My Favourite Future History Series

Regular readers of this blog already know that I remain fascinated with the structure of Poul Anderson's Technic History, particularly in its original reading order which would require some slight amendments if it were to be reproduced in a later edition. By the end of the opening Polesotechnic League Tetralogy, David Falkayn's career has advanced from apprentice to acting CEO of SSL and the League has begun its terminal decline. Thus, the narrative begins not at the beginning of the history but at one of its major turning points. Although these four volumes do not in themselves constitute a future history series, because their action is confined within the lifetimes of a single set of characters, they would nevertheless have remained a major sf series even if nothing else had been added. In particular, the culminating volume, Mirkheim, is:

a good novel, because it shows change in the lives of multiple characters;

a good political novel, because it shows how social divisions, conflicts and upheavals and an unexpected war affect these characters;

a good sf novel, because it fully develops the industrial and political consequences of a speculative premise, a superjovian planet orbiting a star that becomes a supernova.

After the Tetralogy:

one earlier and two later periods would be covered in a new collection, The Saturn Game and other stories;

a historically much later period is covered in The People Of The Wind;

periods earlier than, contemporaneous with and later than the Tetralogy, although all of them earlier than The People Of The Wind, are covered in The Earth Book Of Stormgate;

the chronologically latest event in all these seven volumes is the compilation and editing of the Earth Book by Hloch of Stormgate Choth on Avalon, the colony founded by Falkayn;

although Dominic Flandry has not yet been born, the Terran Empire that he will later defend has been founded between stories in The Saturn Game..., has waged war against Avalon in The People Of The Wind and informs the background of Hloch's editing of the Earth Book;

the Earth Book is followed by the nine-volume Flandry period and its single-volume sequel.