Foundations

The first three instalments of Poul Anderson's Technic History are about exploration:

in "The Saturn Game," the Britannic-American spaceship, Chronos, explores the Saturnian system;

in "Wings of Victory," the Grand Survey spaceship, Olga, discovers Ythri;

in "The Problem of Pain," Ythrians, employing some Aenean human beings, explore Gray/Avalon.

Many foundations are laid in these stories for the later History: mentions of Jerusalem Catholicism, Hermes, Cynthia, Woden, the University of Nova Roma on Aeneas and the Ythrian Old Faith as well as a more detailed discussion of the New Faith and, of course, exploration of the as yet uninhabited Avalon.

Having listed the first three instalments, some of us inevitably remember what follows them:

16 instalments about the Polesotechnic League

2 about the early colonization of Avalon

1 transitional instalment

17 about the Terran Empire

4 set post-Empire

This is the most succinct of summaries. There are further sub-divisions.

I appreciate The Earth Book of Stormgate both as a discrete volume and as a major part of The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes I-III. After reading to the end of the near future "The Saturn Game," we are swept much further into the future by Hloch's introduction to "Wings of Victory" which, however, is set considerably closer to "The Saturn Game" than to Hloch's period after the Terran War.

History is complicated. So is the Technic History.