Swords And Spaceships

Pulp magazines had spacemen with swords on their covers. Poul Anderson rationalized that. Dominic Flandry of the Terran Empire can use a sword because his decadent civilization cultivates deliberate archaisms like scientific fencing. In a sword fight, Flandry's telepathic opponent, Aycharaych, has no advantage because fencing moves are drilled reflexes.

The Arzunians carry swords and spears because their telekinesis prevented them from developing mechanics and they are simply uninterested in science. Guns against swords sounds like an easy fight. However, telekinesis enables the Arzunians to deflect missiles or blaster shots unless they are distracted. They have caused a spaceship to crash on their planet and should now be able to dispose of its crew. However, knowing all this, the Earthmen use their blaster flames to forge swords, axes and spears from the scattered plastic and metal of their wrecked ship.

Thus, some of those old pulp covers can make sense after all!

Multiple Viewpoints

We value a future history series because it shows us characters leading often ordinary lives in different periods. Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization does this but also presents multiple perspectives even within a single period.

In Nicholas van Rijn's time:

students hoping to join the Polesotechnic League;
some of van Rijn's employees;
other planetary explorers.

In Dominic Flandry's time:

Ensign Flandry gives us Hauksberg, Brechdan and Abrams before its title character;

John Ridenour meets Flandry on Starkad, then later is seen, with several others, on Freehold;

A Circus Of Hells gives us the viewpoint of its heroine, Djana;

the Didonians share memories of human beings long after Flandry's visit to their planet;

the entire population of Aeneas recovers and adjusts after Flandry has defeated their rebellion;

Kossara Vymezal prays for her fiancee, Flandry;

ychan steadcaptains on the Obala see a tall man in their mootroom;

we know some of the thoughts of Yewwl, Miriam Abrams, Diana Crowfeather, Admiral Olaf Magnusson, Fodaich Eidhafor the Bold, Ensign Helen Kittredge, Afal Uroch and Targovi.

It would be a mistake to focus on van Rijn and Flandry to the detriment of all the other characters in the History.

Proto-Series

By a "proto-series," I mean a single work that is potentially the opening installment of a series. If Poul Anderson had written nothing further about Nicholas van Rijn, Dominic Flandry or Manson Everard, then the stories that had introduced these characters, "Margin of Profit," "Tiger by the Tail" and "Time Patrol," would have been easily identifiable as three proto-series. (Each of these titles defines the role of its respective central character to a certain extent.)

In fact, each of these narratives was not only extended forwards but also expanded sideways. In other words, we learn more about the Polesotechnic League than just about van Rijn, or even about his protege Falkayn, more about the Terran Empire than just about Flandry, or even about his adversary Aycharaych, and more about the Time Patrol than just about Everard, or even about his protege Tamberly.

Regular readers will know that the League and the Empire were fitted into a single timeline, as the History of Technic Civilization, whereas the Patrol guards an alternative timeline, in the separate Time Patrol series. With the benefit of hindsight, we might have preferred if all three series had been unified. However, Everard operates in historical, not future historical, periods and interacts with the Roman, not the Terran, Empire. Thus, even if the few futuristic references in the Time Patrol series had mentioned the League or the Empire, there would not have been a lot of overlap.

If a proto-series is a single work, then a series is at least two works. In this sense, the Flandry series is followed by, and the Technic History is ended by, one series and three proto-series:

The Game Of Empire is a proto-series about Diana Crowfeather, Flandry's daughter;
"A Tragedy of Errors" is a proto-series about Roan Tom, a star rover during the Long Night;
The Night Face and "The Sharing of Flesh" are a short series about the Allied Planets;
"Star Fog" is a proto-series about Daven Laure, a Ranger of the Commonalty.

Flandry cameos in The Game Of Empire but the last novel about him is the previous volume, A Stone In Heaven, which, I think, deserves further attention for its presentation of the now fully matured Flandry.

Earlier in the Technic History, "Wings of Victory" describes first contact with Ythri during the Grand Survey. Thus, it is both a Grand Survey proto-series and the opening Ythrian story.

