Historical Continuities II

The reason why I keep writing posts like the preceding one is that I never cease to be impressed by the combination in Poul Anderson's Technic History of length, continuity and change. Thus, there is no direct connection between the first and forty third installments. Both describe exploration of space but of very different and distant volumes of space millennia apart.

In The Technic Civilization Saga, the Jerusalem Catholic Church is introduced in the first installment, Ythrians in the second, Avalon in the third, van Rijn and the Polesotechnic League in the fourth, Falkayn's companion, Adzel, in the fifth and Falkayn himself in the sixth while Chee Lan's home planet, Cynthia, has been very briefly described in the second and fifth. After these several characters have adventured in space and on diverse planets, society changes and history continues as already outlined.

However, this entire future history series was not planned systematically but grew organically and also features many interesting individuals appearing just once, including the central and supporting characters of several self-contained juvenile short stories written for different markets. Dominic Flandry began as the hero of a series of pulp magazine space operas but then matured into the protagonist of several novels charting the process of imperial decline. This is unique in sf.