Noticing Details

Opening The Long Night and bypassing "The Star Plunderer" but starting to reread "Outpost of Empire," which is set on the planet Freehold, we are almost immediately informed that nearby stars include Betelgeuse. If we are sufficiently familiar with Poul Anderson's Technic History, that proximity of Betelgeuse might be enough to alert us that this "outpost" is located on the side of the Terran Empire that faces toward the Merseian Roidhunate. Near the bottom of the opening page, a conversational reference to the Anglic language is our first provisional internal confirmation that this story is set in the Technic History timeline. English might become "Anglic" in more than one fictional future, of course, although sf writers usually restrict such specific references to a single timeline. (An exception is James Blish's Haertel Scholium where mutually incompatible futures share common background references: e.g., not only to Einstein but also to his successor, Adolph Haertel; not only to known planets like Mars but also to the fictional planet, Lithia.)

After four pages of unfamiliar Freeholder characters and settings, we encounter John Ridenour and might remember that Ridenour was with Flandry on Starkad. He - Ridenour, not Flandry - has travelled to Freehold in a Germanian ship. Germania, mentioned more than once elsewhere, is most notable as the home planet of a future Imperial usurper, Hans Molitor. Thus, "Outpost of Empire" gains immeasurably by being one instalment of a rich future history series instead of just a stand-alone story. But we knew that, of course.