(i) Poul Anderson presents no year dates except in the opening story, "The Saturn Game."
(ii) He does inform us about periods of time that elapse between installments or between important events in the Technic History. Thus, we are often told the age of either Falkayn or Flandry in a particular installment. The events of Mirkheim occur ten years after the end of "Lodestar" and a hundred years after the Council of Hiawatha. "Lodestar" occurs shortly after Satan's World but ten years elapse between the beginning and end of "Lodestar."
Rather that arbitrarily ascribe AD/CE year dates to events after "The Saturn Game," I think that it makes more sense to treat, e.g., the discovery of hyperdrive as time zero and to date the Breakup, the Solar Commonwealth, the Grand Survey etc from then.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I argue, in my revision of Miesel's Chronology, that Falkayn's discovery of Mirkheim occurred 18 years before the Babur War. And the Prolgoue of MIRKHEIM clearly states so. Next, I argue that "Lodestar" took place eights years after that discovery (and three years after the Supermetals Company began operations).
Apparently, Falkayn needed five years to put together the consortium of "have nots," and somehow obtaining or buying the necessary ships and equipment, arranging for all this to be done secretly, etc., before Supermetals could begin publicly selling the metals from Mirkheim.
Last, I think what people "actually" did in the Technic stories was to use the BC/AD era dating system for events on and off Earth/Terra or for events occurring in the sphere of space covered by Technic civilization and (later) the Empire. Many planets, of course, would use their own local calendars/era dating systems, based on the varying lengths of time it took to make a complete revolution around their suns. And that would be true of independent powers like Merseia, Betelgeuse, Ythri, etc.
I think trying to date events from a Year Zero would be too confusing, both because we do have that single AD year from "The Saturn Game" and because that was not how the peoples in the Technic stories "actually behaved."
Happy New Year! Sean
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