Narnia, Nicholas van Rijn And The Shield Of Time

Alliteration, assonance and an attention-grabbing post title, I hope. Let us remember reading these three imaginative series and also find some connections between them. (In fact, the mere title of this post evokes many other such works, for example, SM Stirling's Conquistador with its Gates between parallel Earths.)

The Chronicles of Narnia...
...comprise seven juvenile novels by CS Lewis about magic and visits to other worlds - as in some other works by Poul Anderson, even including one that cameos van Rijn! The first four Narnia books form a linear sequence whereas the last three add a beginning, a middle and an end to the series. More on this below.

Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn series...
...is incorporated into the first three of the seven omnibus collections that comprise The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I being entitled The Van Rijn Method.

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series...
...is complete in one omnibus collection and one long novel.

Reading Orders
Since these two Anderson series have been omnibused, which would be the best way to omnibus Narnia: a single volume collecting all seven novels (they are reasonably short) in the chronological order of fictitious events or two volumes, the first collecting the linear sequence, Volumes I-IV in the original order of publication, and the second collecting the additional beginning, middle and end, Volumes V-VII in the original order?

My point is that a series can have two "first" installments, depending on how we read it. Of course we can read any series in any order but I mean that there can be more than one equally valid starting point. Thus, anyone reading Narnia now can choose between the original order of publication, beginning with The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, and the chronological order of fictitious events, beginning with The Magician's Nephew. The opening passage of that second "first" installment assumes the reader's familiarity with Narnia and also treats Sherlock Holmes as a real person as does the Time Patrol series which has only one starting point, "Time Patrol." Everything else follows from Manse Everard's recruitment into the Patrol in that original story.

The first magazine-published Nicholas van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit," was quoted but not included in the first Nicholas van Rijn collection, Trader To The Stars, so that, for those of us who followed van Rijn not in the magazines but in books, the first of his stories that we read was "Hiding Place." "Margin of Profit" had to be revised in order to be incorporated into the Technic History and it now appears before any of the others in the Saga.

Addendum, later that evening: Googling discloses a Complete Chronicles Of Narnia.