Fourteen instalments had established the fictional reality of the Polesotechnic League, then "Lodestar" presented a crisis between van Rijn and Falkayn and Mirkheim presented a crisis for the League. Mirkheim is "Lodestar" writ large. Three pre-Flandy and twelve Flandry-era instalments had established the reality of the Terran Empire, then, in A Knight of Ghost and Shadows:
Dominic Flandry, having previously defended legitimacy in government, winds up working for a usurper;
Chunderban Desai says that the Empire is a stage in the decline of Technic civilization following the cartelization of the Polesotechnic League;
Flandry loses both his son and his fiancee and has a final showdown with Aycharaych on Chereion.
Although two further novels feature Flandry, A Knight... is a critical turning point, comparable to the earlier "Lodestar" and Mirkheim.
Either the Polesotechnic League or the Terran Empire could have stood on its own as a discrete series but the Empire gains additional substance by building on the foundation of the League.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
It helped, of course, that Hans Molitor was an able, basically well meaning usurper who only reluctantly agreed to seize the throne, after the legitimate line of succession had collapsed. To say nothing of how Flandry, a good judge of character, LIKED Old Hans!
I think there is still much to be said in favor of Hord's theories on how and why civilizations rise and fall, and even his suggestions on how long different phases of that process might last. But Stirling's arguments about how contingent, unpredictable, human affairs are should make us a bit wary about such speculations.
What I'm leading up to is my belief Manuel's Empire was too successful and lasted too LONG, over 440 years by calculations based on internal evidence found in the stories, to be a mere stage in the decline of Technic civilization. A good argument could be made that the Empire, at least from Manuel I's time to Georgios', was a genuine revival of Technic civilization.
I agree the two parts of Anderson's Technic series, the Solar Commonwealth/Polesotechnic League and the Imperial era, gained solidity and substance from Anderson's accidental but fortunate linking of them in THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment