The Beginnings And Endings Of Two Major SF Series By Poul Anderson

The Time Patrol Series (one omnibus collection of ten stories of different lengths plus one long tripartite novel)

Opening and concluding installments:
"Time Patrol" and "Death and the Knight."

"Time Patrol" begins in 1954 with Manson Everard as a thirty year old engineer, unemployed in New York. "Death and the Knight" ends in 1307 with Everard in Paris, about to return to San Francisco in 1990. However, he is older than sixty six because of time travel but has not aged visibly because of Patrol medical treatment.

Everard has become a senior Unattached agent of the Time Patrol, one of the most important agents operating in the last three millennia, has twice restored the version of reality protected by the Patrol and has begun a relationship with a younger agent, Wanda Tamberly. A very great deal has happened to Everad since the beginning of "Time Patrol."

The History Of Technic Civilization (seven omnibus volumes containing forty three works of different lengths)

Opening and concluding installments:
"The Saturn Game" and "Starfog."

"The Saturn Game" is set in the Saturnian system, mostly on Iapetus, in the twenty first century whereas "Starfog" is set in another spiral arm of the galaxy millennia later. A very great deal has happened to the human race and to many other intelligent species since "The Saturn Game."

The Two Series

In the Technic History, millennia of history have elapsed. Technic civilization has risen and fallen to be succeeded by several other civilizations. In the Time Patrol series, decades have elapsed in the twentieth century and Patrol agents have traveled throughout human history as well as prehistory. These are two contrasting fictional perspectives on history.

Somewhere in the Time Patrol series, it is stated that Earth will always be the human world - even though there is interstellar travel - whereas, in the Technic History, humanity colonizes many worlds and leaves Earth far behind in space and time.