The Two Reading Orders Revisited

When discussing the trade pioneer crew here, I referred to the original publication order of Poul Anderson's Technic History. I think that this publication order is worthy of preservation. It would give us perhaps seventeen volumes of which the first seven could be:

I Trader To The Stars

II The Trouble Twisters

III Satan's World

IV Mirkheim

V (The Saturn Game and other stories)

VI The People of the Wind

VII The Earth Book of Stormgate

That is already a substantial future history series yet it is less than half of the total. The brackets indicate that I include a proposed collection of three stories that do fit into this period but that had not been collected as such.

This reading order plunges in media res, into the midst of things, at the height, or even at the beginning of the decline, of the Polesotechnic League. An entire history of interplanetary and interstellar exploration and of the earlier careers of the leading characters has already happened. In fact, "The Saturn Game," the first seven of the twelve instalments collected in the Earth Book and the first two of the three instalments collected in The Trouble Twisters are all set earlier than the first of the three stories collected in Trader To The Stars! That is why Bean Books presents the Technic History in chronological order of fictitious events in the seven omnibus volumes of its The Technic Civilization Saga, compiled by Hank Davis.

(This is not a paid ad, just a factual summary.)

I turned back to these early volumes of the Technic History in order to check back through what we are told about the trade pioneer crew but that can wait. 

(A lot of superhero stuff on screen and in periodicals at Andrea's place this afternoon.)