What To Read

(Regular blog readers might prefer to skip past posts displaying your friendly neighborhood blogger's particular obsessions. Themes like the Anderson novel that I am currently rereading are not forgotten but neither are they prioritized. In fact, I might be interested to test the limits, if any, of my own enthusiasm for posting about a favored topic.)

I cannot be alone in my fascination with the structure and solidity of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, unique among sf future history series. Within the Technic History, one novel and eleven shorter narratives together with new fictional introductory passages comprise the magnificent The Earth Book Of Stormgate although this single volume contains less than a third of the total number of forty three installments, including ten or more novels, depending on what length of narrative we categorize as a novel.

By contrast, Robert Heinlein's original five-volume Future History was composed of twenty two installments, including two novels. Thus, Heinlein's entire Future History can be collected in at most two omnibus volumes whereas Baen Books' comprehensive The Technic Civilization Saga, compiled by Hank Davis, is complete in seven omnibus volumes, incorporating the entire contents of the Earth Book in their correct chronological relationship to the remaining thirty one installments. Thus, the interrupted Earth Book ends at the midpoint of The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume III, although the perspective of its fictional introductions is provided by The People Of The Wind, the concluding installment to be collected in Volume III. Volumes I-III are like an extended and completed Earth Book although they still remain less than half of the Technic History.

Anyone who has seen an sf film and wants to check out some prose sf would do well to read The Technic Civilization Saga from beginning to end. In fact, if you can get them, read in this order:

Heinlein's Future History;
Anderson's Psychotechnic History;
Anderson's Technic History;
Larry Niven's and other authors' future histories.

For time travel, read at least The Time Machine by HG Wells and Time Patrol by Poul Anderson.

Compare and contrast:

Wells' elaborate hand-crafted Time Machine with Anderson's mass-produced, streamlined timecycles;

Wells' Morlocks and Eloi with Anderson's Danellians;

Well's hints at "anachronism and utter confusion" with Anderson's handling of subtle time travel paradoxes;

Wells' nineteenth century starting point with the Time Patrollers' visits to the nineteenth century;

Well's exploration of the future with, in this series, Anderson's explorations of many historical periods;

the Time Traveler's invention of his machine in the author's present with the arrival of Time Patrol recruiters from the remote future;

Wells' single short novel about an individual time traveler with Anderson's long series about a massive organization.