The Van Rijn Series

Everything would have been clearer (see the previous post) if "The Master Key" had begun on p. 273 with the Shelley quotation immediately above the opening paragraph of the text of the story.

Throughout his sub-series of Poul Anderson's Technic History, Nicholas van Rijn alternates between:

a guy who is too old to go back into space;

a guy who is usually too old to go back into space but who does go there in an emergency;

a guy who goes into space because it seems to have been forgotten that he is not supposed to be going there any more.

We might classify these three story types as "too old," "emergency" and "going anyway."

His opening story, "Margin of Profit," is explicitly an "emergency" story;

The Man Who Count is "going anyway";

In "Esau," Dalmady comes to van Rijn on Earth but the story is about Dalmady so all that we know about van Rijn in this story is that he is on Earth, for whatever reason, at the time;

"Hiding Place" is "emergency" - van Rijn has to go into space to deal with the Addercops as he did with the Borthudians in "Margin of Profit";

"Territory" is "going anyway";

"The Master Key" is "too old";

Satan's World, "Lodestar" and Mirkheim are all "emergency" - the series ends in crisis.