Parallel Narratives

Returning to the original publication order of the Technic History:

Trader To The Stars

Three stories about Nicholas van Rijn, MMPL (Master Merchant Polesotechnic League), owner of SSL (Solar Spice & Liquors)

The Trouble Twisters

Three stories:

I David Falkayn is apprenticed to Martin Schuster.

II Falkayn is a journeyman in SSL and a factor for the PL.

III Falkayn, now MMPL, meets van Rijn.

After III, there are two parallel narratives which, later again, merge. Falkayn leads van Rijn's first trader team while van Rijn remains active in the background and, when necessary, also in the foreground. At the end of Mirkheim, Falkayn is acting CEO of SSL while van Rijn, travelling around in the trader team spaceship, tries to patch up the PL after its first civil war. Falkayn has discovered Mirkheim and founded Supermetals and later will lead the colonization of Avalon. The trader team includes Adzel whose student days on Earth are recounted in a story not collected until the Earth Book in the original publication order.

In Poul Anderson's works, we can pass from the Fall of the Roman Empire in The King of Ys to the rise of the Polesotechnic League and, later, the Fall of the Terran Empire in the Technic History. The difference is that we are able to read many other works about the Roman Empire whereas all that we know about the PL and the Terran Empire is in this single series by Anderson. Nevertheless, Anderson generates the sense of a real history involving billions of intelligent beings. This history is of Ythri and of Merseia as well as of the many planets colonised by human beings.