The Significance Of The EARTH BOOK

Hello. We have been very busy here for several days. I have had no original thoughts for this blog, let alone time to post any. I do reflect on what I have learned from the blog. Publishing this blog has vastly enhanced my appreciation of Poul Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate. I regard that volume as the absolute peak of American future historical writing, far surpassing either Robert Heinlein's Future History or anything else by Anderson. 

The Past Through Tomorrow (Putnam, 1967), Heinlein's Future History revised and almost complete, collects twenty-one instalments, including two novels. That is indeed almost complete and the two remaining stories, collected as Orphans Of The Sky, do not really advance the history of mankind. They merely recount some subsequent subsidiary events.

It is impossible that the Earth Book alone should contain Anderson's Technic History "almost complete" since that future history series comprises forty-three instalments, including eleven full length novels. That history is complete in seven omnibus volumes as Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga. But the Earth Book, considered as a single volume, is pivotal. It collects over a quarter of the instalments, including one full novel. Some regular blog readers will probably find it tedious that I have made several attempts to summarize the contributions made by the Earth Book. The summary remains recognizably the same but also grows as I come to appreciate further aspects of the collection. 

The Earth Book Of Stormgate:

has a very good, and also appropriate, cover illustration;

"Spans, illuminates and completes the magnificent future history of the Polesotechnic League," as its front cover blurb rightly proclaims;

is the fifth Polesotechnic League volume and the second Ythrian volume;

completes the history of the Polesotechnic League and almost completes the history of human-Ythrian interactions;

presents twelve new introductions and one afterword that substantially enhance the Technic History;

refers to the Terran Empire although not to Dominic Flandry because that important character has not been born yet;

prepares the way for the nine-volume Flandry Period and its single-volume sequel.

This summary conveys to its readers that the Technic History comprises at least sixteen volumes. In fact, three further stories could be collected as an additional volume to be read between the fourth Polesotechnic League volume and the first Ythrian volume, thus making the total number of volumes seventeen. OK: I am obsessed not only with the content but also with the structure of the Technic History and everything becomes focused through the Earth Book.