Rich Narratives

We appreciate the richness of two fictional timelines. Well, more than two but I am thinking specifically of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol timeline and of the same author's Technic History. We have just realized how multi-layered one single Time Patrol instalment, "Star of the Sea," is. Consider also "Esau" in Anderson's The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method:

Hloch, an Avalonian Ythrian, introduces a story written by a first-generation Avalonian human being, Judith Dalmady/Lundgren, and originally published in an Avalonian periodical named after that planet's moon, Morgana; 

in this story, Judith's father, Emil Dalmady, who is from Altai, a planet visited centuries later by Dominic Flandry, confronts Nicholas van Rijn, founder and owner of Solar Spice & Liquors, in van Rijn's penthouse on the roof of the Winged Cross in Chicago Integrate on Earth;

a story within the story informs us twentieth and twenty-first century readers of what Dalmady recounts to van Rijn, namely his adventures on the planet Suleiman where he had outwitted the Baburites who will, in a later novel, challenge the Solar Commonwealth for possession of the supermetals-rich planet, Mirkheim, that will have been discovered by van Rijn's protege, David Falkayn.

Four narrative layers: Hloch, Judith, Emil and van Rijn. "Esau" is listed as a van Rijn story but its real hero is Emil Dalmady from the remote human outpost of Altai, later threatened by Merseians.

A fully integrated future history series.