Sol City

Of course, Poul Anderson wrote "The Star Plunderer" (1952) nine years before he initiated the Technic History in "A Plague of Masters" (1961). Thus, nothing in the fictional introduction to "The Star Plunderer" was originally intended to inform its readers about a future history. However, we now try to fit whatever is written in this introduction into what we know about the History of Technic Civilization. We are like Sherlockians trying to resolve inconsistencies in Conan Doyle's texts.

"The Star Plunderer" features Manuel Argos who will found the Terran Empire. In Dominic Flandry's time, the Imperial capital will be Archopolis, Terra. Donvar Ayeghen, author of the Introduction to "The Star Plunderer," tells us that the story is Chapter V of the Memoirs of Rear Admiral John Henry Reeves, Imperial Solar Navy, and that this book, written in the early period of the First Empire, was excavated from the ruins of Sol City, Terra.

We deduce that:

there are at least two Empires;

the capital of a later Empire will be not Archopolis but Sol City;

that city is ruined in Ayeghen's time;

Ayeghen is a long way in the future after Manuel and even after Flandry.

 

New thought: might Ayeghen be even later than the Commonalty period in "Starfog," the last episode of the Technic History?

 

References to Sol City and a First Empire link "The Star Plunderer" to "The Chapter Ends" in Anderson's Psychotechnic History.