From 1973 To 1952

Poul Anderson wrote "The Star Plunderer" as pulp magazine sf in 1952 (see image) and "Rescue on Avalon" as juvenile sf in 1973 (see recent posts), yet, in the fictional chronology of Anderson's Technic History, we turn directly from "Rescue on Avalon" to "The Star Plunderer." A century or two is supposed to have elapsed between the two stories.

Two fictional historians address us between the end of the 1973 story and the beginning of the 1952 story. First, Hloch, editor of The Earth Book Of Stormgate, signs off. Hloch has previously told us that the peripatetic historical writer, A. A. Craig, visiting Avalon during a pause in the Troubles, interviewed the aged Jack Birnam, then wrote "Rescue on Avalon" as an essentially accurate, although fictionalized, account of Jack's rescue of the Ythrian, Ayan. A "fictionalized" account means, e.g., that the conversations were not recorded at the time and have had to be imaginatively reconstructed.

Directly following Hloch, at least as the stories are presented in The Technic Civilization Saga, Donvar Ayeghen of the Galactic Archaeological Society tells us that the Memoirs of Rear Admiral John Henry Reeves, Imperial Solar Navy, might be "...pure fiction..." (Rise Of The Terran Empire, p. 325) But, even in that case, the author lived at the time and tried to present "...a true picture..." (ibid.) of the Imperial Founder who had, like Nicholas van Rijn, become a legend in his lifetime.

We feel that there is a real history of Avalon and the Terran Empire but that, in these installments at least, that history is mediated through fictionalized accounts and is not directly accessible to the reader.