Friday 28 May 2021

Story Continuity

"The Acolytes" was published in Worlds Beyond, 1951. Its sequel, "The Green Thumb," was published in Science Fiction Quarterly, 1953. Despite this gap, between two different publications two years apart, the sequel begins:

"Pete felt so bad about Tobur getting killed on his account that Uncle Gunnar and Aunt Edith were afraid at first they'd have [to?] take him to a psychiatrist in Stellamont."
-Poul Anderson, "The Green Thumb" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3 (Riverdale, NY, 1018), pp. 21-41 AT p. 21.

- as if this text were a narrative continuation in the same periodical the following month. Is this how it was originally published? In any case, the two installments form a two-part story and the second part is of greater significance for the Psychotechnic History.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Truth to say, I thought "The Acolytes" and "The Green Thumb" rather weak stories, which is not too surprising, written as they were at a time when Anderson was still learning the art of writing. Weak enough stories that I can see why Sandra Miesel excluded them from the Psychotechnic collections she edited: THE PSYCHOTECHNIC LEAGUE, COLD VICTORY, and STAR SHIP.

But she should have included THE SNOWS OF GANYMEDE and the longer version of VIRGIN PLANET.

And THE PEREGRINE, of course.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

The contribution of these 2 stories was that they introduced Nerthus.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Yes, but that is not really MUCH.

Ad astra! Sean