The Structures Of The Three Greatest Series

See the previous post.

Poul Anderson's three greatest series, as I call them, have different sructures:

the Technic History is seven omnibus collections, as we see here again;

the Time Patrol, one omnibus collection and one long novel;

The King Of Ys, a continuous narrative in four long volumes, although I have seen an internet image of the cover for a one-volume edition.

In the Technic History, Volume III culminates in The People Of The Wind which, however, casts its shadow back over Vols I-III because the Earth Book Of Stormgate introduction to the second story in Vol I refers to the Terran War on Avalon which is eventually described in The People Of The Wind. The life time of Dominic Flandry fills three and a half volumes but this does not feel disproportionate. We want not less of Flandry but more of everything else.

After a thirteen year gap, the Time Patrol series began to grow from four short stories until eventually it filled two long volumes. I do not think that I would get into a writer whose works comprised only unconnected short stories.