Blish's Cities In Flight future history fits into a single omnibus volume whereas Anderson's Technic Civilization future history fills seven omnibus volumes. Both series explain the technological basis of their interstellar civilizations.
Volume I of the Cities In Flight Tetralogy (before the omnibus edition) recounts:
the discovery of anti-agathics (a short story incorporated into the novel);
the discovery of antigravity (a short story incorporated into the novel);
Terrestrial politics at the time (new linking passages added in the novel).
The PROLOGUE of Volume III explains that:
the Dillon-Wagoner gravitron polarity generator, or "spindizzy," is an overdrive with meteor screen and antigravity;
the overdrive plus anti-agathics make long interstellar flights possible;
the opening of the interstellar frontier drives down the price of germanium until it becomes the monetary standard for space trade.
The first six published stories in Anderson's Technic History were:
"Tiger by the Tail" (January, 1951);
"Honorable Enemies" (May, 1951);
"Sargasso of Lost Starships" (January, 1952);
"The Star Plunderer" (September, 1952);
"The Warriors from Nowhere" (Summer, 1954);
"Margin of Profit" (September, 1956) -
- although that version of "Margin of Profit" had to be revised to make it consistent with the History. After that revision, the stories rearranged themselves as follows:
"Margin of Profit," the Polesotechnic League period;
"The Star Plunderer," the Time of Troubles;
"Sargasso of Lost Starships," the early Terran Empire;
"Tiger by the Tail," Flandry in the later Terran Empire;
"Honorable Enemies," Flandry;
"The Warriors from Nowhere," Flandry.
Three later-written works are set earlier than "Margin of Profit." Nevertheless, that story retains its status as:
the first Nicholas van Rijn story;
the earliest written story set in the earlier period of the Technic History.
Like the Blish works cited above, "Margin of Profit" lists the technological and other factors underling the new period of interstellar trade:
automation and the mineral wealth of the Solar System made most manufacturing cheap;
fusion power made energy cheap;
gravitics led to the hyperdrive....
Strong Anderson-Blish parallels.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
By and large, however, I think Anderson handled science, technology, and politics in his stories better than Blish did in his own works. And I believe Anderson's hyperdrive a more convincing FTL drive than Blish's spindizzy. I would put that down to Anderson's deep grounding in the sciences.
While I enjoyed the first two volumes of Blish's CITIES IN FLIGHT books, I regrettably got bogged down in the third volume. I fear they simply did not "grab" me even the way original text of the very first Anderson story I read, "Tiger By The Tail," in AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE, had done with me.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
You started at the very beginning of the Technic History.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
True, the Chilton Books edition of AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE collected the first, unrevised Dominic Flandry stories, from way back to the early 1950's.
Ad astra! Sean
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