Series Within Series

I am yet again contemplating Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization in its original publication order. OK. This is an obsession. But the Technic History is such a rich future history series both in itself and when compared with any other such series.

This future history begins with a Nicholas van Rijn series, three stories collected as Trader To The Stars. This series could have been extended indefinitely or at least as long as the later Dominic Flandry series. However, nothing remains the same for long in the Technic History.

The van Rijn series is followed by a David Falkayn series, three stories collected as The Trouble Twisters. Unlike its predecessor, The Trouble Twisters is a fictional biography, following Falkayn's early career as apprentice, journeyman and Master Merchant. Further, the third story becomes a trader team story - Falkayn, Adzel and Chee Lan - and cameos their employer, van Rijn.

The trader team and van Rijn series merge in Satan's World and reach a conclusion in Mirkheim. In fact, time had passed and the trader team had been disbanded but van Rijn reassembles them for a different kind of mission, one that eventually signals the beginning of the end of the Polesotechnic League.

Thus, here is a complete series of series comprising eight instalments in four volumes. However, there are eight more Polesotechnic League instalments set before or between the eight that are in the initial tetralogy. These second eight consist of:

1 Adzel

3 van Rijn

1 trader team

1 van Rijn and trader team

2 others

Thus, there is a move away from a focus just on van Rijn or Falkayn. There are also six other Technic History instalments to be read between Mirkheim and two contemporaneous League stories:

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" about young Adzel;

"Margin of Profit," the earliest published van Rijn story.

And all of this is less than half of the Technic History.