The Pirate And The Peregrine

Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History places five years between "The Pirate," about Trevelyan Micah in the Coordination Service, and The Peregrine, in which Trevelyan leaves the Service to join the Nomads. These dates must be an editorial decision by Miesel alone because "The Pirate" cannot possibly have appeared in Anderson's original Chronology even as a Heinleinian story-to-be-told. It was entirely conceived of at the time when it was written in the 1960s. Five years is a reasonable although arbitrary interval.

Did Anderson's earliest, unpublished version of the Chronology include stories-to-be-told and did some of these, like Heinlein's, remain untold? There are gaps that could have been filled but Anderson, for sound reasons, decided not to continue with this future history series. To my knowledge, he is the only writer of multiple future histories. James Blish did something similar although on a smaller scale. Blish's main future history series fills one omnibus volume whereas Anderson's fills seven and could have been extended indefinitely. Blish has one historical novel, one fantasy novel and one futuristic sf novel in a single trilogy whereas Anderson wrote several volumes of historical fiction and of fantasy and many more of sf.

"The Pirate" and The Peregrine comprise a good sub-section of the Psychotechnic History that is entirely removed from the opening instalments, "Marius," "Un-Man" etc. As Sandra Miesel writes right at the end of the History:

"Humankind's saga flows on." (Volume 3, p. 215)