Longer Term Questions

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows is a pivotal novel for two main characters in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization. Flandry of Terra loses his son and his fiancee. Aycharaych of Chereion loses his planet and his heritage. Flandry carries on. We do not know what happens to Aycharaych. Two volumes later there is a hint that he might have survived but that is all.

Was Aycharaych killed in the bombardment of Chereion? He could have escaped but might not have wanted to. If he did escape, he would have had no reason to continue working either for Merseia or against Terra. Might he instead have worked against Merseia? Could that be why, when the Empire falls, its space is not filled by an expanded Rhoidunate?

How could the Ancients/Chereionites have become extinct? If they are not, then where are they and could Aycharaych have joined them (although his anguish in the face of Flandry's questions does strongly suggest that he is indeed the last Chereionite)? (1) Another science fiction writer might have planned and presented a multi-volume series raising, then answering, these questions. Instead, Anderson wrote a long sequence of stories and novels about various characters living and working in many different well conceived planetary environments.

Longer term questions about history and the Ancients form the background for these works but do not become the prime subject matter. Thus, we get an approximation to real history. What is the later course of the career of Flandry's daughter? What will Fr Axor discover when he continues to examine Ancient ruins? Since the League and the Empire fell, will the Commonalty fall also? Such questions could have been answered if Anderson had just written this one series and had not devoted such attention to details in individual works but had instead concentrated on an Asimovian perspective of big galactic events. However, I think we should be very grateful that Anderson followed the course that he did.

(1) Anderson, Poul, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, London, 1978, p. 215.

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?

Relationships Between Future Histories

The connection between Robert Heinlein's Future History and Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History is that the latter was modeled on the former. The connection between the Psychotechnic History and the Technic History is that both were written by Anderson. Thus, there is no direct connection between the Future History and the Technic History. However, all three are future histories. Heinlein's History and Anderson's second History have in common that, in both cases, the period of time covered by the series as a whole is longer than the life span of any of the characters - although with one exception in the case of Heinlein because one of his science fictional premises is precisely the prolongation of human life. In any case, both series cover a period longer than any expected human life span.

Secondly, as in any fictitious history, earlier stories provide background material and references for later stories so that continuity is provided not by characters but by process. Thirdly, both the Future History and the Technic History follow the same general pattern of capitalist expansion followed by political collapse and tyranny but later followed by a stabler culture.

One pleasure afforded by a future history, as by any long series, is to read or re-read not just individual stories but the entire sequence from beginning to end in chronological order of fictitious events which can differ from the order of writing or publication. With Heinlein and Anderson, there could be the additional pleasure of reading all three histories one after the other in the order of their publication. The sequence within each series is transcended by the sequence between them.

It would be necessary for the reader to remember that, in the case of Anderson, he was moving from very early to much later works by the same author so that a higher quality of writing and imagination is to be found in the Technic History. On the other hand, the Psychotechnic History does successfully emulate the model created by Heinlein and provides a conceptual contrast with the Technic History: a premise of benevolent social control as against unbridled capitalism.

(Addendum: Since writing the above, I have been rightly reminded that, although the social control in the Psychotechnic History is initially "benevolent," it becomes manipulative and oppressive and is overthrown. Consistently throughout his career and in many later works, Anderson passionately defended the uncontrolled and the unpredictable in human affairs and did not want to inhabit any sort of managed or safe environment.)

Inconsistencies

"Perfect consistency is possible only to God himself, and a close study of scripture will show that he doesn't always make it." (1)

That was Poul Anderson's standard response to readers who spotted inconsistencies in his future history. A lot of inconsistencies in fiction can be ironed out if it is recognized that most fiction, even when the narration is in the third person, is narrated from the point of view of a fictitious character who may be mistaken. Merseians are mammals but with more traces of reptilian ancestry than Terrans. Or they are warm-blooded giving live birth but are not mammals, "...no kind of animal that Terra had ever brought forth." (2) That last remark is obviously correct. The statement that they are mammals is made from Flandry's point of view. The statement that they are not is made from another character's. Thus, the statements express different characters' understandings, not objective facts.

In A Circus Of Hells, Flandry greets Tachwyr the Dark of Merseia as a member of the Vach Rueth whereas The Game Of Empire presents Tachwyr as the Hand of the Vach Dathyr. We are to understand that Tachwyr has risen to the Handship of his Vach between novels but the Vach should not have changed. But, of course, Flandry could have been mistaken. This would be out of character but is at least possible and A Circus Of Hells does show him making youthful mistakes. Flustered at meeting his former acquaintance unexpectedly in the formal setting of a Naval reception, Flandry could have stumbled and misremembered Tachwyr's Vach, like introducing someone as Northern Irish when we should have known that he was Scottish. Alternatively, there is a Story To Be Told about why, against immemorial Merseian custom, Tachwyr did for some reason change his Vach. Again, changes to immemorial custom are at least possible. The only logical impossibility here is Tachwyr both being in Vach Rueth and not being in Vach Rueth at the same time.

