Fourre

There are biographical details about Etienne Fourre in "Marius" and in "Un-Man." Are they consistent? Does it matter? I have suddenly realized that it does not. If we imagine that the instalments of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History are written by different authors in later periods of that fictional timeline, then any of those authors might have got some of the details wrong or alternatively might have written a fictionalized account in which he was obliged to improvise to some extent because he had not known what all of the details had originally been in any case. Thus, as long as we receive a reasonably consistent account of Fourre as a character, there is scope for some divergence in the accounts.

Fourre is the viewpoint character in "Marius" but is seen from the outside by Naysmith in "Un-Man." This difference alone provides the opportunity to present a more rounded account. Unfortunately, that is the last that we see of Fourre because history moves on. The Technic History presents the best of two worlds: long character-based series and a long future history series. Poul Anderson is unique in that we can move from one of his future history series to another.