Tuesday, 13 February 2018

Reading The Technic History

On 21 January here, I posted, not for the first time, about "The Saturn Game," the opening installment of Poul Anderson's magnificent future history series, the History of Technic Civilization. Since then, we have stayed with the Technic History, bypassing some installments but closely analyzing others. Currently, I am rereading the novel, Mirkheim, which is the first installment in Volume III (of VII) in Baen Book's omnibus collection of the series, The Technic Civilization Saga.

After that, the remaining five installments in Volume III beckon. In "Wingless," we learn that David Falkayn and his family are among the colonists on the planet Avalon but when are we first told that it was David who founded that colony? Having read the series before, we already know such fictional facts but there has to have been a first occasion when each of these facts was stated in one of the texts. Rereading to find the answers to such questions always uncovers many other fascinating details.

1 comment:

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Kaor, Paul!

One bit I recalled from MIRKHEIM was David and his wife agreeing that Earth would not be a good place for them to permanently settle down on, not when the Commonwealth was becoming more oppressive. And I think David was not sure of the desirability of living for good on even Hermes. That could easily lead him to the idea of founding a new colony.

Sean