I: 11, including 1 novel.
II: 7, including 1 novel.
III: 6, including 2 novels.
IV: 3 novels.
V: 6, including 1 novel.
VI: 4, including 1 novel.
VII: 6, including 2 novels.
Of the 11 installments in Volume I, each had been published as a single work and then republished at least once in a collection before being re-collected in the Saga. Each had also acquired an introduction when republished. The Man Who Counts acquired two in different editions. The introduction to "The Saturn Game," although interesting, is not directly relevant to the story and therefore was not included in the Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method. However, the remaining eleven introductions (two for The Man Who Counts) are included. One of the The Man Who Counts introductions is presented as an Afterword to the novel. In it, Anderson directly addresses his readers whereas the remaining ten introductions are fictitiously written within the Technic History.
The introduction to "Hiding Place" begins "'The world's great age begins anew..." and really introduces the entire Polesotechnic League period. "Hiding Place," preceded by this introduction, was the first story in the collection, Trader To The Stars but is the last in The Van Rijn Method. Much had happened earlier as is made clear when the Saga, for the first time ever, presents the Technic History in chronological order of fictional events. Mirkheim, which concludes the League period, was the fourth volume in the Polesotechnic League Tetralogy but is the first installment collected in the Saga, Volume III, Rise Of The Terran Empire. An end is a beginning.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I checked my copy of the Gregg Press edition (1976) of THE MAN WHO COUNTS, even tho Gregg unfortunately used the title Anderson disliked, WAR OF THE WING-MEN, to see who introduced that edition: Charles N. Brown and Sandra Miesel. And I know THE EARTH BOOK OF STORMGATE used the fictional introduction written by Anderson for that story. But neither of those texts included the introduction/afterword in which the author directly addressed his readers.
Now I'm actually wondering if I should hunt down a copy of THE VAN RIJN METHOD, despite what seems needless repetition, so I would have that "directly written" afterword. An obsessive Andersonian completist would do that!
I would date the great age of the early Technic civilization from the invention of the hyperdrive around AD 2100 (and the rise of the Polesotechnic League around AD 2200) from these dates to the Mirkheim/Babur crisis of 2501.*
Ad astra! Sean
*Going by the dates in my revision of Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization.
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