The Earth Book And The Night Face

This post reiterates information that has already been iterated many times - although I think with different nuances and emphases? - on the blog, partly because I am continually reclarifying it to myself and partly because I remain endlessly fascinated by an sf series with such a dynamic structure that it seems to move and change while we try to comprehend it.

In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization:

each of the forty-three novels or short stories is both enjoyable and substantial;

their interesting chronological relationships, some concurrent, others millennial, generate detailed discussions (see here);

the various editions and collections of parts of the series are also of interest, presenting as they do two alternative reading orders.

Before Baen Books' seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga, compiled by Hank Davis, collected this entire future history series for the first time in chronological order of fictitious events:

there were two collections and two novels about the Polesotechnic League and one novel about Ythrians before The Earth Book Of Stormgate rounded up twelve remaining League or Ythrian installments (with new introductions), thus almost completing the earlier periods of the History;

there were seven novels and two collections about the Terran Empire during the lifetime of Dominic Flandry before The Night Face and other stories rounded up four post-Imperial installments, thus almost completing the later periods of the History;

(this makes the Earth Book and The Night Face... sound like companion volumes);

this still left four short stories unaccounted for.

I have discussed previously how the four remaining works might have been incorporated into the pre-Saga reading order, thus generating a seventeen-volume future history series written entirely by a single author without the franchising of historical periods to other authors that became a feature of Isaac Asimov's, Larry Niven's and Jerry Pournelle's future history series.

Addendum: Those other authors included Anderson (see the combox), who contributed to:

the US Robots period in Asimov's Robots and Empire future history;
the Man-Kzin Wars period in Niven's Known Space future history;
the War World period in Pournelle's CoDominium future history.