Sunday 10 January 2021

The Changing Future

See "Sandra Miesel's Technic Civilization Chronology," by Sean M. Brooks (Revised)

I have four versions of Sandra Miesel's Chronology, in:

The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, May 1979)
A Stone In Heaven (New York, October 1979)
The Long Night (New York, May 1983)
The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009) 

I have listed these titles in chronological order of the publication dates of the editions in my possession. The Earth Book is copyright 1978. In The Van Rijn Method, Hank Davis's Introduction and Miesel's Chronology are copyright 2008. The Van Rijn Method is Volume I of the seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga. Davis compiled and introduces all seven volumes and the same version of the Chronology appears in all seven. When the Saga began to be published, it had ceased to be possible for the Chronology to be expanded by the addition of new stories by the author.

My intention is to make some comparisons between versions of the Chronology but maybe in a later post. 

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I also have Sandra Miesel's Chronology in the Gregg Press editions of THE WAR OF THE WING MEN and the Dominic Flandry stories (with the one in WAR not having dates).

Barring any further information to be found in the papers of Poul Anderson, I don't see how more my revision of Miesel's Chronology can be tweeked.

I was dismayed to find out it was not Anderson's custom to keep many letter--rather he would discard them after writing replies to them. Nor did he keep copies of his own letters. That cut down on bulk and clutter, but dismayed fans, biographers, and critics who would have loved to have those letters!

We have both written 24 letters to Anderson, and I think we both took care to make copies of those letters to include with his replies to them. Which means our two collections may be almost unique in Andersoniana. One French writer, Jean Daniel Breque, found out about my correspondence with Anderson, and I was glad to give him copies of those letters, which he used to help write his book about him: ORPHEE AUX ETOILES,

I hope other letters of Anderson to various fans have survived, and that they will be collected and published.

Ad astra! Sean