(i) The hyperdrive; the Alderson Drive.
(ii) The Breakup; the Great Exodus.
(iii) The Solar Commonwealth; the CoDominium.
(iv) Falkayn; Falkenberg.
(v) The Time of Troubles; the Great Patriotic Wars.
(vi) The Principate phase of the Terran Empire; proclamation of the Empire of Man by Leonidas I of Sparta.
(vii) Civil war; Secession Wars.
(viii) The Dominate phase; proclamation of the Second Empire by Leonidas IV of Sparta.
(ix) Isolated colonized planets like Altai and Makassar.
(x) Fall of Empire, Long Night and later civilizations; no equivalents as yet.
Having enjoyed the Technic History, but also reread it several times by now, it is good to find something similar and enjoyable. Of the CoDominium History volumes that I have read so far, my definite favorite is King David's Spaceship.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Commenting on the points you listed:
i. Agree.
ii. Again, I agree. Except the Technic History had nothing like "BuReloc" tasked with forcibly deporting millions of people from Earth to the new colonies.
iii. Agree, with the caveat that the DoDominium was shakier and shorter lived than the Commonwealth.
iv. Not sure, I can see why or how Falkayn parallels Falkenberg. But the latter was a professional soldier, not a trader.
v. Agree. I would have added what I think was called the "Unification Wars," during which Sparta came to dominate the known galaxy after the collapse of the CoDominium in the century before the First Empire was proclaimed.
vi. I think you erred here. The Principate Phase of Anderson's Terran Empires includes the period from its foundation by Manuel I to the death of Josip III.
vii. I thought you had erred here, then I recalled how the Secession Wars had not immediately destroyed Pournelle's First Empire.
viii. Disagree. The Dominate Phase refers to the later centuries of Anderson's Terran Empire, after the death of Flandry. And Leonidas IV of Sparta seems to have thought himself founding a distinctly new state, altho in sucession to the First Empire.
ix. Agree.
x. Agree. We don't see a sharp and clear parallel in Pournelle's CoDominium timeline to Anderson's Fall of the Terran Empire and Long Night. Followed by successors like the Allied Planets and the Commonalty.
Sean
Sean,
Thank you for such a detailed, analytic response.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I'm glad you enjoyed my comments, and thought them useful. I've thought of another both timelines have: the Technic History has "antisenescence," which could extend a person's good health and vigor till about age 100/110. The CoDominium series also has a life extending treatment (I forget what it was called) that could extend a person's life as long as about 130/40 Earth years.
Sean
Sean,
That is another parallel.
I find that Flandry says he is living not in the Dominate phase but in the interregnum between the two phases (FLANDRY'S LEGACY, p. 74).
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I wonder if anything like Anderson/Pournelle's life extending treatments might actually be possible someday? Who knows!
Exactly! I'm sure it was Chunderban Desai who explained to Flandry in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS that they were living in the "anarchic" or interregnum phase of the Terran Empire. A period when the Empire would be ESPECIALLY at risk of both civil wars and barbarian invasions (or open attacks from Merseia). It would be precisely analogous to what historians called the "crisis" of the third century Roman Empire after the assassination of Alexander Severus in AD 235 (when the Empire suffered half a century of civil and foreign wars and near total internal collapse).
And of course Desai was basing his analysis on the work of John Hord (whose analysis on how civilizations rose and fell or even recovered was accepted and used by Poul Anderson).
Sean
Sean,
It was Desai.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
As I thought was the case! And it's amusing to think of Desai (or Aycharaych!) coming across Poul Anderson's long forgotten essay "Concerning Future Histories" (1979) during their researches.
Sean
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