In "Honorable Enemies," Flandry says that Chereionites have full citizenship in the Merseian Empire whereas everything else that we know about Merseians entails that they either subordinate or exterminate other races:

"... the highest end of all...absolute freedom for our race to make of the galaxy what they will." (3)

That would seem to be incompatible with granting members of other races equal citizenship. However, the Chereionites are a very special case and, again, Flandry's information could be incorrect.

By referring to scripture, Anderson unintentionally invited comparison between his History of Technic Civilization and the Bible so how does Anderson's series measure up to this comparison? The Bible, like the Technic History, is a history of a people. Its books cover successive generations who lived in different but historically connected periods. Some books present alternative versions of events. Individual stories in Anderson's The Earth Book Of Stormgate and, in a separate volume, his account of the founding of the Terran Empire are presented as possibly fictionalized narratives of events that did occur. Further, some of Anderson's characters seek theological significance in the course of events. Thus, I think that the comparison with the Bible is valid. 

(1) Poul Anderson, "Concerning Future Histories" IN Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, Vol 14, No 3, whole no 71, Fall 1979, pp. 7-14 AT p. 13.
(2) Poul Anderson, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, London, 1975, p. 29.
(3) Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry, London, 1976, p. 31. 

Is "Memory" Part of the Technic History?

In "Memory" by Poul Anderson, a regime called the Hegemony restores interstellar civilisation after the fall of a human interstellar Empire. In "The Sharing of Flesh" by Poul Anderson, the Allied Planets restore interstellar civilisation after the fall of the Terran Empire which Manuel Argos founded in "The Star Plunderer" and Dominic Flandry defended in several stories and novels. Are these the same Empire? The stories do not cross-refer because they are set either in different fictitious futures or in different spatial regions. If the Hegemony and the Alliance occupy opposite ends of the former imperial territory and expand in different directions, then they must lack common references and terminologies. For example, Hegemonists call the post-Imperial interregnum "the Dark Ages" whereas Flandry's direct successors call it "the Long Night." Also, the repressive Hegemony was too unstable to have survived long. When, at the end of "Memory," a "deviant unit," i. e., a free man, starts to build an alternative to the Hegemony, this could become the Commonalty which we know will succeed the Allied Planets.

"Memory" attributes to the fallen Empire a mental technology that did not exist in Flandry's period but that could have developed later especially when the declining Empire became more repressive. A Hegemonic unit says that altered stellar positions have invalidated Imperial charts. This kind of background inconsistency is often smoothed over when disparate stories are shoehorned into a single timeline. But, if we take this detail seriously, then it implies a much later date for the Hegemony. In that case, the Hegemony and its rivals could instead be one of the branches of humanity that, we are told, co-exist with the Commonalty in two or three spiral arms. Such far flung civilizations can be expected to endure for a correspondingly longer period and the short lived Hegemony could be an incident during such a period.

There is another possibility. By their actions, Hans Molitor, the usurper, and Dominic Flandry, Intelligence Officer and Imperial Adviser, prolong the Imperial period, thus giving some colonized planets more time to prepare for the war, piracy, economic collapse and isolation of the Long Night. This in turn later leads to the beneficial regimes of the Allied Planets and the Commonalty. The Hegemony might be what would have happened otherwise.

Thus, "Memory" is set in the Allied Planets period, the Commonalty period, a divergent timeline or, as Anderson himself believed, an unrelated timeline. I had thought of only the first and fourth possibilities when I started to write. If "Memory" were to be incorporated into The History of Technic Civilization, then a concluding collection for the series could contain just four stories, each set in a different milieu: Long Night, Allied Planets, Hegemony and Commonalty. The Night Face is one Allied Planets novel. The first two stories of the History cover the first two periods of interplanetary and interstellar exploration, the latter called "the Grand Survey." Between the two end points are the two major periods: the Polesotechnic League (main characters Nicholas van Rijn and David Falkayn although there are others) and the Terran Empire (main character Dominic Flandry although there are others). Between these two periods is the pivotal story about Manuel of his Dynasty the First. With or without "Memory," the Technic History remains a substantial series.