Monday, 8 September 2025

Pairs Of Instalments

Anderson's History of Technic Civilization is so spacious and substantive that some of its species, individuals and institutions are introduced by a pair of instalments instead of just by a single instalment:

two stories about early human interactions with Ythrians, presenting first their biology, then their theology;

two contemporaneous stories introducing the Polesotechnic League with Adzel studying on Earth while Nicholas van Rijn runs Solar Spice & Liquors;

two stories about David Falkayn's career before he led van Rijn's first trade pioneer crew - first apprenticed to Martin Schuster, then working for SSL although not yet close to van Rijn;

two stories set on different continents of the planet Ivanhoe (one of them one of the Falkayn ones);

two stories about the trade pioneer crew, first on Ikranaka, then on Merseia;

two stories about the joint human-Ythrian colonization of the planet Avalon - first the Hesperian Islands, then the Coronan continent;

two 1952 pulp magazine stories about the proclamation, then the early expansion, of the Terran Empire;

two instalments about planets on the fringes of the Empire in Dominic Flandry's period;

two stories set during the period of recovery between the post-Imperial Long Night and the later civilizations spread through several spiral arms of the galaxy.

1 comment:

  1. Kaor, Paul!

    And all of this came together sheerly by accident because of Anderson impulsively mentioning Polesotechnarch van Rijn in THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS.

    Ad astra! Sean

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