Tuesday, 21 April 2020

A Trisected Future History Series

I have trisected Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History as follows:

The UN/Solar Union History
Eleven works;

beginning with recovery from World War III;

covering the periods of UN and Solar Union government;

thus also covering psychotechnic government, the terraforming of Mars and Venus, the Humanist Revolution, the anti-Humanist counter-revolution, Jovian secession and the beginning of slower than light interstellar travel;

ending with Terrestrial descent into social chaos.

The Nomads and Stellar Union History
Six works;

beginning with the founding of the Nomads;

covering the period of the Stellar Union;

thus also covering the work of the Coordination Service and its interactions with Traders, Galactic Survey and Nomads;

(Coordinators operate across a fraction of the galaxy, not throughout the Galaxy);

ending with a much later Galactic civilization involving psychotechnicians.

The presence of psychotechnicians in the Galactic civilization is the only tenuous connection between these two future histories.

Other Works
Five works;

including three "Galactic civilization" stories although this is not the same Galactic civilization as the one mentioned above;

some references that make these five works overlap with aspects of the two future histories.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And we see no mention of a FIRST Empire in the earlier stories, only in "The Chapter Ends." That story still feels like a non series one off to me.

Ad astra! Sean