Subtleties And Complexities III

It is the dynamism of that first main section of Poul Anderson's Technic History that makes it endlessly fascinating. Fictional biography becomes fictional history. Generations, then centuries, elapse but the narrative focus moves backwards as well as forwards. The account of the Polesotechnic League period seems to have been completed in four volumes, two collections each with three stories followed by two novels, but then a further six stories and one novel set in that same period are presented in the longer collection, The Earth Book Of Stormgate. That collection is united by an introduction and interstitial passages derived from the background material provided by the novel, The People Of The Wind, set on David Falkayn's colony planet. 

"Lodestar," (1973) about the discovery of Mirkheim, was written and published before Mirkheim, (1977) about the war for Mirkheim. However, in the original book reading order of the Technic History, Mirkheim is the concluding volume of the Polesotechnic League tetralogy whereas "Lodestar" is first read later in the Earth Book where it is presented as if it were a later-written prequel:

"Also in the records left on Hermes was information about an episode which had long been concealed: how Nicholas van Rijn came to the world which today we know as Mirkheim."

-Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 631-680 AT p. 631.

 

Falkayn, not van Rijn, discovered Mirkheim but the planet's existence had been kept secret until van Rijn's investigation led him to it. I am able to quote the Earth Book Introduction to "Lodestar" from Volume II of The Technic Civilization Saga because the Saga reproduces the entire contents of the Earth Book although in a different order. It is as if the texts keep moving and will not stay still in a single order.