Background Information

During a day trip away from books and a computer, thoughts about Poul Anderson's Technic History settle down into fresh-seeming patterns. In Mirkheim, which is the culminating volume of the Polesotechnic League Tetralogy, imperialistic Baburites seize control of valuable Mirkheim and of humanly colonized Hermes and have recruited some aristocratic Merseians who are disaffected from Technic civilization into their space navy. For background information about Baburites, Mirkheim, the Grand Duchess of Hermes and Merseians, we read four of the twelve Technic History instalments collected in The Earth Book Of Stormgate:

Baburites in "Esau";

Mirkheim in "Lodestar";

the (future) Duchess in The Man Who Counts;

Merseians in "Day of Burning."

In The People Of The Wind, set several centuries after Mirkheim, human beings and Ythrians share the jointly colonized planet, Avalon. For background information about human-Ythrian interactions and about the joint exploration, then colonization, of Avalon, we read another four instalments in the Earth Book:

first human-Ythrian contact in "Wings of Victory";

exploration of Avalon in "The Problem of Pain";

colonization of the Hesperian Islands in "Wingless";

colonization of the Coronan continent in "Rescue on Avalon."

A series that was not preplanned but that grew organically turns out to be intricately systematic when it is analyzed. The series is not linear but dynamic. Each episode not only succeeds but also transforms what has gone before. The story behind the stories becomes more than the sum of its parts. There are three interconnected interstellar histories - of human beings, of Ythrians and of Merseians. The Baburites, appearing only twice, fail in their imperial ambitions because those ambitions collide with Nick van Rijn and his trader team. David Falkayn changes more history than anyone else although, millennia later, it is Dominic Flandry's legacy that endures at least according to the scant information that we have received from that later period.