Flandry's Legacy

I imagine that, for commercial and practical purposes, Baen Books preferred The Technic Civilization Saga to comprise seven volumes of approximately uniform length. Uniformity also has an aesthetic appeal. However, if instead we consider the contents of the series and the periods of the Technic History, then we are bound to envisage volumes of unequal length. For example, I had originally thought that the concluding volume of the complete Technic History should be entirely post-Flandry and therefore that his name should not appear in its title. That would make the concluding Saga volume identical in contents with the earlier collection, The Night Face And Other Stories. But that would have been a much shorter volume.

I have become more inclined to think that both the contents and the title of the existing Volume VII, Flandry's Legacy, make sense. The legacy of a man's earlier and middle years begins to appear during his later years. It continues after his death but has begun before then.

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, A Stone In Heaven and The Game Of Empire do not really comprise a concluding Flandry Trilogy. A Knight... concludes the Captain Flandry series. Flandry has retained his freedom of movement by not as yet accepting the rank of Admiral. Instead, he answers directly to the recently installed new Emperor, Hans I, on a roving commission.

This is very different from the situation in A Stone In Heaven at the beginning of Flandry's Legacy when Flandry, now a Vice Admiral, has his own staff and his legacy is becoming apparent. The new Molitor dynasty which he has supported is firmly established and his achievement at Chereion is discretely referred to. Flandry, now a Fleet Admiral, merely cameos in The Game Of Empire which is a proto-series about his daughter. Starkadians have been settled on Imhotep.

In the four post-Flandry installments, certain planets have survived the Long Night, Vixen has even established a colony and the descendants of rebels expelled by Flandry have thrived and now re-contact civilization. These six works fit together.