The Early Technic History

If we read Poul Anderson's Technic History in its original order, then we begin with four Polesotechnic League volumes followed by The People Of The Wind. The League Tetralogy conveys a sense of completeness because it presents David Falkayn's career in Nicholas van Rijn's Solar Spice & Liquors Company from beginning to end and culminates in events that van Rijn and Falkayn recognize as the beginning of the end of the League.  

The People Of The Wind:

transforms the series into a future history by leaping several centuries further into the future;

introduces Ythrians, Avalon, the Terran Empire and the Jerusalem Catholic Church;

retroactively tells us that, after his time with SSL, Falkayn led the joint human-Ythrian colonization of the planet Avalon, which now comes into conflict with the Terran Empire.

There is a single reference to:

"...the splendor of an Ythrian on the wing..."

-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT VI, p. 109 -

 

- in the fourth Polesotechnic League volume but, apart from that, we first see Ythrians in The People Of The Wind.

 

However, of course, The Earth Book Of Stormgate, to be read after The People Of The Wind:

 

tells us more about van Rijn, Falkayn and the League;

 

describes first contact with Ythri, then the exploration and later colonization of Avalon.

 

The Jerusalem Catholic Church, then the Terran Empire, are introduced in three stories that could be collected between the League Tetralogy and The People Of The Wind.

 

Of course, Baen Books' seven-volume The Technic Civilization Saga presents the entire Technic History in chronological order of fictional events but I still value that earlier reading order with the first main section of the History culminating in the Earth Book.