17, 16 Or 7

See 17 Or 7.

I still like that earlier, not-quite-complete, 17-volume version of Poul Anderson's Technic History, although the situation is slightly more complicated even than that. When I say "17 volumes," the last 2 of these would be:

16. The Long Night, containing "The Star Plunderer," "Outpost of Empire," "A Tragedy of Errors, "The Sharing of Flesh" and "Starfog."

17. Let The Spacemen Beware! (The Night Face).

(Or maybe these two volumes should be presented the other way around.)

However, there was also a The Night Face and Other Stories, containing, after an Introduction, "Starfog," ""The Sharing of Flesh," "A Tragedy of Errors" and The Night Face. (See here.) This would reduce the 17 volumes to 16 but would also exclude "The Star Plunderer" and "Outpost of Empire" as well as "The Saturn Game" and "Sargasso of Lost Starships."

The 17-volume version comprises:

2 collections
2 novels
2 companion volumes
9 Flandry period volumes
2 later volumes

The 2 opening collections are formally similar in that the first, Trader To The Stars, comprises three stories about van Rijn whereas the second, The Trouble Twisters, comprises three about Falkayn. However, van Rijn, like Poirot, begins his series already old and successful enough to retire (if he had wanted to) whereas the three stories about Falkayn present three distinct steps or stages in this character's early career. Another anomaly is that the second of the three van Rijn stories is preceded and introduced by a long extract from the earliest published van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," which is not included in the collection. Here is an early indication that, although some interconnected stories are starting to be gathered together, we are not being told the whole story as yet.

The 2 novels, Satan's World and Mirkheim, are equally about van Rijn and about his trader team led by Falkayn. Further, Mirkheim presents the beginning of the end of the Polesotechnic League. Thus, the four volumes so far might be regarded as a complete tetralogy.

The two companion volumes are the novel, The People Of The Wind, and the collection, The Earth Book Of Stormgate. The novel is a sequel to the Polesotechnic League series because it features the planet Avalon centuries after Falkayn had founded a joint human-Ythrian colony on that planet. If we are reading the Technic History in this order, then this is our first encounter with Ythrians. The Earth Book is a companion volume to the novel because:

its interstitial passages are written by an Avalonian Ythrian;

four of its twelve stories cover first human contact with Ythri, Ythrian-human exploration of Avalon and two early stages of the settlement of the latter planet;

Stormgate is an Ythrian "choth" on Avalon.

The blurb on the front cover of the Earth Book (New York, 1979) rightly proclaims that this volume:

"Spans, illuminates and completes the magnificent future history of the Polesotechnic League."

Thus, we read:

an account of the student days on Earth of Adzel, later a member of the trader team;

"Margin of Profit";

two other works featuring van Rijn;

two other stories about the League;

the pivotal account of how the trader team saved Merseia, later the mortal enemy of that same Terran Empire that fails to annex Avalon in The People Of The Wind;

how the trader team discovered Mirkheim, causing a rift between van Rijn and Falkayn.

Having read beyond the period of van Rijn and Falkayn, we get these characters back again when Hloch, the Earth Book editor, publishes previously uncollected stories. This aspect of the History is lost when the entire series is collected in chronological order of fictitious events in The Technic Civilization Saga.