"One Of The Best SF Future Histories"

The back cover of the 1997 Tor paperback edition of Poul Anderson's Harvest The Fire quotes Booklist as commenting:

"Already, at its current three-book length, this is one of the best SF future histories."

Is it?

Poul Anderson is unique among sf writers because he alone wrote, by my count, nine future histories, not all of them series. The Heinlein American Future History model is a series whereas the Wells/Stapledon British model is a single novel. Anderson, of course, creatively developed both of these models.

Furthermore, Anderson's several future histories differ so much from each other that they are not really mutually comparable. Starfarers, a single work, shows us, for example the history of Kith Town. Harvest Of Fire certainly shows us how Terrestrial and Lunar societies have changed since the previous two volumes.

However, my personal favorite among Anderson's future histories remains the Technic History partly because of the way the comprehensive The Earth Book Of Stormgate, the sixth volume in the original reading order, completes the story of the Polesotechnic League and almost completes the story of human-Ythrian interaction while leaving over half of the History still to come.