Van Rijn POV

I think that Dominic Flandry is usually the viewpoint character of Flandry stories whereas Nicholas van Rijn is not usually the viewpoint character of van Rijn stories? The first van Rijn story was "Margin of Profit" (Astounding, September 1956). According to the Chronology of Technic Civilization, "Margin of Profit," introducing van Rijn, and "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," introducing Adzel, are set in the same year although "Margin of Profit" is listed first.

In The Earth Book Of Stormgate, the first four stories are:

"Wings of Victory"
"The Problem of Pain"
"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson"
"Margin of Profit"

- whereas, in The Technic Civilization Saga: The Van Rijn Method, the first five stories are:

"The Saturn Game"
"Wings of Victory"
"The Problem of Pain"
"Margin of Profit"
"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson"

I prefer "...Ethnic..." before "...Margin..." because I like the idea of four whole stories before van Rijn appears. These opening stories form a solid foundation for the emerging future history.

In Robert Heinlein's Future History, the first flight to the Moon occurs in the fifth installment and the first slower than light interstellar expedition has been launched by the time of the twentieth installment;

Isaac Asimov's Robots and Empire future history begins with robots working on solar planets and testing an FTL drive in an early story;

James Blish's Cities in Flight future history begins with a novel in which interplanetary travel happens while observations on Jupiter and experiments on Earth lead to the discoveries that make FTL interstellar flight possible;

in Anderson's Psychotechnic History, interplanetary travel has begun by the second installment and slower than light interstellar expeditions have been launched by the ninth installment;

in Anderson's Technic History, faster than light interstellar travel has already started in "Wings of Victory" but "The Saturn Game," about interplanetary exploration, was written later;

Larry Niven's Known Space future history begins with interplanetary exploration;

Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history begins with faster than light interstellar travel already happening.

Thus, we observe some technological progress in future histories. I started to post about van Rijn's pov but got sidetracked onto comparing the early periods of the big seven American future histories.