"The Season of Forgiveness"

Poul Anderson, "The Season of Forgiveness" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 317-336.

I am following my own advice and rereading Poul Anderson's Christmas story. It is one of several short stories, published in different magazines or anthologies, that give body to a future history series. Fictitiously, it was written by Judith Dalmady/Lundgren and published in the Avalonian magazine, Morgana. Since Judith is a daughter of Emil Dalmady, hero of "Esau," which she also "wrote," "The Season of Forgiveness" is extremely well integrated into The Earth Book of Stormgate although we currently reread it in The Van Rijn Method.

We soon learn that the protagonist, Juan Hernandez, a Polesotechnic League apprentice and one-off Technic History character, is quick-witted, hardworking and eager and had graduated early from the Academy. Anderson's characters are the successful. We ought to see more ordinary people as well.

For those who read the Technic History in its original publication order, the Earth Book comes as a good summation at the end of the first major period of the History. This collection informs us:

how Ythri was contacted;

how Avalon was explored, then later colonized in two phases;

what Adzel did on Earth;

what the League did on Merseia - and the trader team's role in that transaction;

how van Rijn came to Mirkheim;

what happened later on Ivanhoe where we had first seen David Falkayn as an apprentice.

It is "The Season of Forgiveness" that imparts further information about Ivanhoe as seen through the eyes of another apprentice, Hernandez.