Birds And Future Histories

There was a birds of prey display at the Southport Flower Show today as there has been in the past at Muncaster. Was I alone in Southport in thinking of Poul Anderson's intelligent flying carnivores, the Ythrians? They always come to mind on sight of peregrines etc.

Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, which features Ythrians, is what Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and Frank Herbert's Dune series should have been: a detailed history of interstellar civilizations with a vast cast covering multiple periods. What matters is the details of individual lives in planetary environments, not political manipulations by powerful cliques. James Blish's Cities In Flight, Volume III, Earthman, Come Home, shows us the Mayor and City Manager but not the population of New-York-in-flight but Blish - partly - made up for this in the later-written Volume II, A Life For The Stars.

Cities In Flight, like Robert Heinlein's Future History, would have matched the Technic History if lengthened whereas the Foundation series and the Dune series would have needed total rewrites. Thus, this blog ranks sf works.

Blish's major disadvantage vis a vis Anderson is a much smaller output.