The Technic History And Cities In Flight II

In James Blish's Cities In Flight, Earth Colonials meet and defeat the Vegan Tyranny but the Earthman culture is later superseded by the Web of Hercules whereas, in Poul Anderson's Technic History, a Grand Survey ship makes first contact with Merseia and the Polesotechnic League saves Merseia from supernova radiation but the Terran Empire must later contend with a resentful and aggressive Merseian Roidhunate. The Merseians, originating as standard space opera villains, are green, scaled and tailed whereas we are told that an atypical man could pass as a Vegan. However, the Vegans, like the few other alien races mentioned in Cities In Flight, remain off-stage whereas, in the Technic History, human beings interact with many intelligent species, usually described in detail.

The Technic History is admirably consistent whereas, in Cities In Flight, the inconsistencies:

"...are too numerous and too prominent to be regarded as anything other than an essential feature of the overall story."

-Richard D. Mullen, AFTERWORD: THE EARTHMANIST CULTURE: CITIES IN FLIGHT as a Spenglerian History IN James Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 597-607 AT p. 599.

Since Blish rigidly controls point of view, each statement can be attributed to a particular character so Mullen concludes that the tetralogy is not a consistent history but "...a historical narrative with a large admixture of myth..." (ibid.)

The Technic History ends at the edge of another spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy whereas Cities In Flight goes further to the Greater Magellanic Cloud, then to the Metagalactic Center and the creation of new universes:

 

"Creation began."

-James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Cities In Flight, pp. 466-596 AT CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 596.

 

If you read Anderson, read Blish.