The Twilight Of The Terran Empire

Did Hank Davis, Compiler of Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga, write the blurbs? This one is quite good:

"It is the twilight of the Terran Empire. The warriors who made it great are long gone now, and the traders of the Polesotechnic League who made it possible are the dimly-remembered stuff of legend. Alien enemies prowl its outer precincts, and Sector Governors conspire for the Throne of Man. On Terra herself, those who occupy the labyrinthine corridors of power busy themselves with trivialities and internal politics, as outside the final darkness gathers."
-Young Flandry (New York, 2010), back cover.

The blurb deploys evocative terms and phrases: twilight; Empire; warriors; legend; enemies prowling; Throne; not only "corridors of power" but "labyrinthine" ones; the final darkness gathering.

The warriors that made the Empire great include the Founder who, in the previous volume, led a slave revolt, seized a slaver ship and attacked the slavers' planet. How did the League make the Empire possible? It "...spread a truly universal civilization..." (The Van Rijn Method, p. 146), which the Empire took over when the previous system of government had broken down.

Alien enemies include not only a rival imperialism but also barbarians armed with spaceships and nuclear weapons by unscrupulous traders - the other side of the League. The corridors of power include the city-sized Admiralty Center where Flandry receives his orders in the third Young Flandry novel.

The second paragraph of this blurb describes Flandry as "...blazing a trail across the galaxy..." whereas, of course, in this era, known space comprises only one outer part of a single spiral arm. Anderson's text is more considered and restrained than an extravagant blurb.

The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume III

Occasionally, I critique the physical layout and even the pagination of a book. For example, I consider unnecessarily blank pages wasteful and unaesthetic. However, I can find very little adverse criticism to make of Rise Of The Terran Empire, which is Volume III of Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga, compiled by Hank Davis.

First, I think that the contents are just right, that the title is appropriate and even that the cover illustration (see image) is excellent, unlike those on some of the other Volumes. Secondly, in the entire seven-volume Saga, the text begins on page 1 in Arabic numerals whereas Roman numerals are used before that. I think that this should be a universal publishing practice. A glance at the last page should tell us the page count for the text. It should not be necessary to look to the front, then subtract a number.

In Rise..., we find that Hank Davis' Introduction, "Descent Into Empire," is on pp. VII-X, although it could have been fitted onto three pages and there is a miss-spelling in the heading of p. IX, "Desent Into Empire."

The Roman numerals number everything before the text except the front cover. Thus, we find:

outside front cover - see image;
inside front cover - the Baen symbol, prices and a bar code;
p. I - an extract from Mirkheim, the first work collected in this Volume;
p. II - a list of Baen Books by Poul Anderson;
p. III - title page;
p. IV - publication information;
p. V - Contents;
p. VI - Acknowledgements.

I also like it that there are few blank pages throughout the book and, in particular, that the text of "Sargasso of Lost Starships" ends on p. 436 while the text of The People Of The Wind, a novel, begins on p. 437, without any intervening blank pages or internal title page.

Where Is The Black Nebula?

In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, the author writes the introductions that are fictitiously written by:

Francis L Minamoto;
Hloch of the Stormgate Choth;
Vance Hall;
Noah Arkwright;
Le Matelot;
Urwain the Wide-Faring;
Donvar Ayeghen, President of the Galactic Archaeological Society.

(Have I missed any?)

In Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga, the first complete uniform edition of the Technic History, editor/compiler Hank Davis writes the one new introduction that is fictitiously written by Michael Karageorge, a contemporary of Donvar Ayeghen.

Karageorge writes that the few clues as to the location of the Black Nebula use names of stars that fell into disuse centuries previously. The story, "Sargasso of Lost Starships," informs us that the nebula is a spherical dust cloud a light year in diameter ten parsecs beyond Ansa towards Sagittari. This sounds clear enough. And Ansa, a colony planet, is still inhabited a few centuries later in Dominic Flandry's time.

However, "Ansa" is the Anglic name of a planet. We are not told the name of its star. Further, Ayeghen and Karageorge live a very long time after Flandry. Ayeghen refers to the Empire founded by Manuel Argos as "...the First Empire..." (Rise Of The Terran Empire, p.325). We know of no subsequent Empires although we do know that human beings spread further during the four or more millennia after Flandry. Daven Laure, a Ranger of the service organization called the Commonalty, reflects that:

humanity has thinly occupied parts of two or three spiral arms;
the Commonalty operates in only one civilization, where it has members on ten million planets;
other branches of humanity have distinctive ways;
there are rumors of even stranger ways.

Thus, although the Commonalty has no wars or imperialism, there could well be empires elsewhere and Ayeghen's phraseology confirms this. Sol and Old Earth are fifty light years from Ansa but two spiral arms away from Daven Laure so Karageorge, wherever/whenever he is, is probably right when he says that the Black Nebula will be difficult to locate, especially if the name of their organization, the Galactic Archaeological Society, means that Ayeghen and Karageorge belong to a civilization that is not confined to part of one spiral arm but spans the galaxy.  

