Sunday 3 November 2024

The Cosmos Future History

Poul Anderson, "The Acolytes" IN Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 3 (Riverdale, NY, July 2018), pp. 3-19. 

I have reread a short way into "The Acolytes" and will make some general observations.

First, "Gypsy," "Star Ship" and "The Acolytes" have two common features:

characters' names have the surname first and the personal name second, e.g., "Wilson Pete";

characters swear by Cosmos.

Secondly, there has not yet been any reference back to the pre-FTL period of the Psychotechnic History with the Institute, the Solar Union etc.

Did Sandra Miesel have these three and a few later stories in mind when she wrote in a fanzine article decades ago that there was an obscure Poul Anderson future history series in which the characters swear by Cosmos?

"Gypsy" is about an early FTL colonization spaceship that had been bound for Alpha Centauri but instead became lost in space whereas the remaining two stories mentioned here are set in much later periods. "Star Ship" refers to Galactic civilization and, in "The Acolytes," one explorer has:

"...been all over the Galaxy..." (p. 3)

So far, the stories either do not pull together into a single series or at most are set in widely separated periods of a common timeline.

5 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

The simplest explanation might be that these were, after all, very early stories by Anderson. Hence he might have intended them to be independent non-series works.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

But he must have included them in the Chronology.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Do we know that for sure? If I got a copy of the magazine where Anderson pub. his Chronology, then we might find out if included these particular stories in the Psychotechnic series.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

I have not seen the original Chronology.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

But it would be a necessary piece of evidence.

Ad astra! Sean