The Night Face In The Long Night

Poul Anderson's "A Twelvemonth and a Day" (Fantastic Universe, January 1960) was revised and expanded by the author and re-entitled by an editor as Let The Spacemen Beware! (Ace Books, 1963). A later editor, Jim Baen, agreed that Let The Spacemen Beware! was unacceptable as a title but argued that the original title was too cumbersome. Therefore, under the third title of The Night Face, this work has been republished as a single volume (Ace Books, February 1978), as the title story of The Worlds Of Poul Anderson, Volume I (of VII), The Night Face And Other Stories (Gregg Press, 1978), where it is the longest of four collected stories, and as one of the six works collected in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume VII (of VII), Flandry's Legacy (Baen Books, June 2012).

"A Twelvemonth and a Day" belongs on the list of original versions of Technic History stories that should form a collection.

Anderson's Introduction to The Night Face makes clear that this work, like "A Tragedy of Errors," is set during the Long Night after the Fall of the Terran Empire.

Flandry's Legacy is an appropriate title for the concluding volume of the Saga because:

Flandry strengthened several planets so that their civilizations would survive during the Long Night;

he protected the human colony on Vixen which later founded the colony of New Vixen which still exists long after the Long Night;

he expelled the Aenean rebels, some of whose descendants survived and eventually thrived on Kirkasant in the "Cloud Universe" Nebula.