"Time Patrol" begins with Manse Everard and "Death And The Knight" ends with Everard. Thus, we know that we are reading the same series although a great deal has happened between these start and end points.
The Technic History
"The Saturn Game" describes the exploration of the Saturnian System. "Starfog" describes the exploration of an eccentrically orbiting gas-filled cluster in another spiral arm. Although we recognize the same kind of hard sf, there is no internal evidence to inform us that these stories are the opening and concluding installments of a single long future history series. A very great deal has happened in between. Two long sub-series have begun and ended and there have been several intermediate installments.
Other Future Histories
History should be like this. Stories set in Britain in 2000 BC and 2000 AD would not have any direct connection. Compare also the beginnings and endings of:
Heinlein's Future History;
Anderson's Psychotechnic History;
Niven's Known Space future history.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And if the Polesotechnic League and the Terran Empire had not been mentioned in "Starfog," that story would have been easily classified as a non series work.
And Larry Niven came to regret, as you know, coming up with the "good luck" gene in his Known Space series. It made it much harder for him to come up with interesting new story ideas. He managed to salvage the series with the MAN/KZIN WARS anthologies, inviting other SF authors to make contributions of their own. Including Poul Anderson, with INCONSTANT STAR and the posthumous "Pele."
This may well be my last comment in this blog for some time!
Sean
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