Later And Earlier

When reading a fictional series, we sometimes know that an event has happened earlier in the characters' lives, then appreciate reading a later written account of that event. Holmes tells Watson and thus us about his first case...

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, "The Trouble Twisters" (1965) tells us that Adzel as a student sang Fafnir and paraded at Chinese New Year. "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" (1974) tells us how that had happened. In "Wingless" (1973) Nat Falkayn's father is called Nicholas. In Mirkheim (1977):

"Nicholas Falkayn was born in his great-grandfather's mansion..."

-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 1-291 AT XVIII, p. 247.

There is an aesthetic satisfaction in watching the pieces of the narrative fitting together.

In The People Of The Wind (1973), Philippe Rochefort is a Jerusalem Catholic. In "The Saturn Game" (1981), Jean Broberg was brought up as a Jerusalem Catholic. This might not seem significant until we remember that Rochefort lives several centuries in our future whereas Broberg was brought up in the early twenty-first century! Suddenly, future changes, which will affect Christian denominations as well as everything else, are not remote but here and now. We are going somewhere if not into the Technic History.