total transformation of the significance of the original Trilogy.

(Subsidiary comments: the Mule as a rebel Gaian instead of a unique mutant does not ring true; Anderson's works of course present his versions of psychohistory, robotics and Artificial Intelligence.)

The Hebrew scriptures comprise:

the Law, a complete divine revelation;
the Prophets, historical applications of the Law;
the Writings, the remaining canonical literature, an "et cetera" section.

The Christian Bible reclassifies and reinterprets these texts, thus:

the Law, a partial and preliminary revelation;
historical books;
poetic books;
certain books still classed as "Prophets" but now interpreted as prophesying the complete revelation that is to come in the Messiah.

The texts remain the same but their significance changes: the Prophets now come not after the Law, applying the Law, but before the New Testament, prophesying the Messiah - an ingenious reinterpretation. And the Law is superseded or relegated just as the Second Foundation is by Asimov.

Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate is like a Bible. It is the history of a people who have moved to a new planet, who have had to fight and who believe that God the Hunter will stoop on them. The Earth Book collects previously published works but contextualizes and thus alters their significance. We now learn that the story about Emil Dalmady was written by his daughter on Avalon. She also wrote two other stories in the Earth Book. Christopher Holm, known to us from The People Of The Wind, also wrote three of the stories and we are informed of the circumstances in which they were written. Thus, the writing of the texts becomes part of the narrative.

When "The Star Plunderer" was published in Planet Stories, it was not yet certain that the Solar Empire founded by Manuel Argos would turn out to be identical with the Terran Empire defended by Dominic Flandry. And, when "Margin of Profit" was published a few years later, it certainly was not yet the case that Nicholas van Rijn preexisted either Argos or Flandry. Thus, when "The Star Plunderer" originally referred to extrasolar colonists, many of whom had become barbarians and had joined with savage aliens to attack Earth, there was as yet no knowledge of Hermes, Aeneas, Altai, Vixen, Dennitza, New Germania, Avalon, Esperance or Nyanza. These colonies did not go barbarian and at least one, Altai, was too remote to be affected by the Troubles.

Thus, the Troubles, while devastating for Earth and for nearby planetary systems, were not necessarily as big a problem for the whole of human space as was originally thought.