in Heinlein's Future History, "Life-Line" and "Common Sense";
in Anderson's Psychotechnic History, "Marius" and "The Chapter Ends";
in Anderson's Technic History, "The Saturn Game" and "Starfog";
in Niven's Known Space History, "The Coldest Place" and "Safe at Any Speed."
If it is felt that "The Chapter Ends" does not fit with the Psychotechnic History, then the same point can be made by ending instead with "The Pirate." (Addendum: Not "The Pirate," The Peregrine.) The point is that so much time elapses between the beginning and end of each of these series that there is no direct connection between their opening and concluding installments. The stories, if read in isolation, give no indication that they are episodes of a single series.
Exercise: write two independent stories set in earlier and later periods, then create intermediate narratives to link them together. This is partly how the Technic and Known Space future histories did get written.
An sf author could write a story while imagining that its events occur in the remote future of his existing future history series yet presenting no internal evidence to inform his readers of this common historicity, the point being that, with the passage of a sufficiently long period of time, there are no longer any memories or records to link events together. In the Technic History, readers of the entire series recognize the Kirkasanters, contacted in "Starfog," as the descendants of the much earlier Aenean exiles although none of the characters are aware of this connection.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
"The Pirate" is a better, more satisfactory concluding story for the Psychotechnic tales than "The Chapter Ends."
And the more fact the Ramger Daven Laure mentioned the Polesotechnic League and the Empire in "Star Fog" shows many people still had some knowledge of earlier interstellar history even four or five thousand years later.
Sean
Kaor, Paul!
I don't think a reader would necessarily recognize the Kirkasanters as descendants of the Aenean exiles; from internal evidence, they don't have to be. At least according to what I recall from Sandra Miesel, some readers did make the connection, and Anderson went along with it.
Best Regards,
Nicholas D. Rosen
Kaor, Nicholas!
I thought of that, the Kirkasanters, I mean. So I focused on how Daven Laure MENTIONED the Polesotechnic League, the Troubles, the Empire, and the Long Night to show how some people in the Commonalty still had some knowledge of early interstellar history.
I do recall how "Starfog" mentioned that the Kirkasanters had the wreck of ONE starship to study when they were finally able to build an industrial civilization after a long dark age. One of the Kirkasanter characters even speculated her people descended from stranded bandits or renegades. Which made me think one of Hugh McCormac's ships either got lost from the main refugee flotilla or there was a quarrel and they took off on their own. That's how I think some readers of PA were able to suggest to him the Kirkasant colony descended from the McCormac rebels.
Regards! Sean
Sean,
The concluding installment would be not "The Pirate" but THE PEREGRINE. See the Addendum in the post. I expect to post more about the conclusion of the Psychotechnic History.
Paul.
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