Again Reading Orders

Most people read the installments of a long future history series in random order. Thus, I bought Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind and The Day Of Their Return together under the mistaken impression that both, not just the first, were set long before the lifetime of Dominic Flandry. I was therefore surprised to find that Flandry was referenced as a living person within The Day Of Their Return. However, Anderson's Technic History has not one but two, equally valid, legitimate reading orders.

See The Future Has A Future.

If the introduction to The Earth Book Of Stormgate is read between The People Of The Wind and "Wings of Victory," then it is a direct sequel to the former whereas, if it is read between "The Saturn Game" and "Wings of Victory," then it is a passage of future history read out of chronological sequence. What does the reader make of its opening sentences? -

"To those who read, good flight.

"It is Hloch of the Stormgate Choth who writes, on the peak of Mount Anrovil in the Weathermother. His Wyvan, Tariat son of Lythran and Blawsa, has asked this. Weak though his grip upon the matter be, bloodpride requires he undertake the task."

-Poul Anderson, INTRODUCTION WINGS OF VICTORY IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 75-77 AT p. 75.

The reader of The Van Rijn Method must accept that all of this will make sense (a long time) later. Lythran and Blawsa even appeared briefly in The People Of The Wind although the reader of that novel might not remember them.

Appropriately, Hloch goes on to reflect that:

"...past and present and future have forever been intermingled and, in living minds, ever begetting each other..."

-op. cit., p. 76.