Constructing A Series

A future history series is a literary construct. A few revisions were necessary in the early period of Heinlein's Future History.

Poul Anderson's "The Moonrakers" refers back to his "The Innocent Arrival" and ends by anticipating possible human interstellar travel. Thus, this is a potential series. These two works could be collected in a single volume to be concluded by one other Anderson story that would involve interstellar travel and that would not explicitly contradict any of the events of "The Moonrakers." This should be easy enough to do. A possible candidate might be "Among Thieves" which concludes the Strangers From Earth collection. I will reread that story shortly.

The point is that "The Moonrakers" can be expected to be followed by an interstellar period and "Among Thieves" must have been preceded by an interplanetary period so there is no reason why these stories cannot be fitted together or, at least, they could be collected in one volume, leaving the reader to infer either that this is an arbitrary collection or that the anticipation of interstellar travel at the end of one story is indeed fulfilled in the succeeding story. Readers are in fact at liberty to connect stories in ways that might not have been conceived of by authors, editors or publishers. In fact, the Technic History was brought into existence by its author's whimsical linking of van Rijn's expansive period to Flandry's decadent era.