Two Explorations

"The Saturn Game" and "Starfog" begin and end Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization and also begin and end his collection, Explorations. Anyone reading these two stories only in that collection has no way to know that they are instalments of a single series, let alone that they are the opening and closing instalments of one long future history series. Both stories are about space exploration although on vastly different scales. 

"Starfog" refers back to League, Troubles, Empire and Long Night and thus informs its readers that it has prequels. However, "The Saturn Game" is pre-League. Its only explicit link to the later History is its single reference to the Jerusalem Catholic Church. This is like real history, of course. Most of our present life is lived without making any explicit reference to anything that had happened thousands of years previously.

A single unchanged text has a different significance when it is published and read in a different context. In Explorations, "The Saturn Game" introduces not the Technic History but five other stories about explorations. We can read or reread it and "Starfog" without necessarily reflecting on their relationships to Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn or Dominic Flandry. A literary liberation of sorts.