Factual Fiction?

(Bad alternative title. Good cover.)

Poul Anderson, The Man Who Counts IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), pp. 147-290.

Hloch tells us that there are "Several historical novels..." (p. 146) about Nicholas van Rijn and that, of these, The Man Who Counts, included in the Earth Book, "...appears to be reasonably factual..." (ibid.) A novel is a long prose fiction so how can it be factual?

If we say that a book about, e.g., George Washington is both a historical novel and historically accurate, then we mean that the plot and characterization are fully consistent with known history whereas the conversations and many other narrative details are, of course, invented. If there were no invention, then there would be no fiction. So we can accept that van Rijn was stranded on Diomedes, fomented a war, eventually escaped etc but that the dialogue which we read in The Man Who Counts was composed by a Terran or Hermetian novelist. "The Star Plunderer" and "Sargasso of Lost Starships" are historical fictions within the Technic History although not in the Earth Book.

Of the twelve works collected in the Earth Book:

seven are previously published texts - a chapter of an autobiography, two chapters of Tales Of The Great Frontier, three short stories by Judith Lundgren and one novel;

two were private documents - part of a correspondence and a section of a notebook;

three were specially written for the Earth Book.

In fact, Christopher Holm, a character in The People Of The Wind, becomes one of the authors of the Earth Book.