"The Season of Forgiveness.""Until lately, Ivanhoe had had no more than a supply depot for possible distressed spacecraft." (p. 134)
In "The Three-Cornered Wheel," David Falkayn, distressed on Ivanhoe, had accessed that supply depot. Thus, although it neither names nor even mentions that major Technic History character, "The Season of Forgiveness" is an understated sequel to his introductory short story. Having established a fictional setting in an earlier future history episode, an sf author becomes able to reuse that setting in later episodes. In this case, Falkayn and Ivanhoe, introduced together, have parted company although their paths will recross later when Ivanhoans join the Supermetals Company subsequently founded by Falkayn.
If we are reading Poul Anderson's Technic History in its original order of book publication, then we have already read "The Three-Cornered Wheel" in the second volume, The Trouble Twisters, and are now reading "The Season of Forgiveness" in the sixth volume, The Earth Book Of Stomgate, whereas, if instead we are reading the seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga, then we find that these two stories are respectively the sixth and eighth items to be collected in Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, where they are separated only by the second Falkayn story, "A Sun Invisible." Alternatively, if we are reading Poul Anderson's works at random, then we might not recognize the reference to the supply depot on Ivanhoe.
James Blish's Cities In Flight was complete in three volumes:
They Shall Have Stars, prequel;
Earthman, Come Home, the original tetralogy with Okie culture ending in the third installment and New York colonizing New Earth in the Greater Magellanic Cloud in the fourth;
The Triumph Of Time, sequel.
However, Blish, asked to write a juvenile interstellar sf novel, expanded Cities In Flight by setting A Life For The Stars between the prequel and the original tetralogy, another example of a future historian creatively reusing an already established background.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I remember how I read Blish's CITIES IN FLIGHT books with interest and pleasure when I was a boy. Alas, decades later, when I tried to reread them, I got bogged down in the third volume and lost interest. I fear my tastes and science fictional interests had changed during the intervening years.
But that sense of disenchantment was not true for all of Blish's works. I could still reread A CASE OF CONSCIENCE with interest.
Ad astra! Sean
Poul avoided the trap of the "planet of hats" -- having a planet be all one thing. He rarely lost sight of how large and complex and varied a planet would be, as Earth is.
Of course, he also had a few that had been homogenized into sameness by very ancient civilizations (THE STAR FOX), and some recently settled by one variety of human.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, Anderson was very good at showing how complex and varied any planet is going to be.
And you reminded me of the ancient Aleriona culture we see in THE STAR FOX.
And I think you also had the Zazharians in mind? Whom we see in THE GAME OF EMPIRE. I even used them to help write one of more fanciful articles, using your Draka: "Was The Dominination Inspired by Merseia?" (Smiles)
Ad astra! Sean
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