Not Only Times But Also Places

A future history series should feature places where some of the characters live, work or spend time so that the reader vicariously experiences not only the passage of time, biographical, generational, historical - even geological and cosmological - but also a number of fully realized physical locations. History is temporal but historical events are spatiotemporal and sometimes contemporaneous. John Ridenour is on Freehold and Chunderban Desai is on Aeneas while Dominic Flandry pursues his career in Intelligence. Earlier, some Polesotechnic League stories had overlapped.

The Rebel Worlds introduces some locations on Aeneas, then most of The Day Of Their Return is set on that planet. Nicholas van Rijn has a penthouse in Chicago Integrate and Dominic Flandry has an apartment in Archopolis. However, these characters move around so much that what we get is a quick succession of places and planets although each of these is realized in detail. We see Flandry in his office at Intelligence Headquarters only once in his entire series.

In the Man-Kzin Wars series, Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling take the trouble to establish the setting of Harold's Terran Bar which Anderson reuses. In one scene, we see this nightspot when it is empty in daylight. Only the proprietor and the bribe-accepting police chief meet and eat:

wurst;
egg and potato salad;
breads;
shrimp-on-rye;
gulyas soup -

- although the police chief has only a croissant and espresso. More for our food thread.

The Laws Of Cultures

The interpreted past meets the imagined future (see here) when Chunderban Desai exhaustively analyzes Terrestrial history. However:

"'...we don't have the knowledge to say how far [the historical pattern] may apply to nonhumans, if at all,' Desai admitted."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 390.

But he intends to find out. When Flandry questions whether the Merseians are also decadent, Desai asks:

"'...what is decadence to a nonhuman?'" (ibid.)

I think that the Merseian resolve begins to weaken shortly afterwards when the Magnusson Rebellion fails. Tachwyr's rationalization:

"'By adversity, the God tempers the steel of the Race. Let us get on with our quest.'"
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 447 -

- rings hollow.

By contrast with Desai, the Vro-Hi in "Flight to Forever," having advised the First Galactic Empire of many intelligent species on a billion planets, has learned "...the great laws in the rise and fall of cultures..." -Past Times (New York, 1984), p. 262.

If transported to the History of Technic Civilization, the Vro-Hi would be able to assess Terra, Merseia, Ythri etc - unless "...the great laws..." differ between timelines? But I doubt it.

Chunderban Desai

Chunderban Desai:

is a native of the human-colonized planet, Ramanujan, where there is a Mount Gandhi;

is married with seven children, four grown and settled on different planets (imagine living in such an immense civilization);

had worked in regions facing Betelgeuse and Merseia;

was assigned to the Terran diplomatic delegation that ended the Jihannath crisis, where his Merseian opposite number was Uldwyr;

is fluent in the principal Merseian language, Eriau, as Uldwyr is in Anglic;

is now a commissioner, thus intermediate between a resident in a single culture and a governor of a galactic sector;

specifically, is High Commissioner of the Virgilian System at the opposite end of the Terran Empire from Jihannath;

thus, is based in Nova Roma on the human-colonized planet Aeneas which had spearheaded the revolt of Sector Alpha Crucis against the Empire;

later, will teach at the Diplomatic Academy on Terra for a year before retiring to Ramanujan where he will continue to develop the cyclical theory of history that he explains to Flandry.

One of the many characters that we would like to know more about, Desai's single reappearance, to converse with Flandry in a later novel, is both unexpected and highly enjoyable.