Thursday, 4 May 2023

"Hiding Place" And "Esau"

Le Matelot's introduction to "Hiding Place" begins:

"'The world's great age begins anew...'"
-Poul Anderson, "Hiding Place" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 555-609 AT p. 555 -

- and ends:

"...we are on our way." (p. 556)

- whereas Hloch's Earth Book introduction to "Esau" states that, by the time of that story, Polesotechnic League philosophy and practice were becoming archaic, even obsolete.

Yet "Esau" immediately precedes "Hiding Place" in The Van Rijn Method. This anomaly can be ironed out by moving "Le Matelot" to before "Margin of Profit," as suggested here.

In The Technic Civilization Saga, as in Time Patrol, I think that a few such adjustments are necessary.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Strictly speaking, we should date Le Matelot's "great age" with the invention of the FTL hyperdrive. Which I speculatively dated to around AD 2100. It was the hyperdrive which made possible the Breakup and the rise of the Polesotechnic League, the latter of which might be dated to circa 2200.

I am compelled to use round numbers because only once in the Technic stories, "The Saturn Game," are we given a specific date.

Ad astra! Sean