Robert Heinlein's Future History
Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, modeled on Heinlein's
Anderson's Technic History, an unplanned Heinlein-model series
A history is a succession of events. However, at any moment in the history, many events are simultaneous. A good future history series shows both succession and simultaneity.
In Heinlein's Future History:
the six stories in Volume I span the second half of the twentieth century;
the ten stories in Volume II are set around 2000 and three uncollected stories are also set in this period;
the six installments, including two novels, in the remaining three volumes are later and successive.
The installments in Anderson's Psychotechnic History are entirely successive.
According to Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization, five works overlap in the 2420s and six in the 2430s.
2420s
"A Sun Invisible" is about Falkayn;
"The Season of Forgiveness" is about non-series characters;
the remaining three items feature van Rijn and therefore must be successive in relation to each other but can be simultaneous with the first two.
2430s
"Territory" is about van Rijn;
"The Trouble Twisters" is about the trader team and cameos van Rijn;
"Day of Burning" is about the trader team;
"The Master Key" is about van Rijn;
Satan's World is about the trader team and van Rijn;
"A Little Knowledge" is about non-series characters and refers to van Rijn.
Thus, a combination of succession and simultaneity.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And of course you are aware of how I came to be dissatisfied with Sandra Miesel's Chronology and proposed a revision of it. I do not claim to have untangled all the chronological difficulties in the listing of the Technic stories, but I do believe my suggested dates to be more accurate than those of Miesel.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I used the dates as convenient headings, not out of belief in any particular dating for the Chronology. Only "The Saturn Game" mentions any dates. 3000 is just a convenient round number for Flandry's birth year. The same applies to the dates of the post-Imperial stories.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course I agree with you! In the absent of specific dates (except once) some rounding out and guessing will be inevitable in any such chronology.
I'm vain enough to hope some future editor, again collecting the Technic Civilization stories, may see my revision of Miesel's Chronology and decide to include my dates alongside hers.
Ad astra! Sean
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