Tales Of The Flying Mountains And The Earth Book Of Stormgate

I get blown off course. Longer term, I am reading SM Stirling's Emberverse series to blog about it. Meanwhile, I am tackling Alan Moore's mammoth Jerusalem over on the Personal and Literary Reflections blog. On this blog, a combox discussion has diverted us onto Poul Anderson's Tales Of The Flying Mountains.

(i) The Earth Book is one volume of a future history whereas Tales is a complete future history.

(ii) The Earth Book collects twelve previously published works whereas Tales collects seven works, only four of them published previously.

(iii) In both works, interstitial material extends and enhances the fictional history.

(iv) Hloch, editing the Earth Book, introduces the collection and each individual installment whereas, in Tales, the Prologue, Interludes and Epilogue recount discussions by the Advisory Council on how to teach history to new generations in the spaceship Astra.

(v) In both works, Anderson develops Robert Heinlein's original idea of a "future history."