Longer And Shorter Future Histories

A longer future history series is able to invest more of its instalments in building its foundations. In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, Fourre, Valti and others begin to construct a new world order in the opening instalment, "Marius." That world order, expanding into the Solar System, subsists for the next ten instalments although it is in terminal decline in the last of these stories, "Brake." Then the narrative jumps abruptly to an entirely different interstellar/Galactic scenario centuries later.

In Anderson's Technic History, the pace is more leisurely and almost imperceptible. In the first nine instalments:

(i) the Solar System is explored;

(ii) other planetary systems are explored and Ythri is discovered;

(iii) Avalon is explored;

(iv) Adzel is a student on Earth;

(v) Nicholas van Rijn is introduced;

(vi) David Falkayn is apprenticed to Martin Schuster on Ivanhoe;

(vii) Falkayn has become a journeyman in van Rijn's Solar Spice & Liquors company;

(viii) other Polesotechnic League merchants are active on Ivanhoe;

(ix) van Rijn meets the Grand Duchess of Falkayn's home planet, Hermes.

These characters and situations will come together and will take their time about it. Considerable additional information is imparted in these instalments, especially since six of them acquire new, fact-packed introductions when they are collected in The Earth Book Of Stormgate.

The decline of the League is also gradual. It has begun in "Lodestar" and "A Little Knowledge," both also collected in the Earth Book, and has become terminal in Mirkheim which ties together every previous narrative strand. Thereafter, there is a step by step transition to a very different interstellar order, involving the Terran Empire, the Domain of Ythri (including Avalon) and the Merseian Roidhunate, all of which brings us to Dominic Flandry - and the Technic History continues long after both Flandry and Empire.