Future Historical Substantiality

(I loathe this cover but Astounding, September 1956, was the issue with Poul Anderson's first Nicholas van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," in it.)

Here, I outlined an order of reading that would make "Margin of Profit" the fifth installment in Anderson's Technic History. (In the omnibus seven-volume collection, The Technic Civilization Saga, it is the fourth.) However, what I call the "Falkayn and Ivanhoe" Trilogy - Falkayn on Ivanhoe, Falkayn elsewhere, others on Ivanhoe - intervenes between that first van Rijn story and the van Rijn novel, The Man Who Counts. Thus, van Rijn does not become a series character until the ninth of the forty three installments of the Technic History. After that, two series, van Rijn and trader team, diverge and recombine and there is one other Polesotechnic League story before the History moves on to a later era in its twentieth installment, "Wingless" - my point being that, in this mega-series, Anderson achieves the kind of future historical substance or solidity that Robert Heinlein had aspired towards in his, the original, Future History.

Not only is the Technic History much longer; it is also bound together by several continuing characters who, however, are entirely absent from a significant number of installments. Regarding just van Rijn and Flandry, there are:

three installments before van Rijn's lifetime;
five between him and Flandry;
four after Flandry;
eight others in which neither appears;
a total of twenty out of the forty three.

(Falkayn is in three of the twenty.)

I frequently revisit the complexities of the Technic History because they always seem fresh at least to me. There will now follow three posts addressing some obscurer details.