Monday, 3 January 2022

The Earliest Technic History Stories

In Publication Dates II, we listed the last three Technic History installments to be published:

Mirkheim (1978)
"The Saturn Game" (1981)
The Game Of Empire (1985)

It makes sense to contrast these with the first three:

"Tiger by the Tail" (January, 1951)
"Honorable Enemies" (May, 1951)
"Sargasso of Lost Starships" (January, 1952)

- or maybe with the first few. To continue the list:
 
"The Star Plunderer" (September, 1952)
"The Warriors from Nowhere" (1954)

Observations
(i) Effectively two different series although the character of Dominic Flandry at least nominally connects them.
 
(ii) Flandry's servant, Chives, and his private speedster, as yet unnamed, are introduced very early, in "The Warriors from Nowhere."

(iii) This requires "The Warriors from Nowhere" to be placed comparatively late in the Captain Flandry sub-sub-series where it becomes a prologue to A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows. (1974)

(iv) A lesser writer would simply have continued the space opera of those first five stories indefinitely.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And as we have discussed elsewhere, Anderson thought it desirable to revise "Tiger By The Tail," "Honorable Enemies," and "Warriors From Nowhere," for the Gregg Press republication of AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE in 1978. "Warriors" esp. needed attention due to it mentioning an elderly Emperor with an adult granddaughter. And Josip III, while probably old enough, had no children or grandchildren.

I recall asking PA in my very first letter to him, in 1978, why he had that elderly Emperor being a usurper, instead of a cousin of Josip who could have succeeded lawfully to the throne? And cited the arguments against usurpation Flandry made in THE REBEL WORLDS.

Ad astra! Sean