Hloch informs us that children of Dalmady went to Avalon with Falkayn and that one of them, Judith, wrote "Esau" as well as two other stories that were published in Morgana and later incorporated into the Earth Book. As with the later life of Jim Ching, we would not have known any of this without Hloch's input. Hloch's introductions are as much a part of the Technic History as are the introduced stories.
Hloch states that "How To Be Ethnic..." shows us:
"...Terran society when the Polesotechnic League was in its glory..."
-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 175-197 AT p. 176.
- but also that, at the time of "Esau," League philosophy and practice:
"...were becoming slightly archaic, if not obsolete."
-Poul Anderson, "Esau" IN The Van Rijn Method, pp. 517-553 At p. 517.
- yet there is at most only a decade and a half between these stories in Sandra Miesel's CHRONOLOGY OF TECHNIC CIVILIZATION.
Maybe these two stories should be further apart in the Chronology?
2 comments:
I think Poul backed himself into a corner by deciding that van Rijn's generation would see both the climax and the decadence of the League.
It would have made more sense for those changes to take a couple of centuries.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I can understand that. It might have been a bit more plausible if the crisis seen in MIRKHEIM had occurred half a century later.
Ad astra! Sean
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