The original "first" volume, Trader To The Stars, collects three stories about Nicholas van Rijn, Master Merchant Polesotechnic League:
"Hiding Place"
"Territory"
"The Master Key"
"Territory" is introduced by an extract from an earlier van Rijn story, "Margin of Profit." There is no indication that the van Rijn series is a sub-series of a future history series. The volume is fictitiously introduced by "Le Matelot," who writes at the time of the Polesotechnic League and who does not know what will come next in history.
The second "first" volume, The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method, collects the first eleven instalments of the Technic History including one full-length novel about van Rijn, The Man Who Counts, another title referring to the same character. The opening thee stories precede the League and have no common character. The fourth is "Margin of Profit." Seven of the instalments are fictitiously introduced by Hloch who writes long after the League and who refers to events recounted in The Technic Civiliztion Saga, Volumes II and III. The eleventh instalment in The Van Rijn Method is "Hiding Place," preceded by the "Le Matelot" introduction.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
This is rather an old point of mine, I think it's also necessary to point out "Margin of Profit" is one of the five Technic stories Anderson thought needed to be revised or incorporated into another story.* To better fit them into what became an unexpectedly long and complex "future history."
Ad astra! Sean
*The White King's War" was revised to become the first part of the longer novel A CIRCUS OF HELLS.
I think the fact that parts of the Technic History were sort of cobbled together increases rather than decreases its realism -- it mimics the wild chances and sudden unanticipated turns of actual history.
Too right.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, albeit "Sargasso of Lost Starships" was probably the most difficult of these stories to fit into the Technic series. But, if readers think of that story as a fiction written centuries after the Empire arose it's much easier to accept "Sargasso" as part of the Technic timeline.
Ad astra! Sean
"Based on true events", rather in the way the film "Gladiator" is... 8-).
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
But GLADIATOR and BRAVEHEART outraged me! I want movies and novels claiming to be based on real history to be faithful to the known facts. The blunders, deviations, outright falsehoods seen in films like these disgusts me.
Merry Christmas! Sean
Post a Comment