Minor Anomalies

"The following story was also written by Judith Dalmady/Lundgren for the periodical Morgana."
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 317.

"Children of [Dalmady's] moved to Avalon with Falkayn. This story was written in her later years by one of them, Judith...It appeared in a periodical of the time called Morgana." (p. 517)

Alert readers will notice that the passage introducing Judith Dalmady and Morgana comes two hundred pages after the passage referring to a second story by Judith in Morgana. This is because the order of stories in The Van Rijn Method, compiled by Hank Davis, differs slightly from that in the earlier The Earth Book Of Stormgate.

However, I agree with the placing of "Esau," introduced on p. 517, later in the Technic History since its introduction describes the philosophy and practice of the Polesotechnic Leauge as "...already...becoming somewhat archaic, if not obsolete." (p. 517) Anomalously, the introduction to the immediately following story, "Hiding Place," celebrates the League's early days with:

"The world's great age begins anew..." (p. 555)

I suggest that the introduction to "Hiding Place," which had originally opened the Trader To The Stars collection, should, in the omnibus History, be placed before "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," where it would then appropriately introduce the League period as a whole.

This period begins with three short stories featuring, respectively, Adzel, van Rijn and Falkayn and ends with a novel featuring all three. We see Falkayn and, later, Flandry from the beginning of their careers into their mature years whereas we first encounter van Rijn when his early days are far behind him. I will seek out what the texts disclose, although it is not very much, about those early days.

The Technic Civilization Saga

This has been a long time coming. I finally have Baen Books Technic Civilization Saga in its entirety. One volume had to be reprinted before the bookshop could get it. I already had all but one of the collected stories but this series is definitely worth buying. (Referring to another Anderson series, I bought an identical  new copy of The Shield Of Time when my original copy began to crumble into dust through over-use, then patched up the original and continued to use it.)

Hank Davis' Introductions to the Volumes are worth reading, also his entertaining new Introduction to one old story that definitely needed it. The Volumes can be critiqued for their covers, contents and titles. I do not want to be comprehensive right now but here are some main point, not in any order.

Volume I, cover: excellent image of van Rijn;

Vol III, I agree with contents and cover but not title - should be Late League, Early Empire or, better still, just League And Empire;

Vol IV, I agree with contents and title but not cover;

I think the last three Flandry novels should be a Volume called Children Of Empire;

Flandry should be absent from the title, cover and contents of the concluding Volume, which should be Long Night And Dawn, although that is a good image of an older Flandry;

Flandry does not look quite aristocratic enough - the illustrations in the Ace Books edition of The Game Of Empire are truer to the physical descriptions in the texts.

Three Saints And A God

Reading Poul Anderson necessitates the use of a dictionary. Recently, I thought to google the title "Thalassocrat" applied to a ruler on a subjovian planet in "Esau." This is not an alien word because it ends in "-ocrat." (1)

I also suddenly wondered about St Dismas who is continually invoked by Anderson's merchant character, Nicholas van Rijn. Was Dismas, like the Jerusalem Catholic Church and the Galilean Order, a religious fiction by Anderson or was there "really" such a saint? Yes, there was. "Dismas" is a name given to the "good thief" crucified beside Jesus but pardoned by him in Luke's Gospel, thus appropriate for van Rijn.

In "Margin of Profit," van Rijn as usual invokes Dismas whereas his companion prefers:

"...St Nicholas, patron of travelers...In spite of his being your namesake." (2)

(Although, is the patron saint of travelers not St Christopher?)

Thirdly, van Rijn, catching an attacking ship on an energy beam, exclaims:

"Ha, like a fish we play him! Good St Peter the Fisherman, help us not let him get away!" (3)

Finally, having calculatingly used his ship, the Mercury, to capture the pirate, van Rijn reveals that Mercury was the Roman god of commerce, gambling and thieves. Thus, the good thief and the god of thieves meet in a van Rijn story.

(1) Anderson, Poul, The Van Rijn Method, compiled by Hank Davis, Riverdale, NY, 2009, p. 526.
(2) ibid., p. 159.
(3) ibid., p. 166.

Latter Days?

In Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization, "Esau" (1970), featuring Nicholas van Rijn, is placed just before "Hiding Place" (1961), also featuring van Rijn. In "Hiding Place," van Rijn is out in space whereas in "Esau" he is back on Earth receiving an employee's report so I would have guessed that "Esau" was set later in van Rijn's career.

When "Hiding Place" was collected in Trader to the Stars in 1966, a newly written fictitious Introduction commented:

" 'The world's great age begins anew...' " (1)

and:

"We do not know where we are going. Nor do most of us care. For us it is enough that we are on our way." (2)

Thus, this story heralds a new age.

When "Esau" was collected in The Earth Book of Stormgate in 1978, a newly written fictitious Introduction commented that the philosophy and practice of the Polesotechnic League

"...already...were becoming somewhat archaic, if not obsolete." (3)

Thus, this story occurs later in the History?

(1) Anderson, Poul, The Van Rijn Method, compiled by Hank Davis, Riverdale, NY, 2009, p. 555.
(2) ibid., p. 556.
(3) ibid., p. 517.