Flandry And Foundation And Van Rijn

Of the first eight stories in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, Nicholas van Rijn appears in only one, "Margin Of Profit," which I think should be read as no 5, at the approximate midpoint. Of the following eleven works, eight stories and three novels, he appears in all but two! The works that come after that are set after his life time.

Thus, he dominates the Polesotechnic League period even when the series has changed its main focus from van Rijn himself to his trader team led by David Falkayn. Nevertheless, van Rijn is absent from nine of these nineteen works so that we are given plenty of information both about pre-League events and about other aspects of the society that is contemporary with van Rijn.

The theme of the collapse of a civilization occurs twice in the History. First, the League decays. Later, the Empire that has replaced it falls. But Anderson shows us in sufficient detail what goes wrong in each case. The Fall leading to the Long Night is no mere rerun of the decline of the League leading to the Time of Troubles and both are far more convincing than Asimov's Fall of the Galactic Empire.

In Anderson's History, civilization is gradually rebuilt by the efforts of people and their governments to form an alliance of planets whereas Asimov instead gives us the implausible behind the scenes machinations of psychohistorians, mental supermen and telepathic Robots.

Flandry's Legacy?

If anyone else has read the articles on this blog in chronological order, then they might have noticed that I have made several attempts to delineate how Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilisation should be presented in a uniform series of omnibus collections. Although the details are debatable, I think that a basic pattern has emerged. Baen Books have got the number of volumes right: seven. There should be (I now think):

one volume of beginnings and introductions;
an entire volume about Nicholas van Rijn or his employees;
an intermediate volume covering the later League, the colonization of Avalon and the early Empire;
the "Young Flandry" trilogy;
one volume about the Empire in general and Dominic Flandry in particular;
the last three novels set during Flandry's life time;
an "After the Empire" volume.

The last three novels during Flandry's life are not a trilogy, perhaps a "triptych." I call these novels "Children of Empire" because each of them begins with a grown up son or daughter of a human character introduced in the first Flandry novel and the third of them also features the grown up son of a non-human character introduced in that first Flandry novel.

Clearly, I think that Flandry himself should be kept out of the concluding volume and I do not think that Flandry's Legacy is an appropriate title for it. Flandry prolonged the Empire but he was not responsible either for the chaos that followed the Empire or for the long recovery after that.

Afterthought: The rationale for seven volumes is as follows. Both the League period and the Flandry period have a beginning, a middle, an end and an aftermath but the League's end and aftermath fit into a single volume.

Technic History Novels

There are 12 and they form a pattern:

3 with van Rijn, 1 without;
3 with Flandry, 1 without;
3 with Flandry, 1 without.

This establishes first that there are 2 major continuing characters and secondly that 3 entire novels feature neither. We may add that the 2nd and 3rd novels with van Rijn also feature his protege, Falkayn, another major continuing character, and that the last novel with Flandry is mainly about his daughter, potentially a new continuing character. Thus, there are at least 2 other important characters. In fact, there are several more but I am just seeing what can be learned by skimming through the novels. To be more precise about the pattern:

3 with van Rijn, 1 between van Rijn and Flandry;
3 with Flandry, 1 contemporary with Flandry;
3 with Flandry, 1 post-Flandry.

This establishes that the novels alone cover 4 periods. The novel contemporary with Flandry introduces the pro-Terran human Desai and the anti-Terran Chereionite Aycharaych. Both later interact with Flandry. Desai expounds to Flandry the theory of Empire which Aycharaych, Flandry's opponent, probably applies to subvert the Empire. Thus, another two important characters.

In fact, the more numerous shorter works in the History add several more periods: 

3 before van Rijn;
3 after Flandry;
a total of 5 between.

(By the 5 between, I mean the Troubles, the early Empire, 2 stages of the colonisation of Avalon and the war between the Empire and Avalon.) It all looks rather symmetrical but perhaps only because readers seek order where none was planned?