To Complete A Future History Or Not

Poul Anderson's Technic History is a future history not only of human beings but also of other intelligent species, notably Ythrians and Merseians, although there are many others. The Baburites and the many member species of the Supermetals Company play pivotal rolls. However, this second aspect, other intelligent species, recedes in the concluding four instalments. 

"A Tragedy of Errors"

The Night Face

"The Sharing of Flesh"

"Starfog"

- have been published as The Night Face and Other Stories and as the last four of the six Technic History instalments comprising The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume VII, Flandry's Legacy.

"...the Pretender's nonhuman mercenaries broke down the last defenses."

-"A Tragedy of Errors," p. 464.

"Vandange had muttered to Laure about nonhumans in surgical disguise. But that the Ranger classed as a fantasy of a provincial who'd doubtless never met a live xeno. You couldn't fake so many details, not and keep a viable organism. Unless, to be sure, happenstance had duplicated most of those details for you in the course of evolution...

"Ridiculous, Laure thought. Coincidence isn't that energetic."

-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 709-794.

Coincidence is precisely that energetic in some branches of sf. But, in any case, I think that these are the only two references to nonhuman xenos in the post-Imperial tetralogy, so to call it. We infer that the Terran Empire and the Merseian Roidhunate had worn each other out but this remains an inference.

"After the [Terran Empire] had crumbled, what became of Terra - and the Merseians for that matter? What did various other races, such as the Cynthians and Wodenites and, especially, the Ythrians and their human allies, go on to do?

"These are intriguing questions, and perhaps from time to time I'll answer a few. Certainly that would please a lot of readers. But maybe I never will. At this writing, I have published one more Flandry story, as a kind of coda to that sub-series. It may prove to be the very end.

"Why?"

-Poul Anderson, "Concerning Future Histories" IN Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, Fall 1979, pp. 7-14 AT p. 13.

Anderson gives five reasons.

(i) The series is long and has come to contain some inconsistencies.

(ii) Knowledge of the cosmos has advanced.

(iii) The framework has become restrictive.

(iv) The political point of the series has been made.

(v) Do not belabour but seek new themes.

We value (iv) and (v). However, the future history had taken on a life of its own and many of us would have liked it to continue.