Continuities

In Poul Anderson's The Man Who Counts, Nicholas van Rijn, Sandra Tamarin and Eric Wace struggle to survive on the planet Diomedes. In Anderson's Mirkheim, Sandra's son by van Rijn is called Eric. Have I only just noticed that Sandra named her son after her and van Rijn's younger companion on Diomedes?  Maybe I noticed before but forgot? Every installment of a future history series is solidly built on the firm foundation of earlier installments while it also extends the fictional history in new directions. In Robert Heinlein's much shorter Future History, Methuselah's Children both introduces the Howard Families and pulls together a maximum number of cross-references to other installments, even anticipating the concluding Orphans Of The Sky. In Anderson's Technic History, cross-references are so textually embedded that they might affect less attentive readers subliminally. No characters' surnames survive the millennia between the Terran Empire and the later civilizations but there are other indications of historical continuity. For example, the planet New Vixen has to be a colony of the earlier colony planet, Vixen. Flandry is not named but his legacy persists. Next post: back to van Rijn.