Just Beginning

One way to end a story is to show that another story is just beginning. At the end of Satan's World by Poul Anderson, the trader team sets off on a new mission. Their lives have significantly changed in that they are now rich enough not to need the work but they do it because they want to. And, while they are outward bound, they play poker. They remain in character and their lives continue.

A later Star Trek film ends with Kirk and his crew taking a new Enterprise out of the Solar System, "thataway." The second and last Doctor Who cinema feature film ends with the TARDIS crew not back home but attacked by Roman soldiers...

SM Stirling found an appropriate ending for his alternative history novel, Conquistador. A sabre-tooth is routinely going about its business eating a giant sloth when a new Gate between worlds opens before it... This scene could lead to a sequel but does not need to. We can turn to other novels by Stirling - and also by Anderson or Turtledove - in order to read more about alternative histories.

Chronology

An approximate chronology for some significant events

The Satan episode.
Shortly after, the Tamethan uprising.
Shortly after that, David Falkayn begins the search that leads him to Mirkheim.
Ten years later, Nicholas van Rijn repeats that search.
Seven years later, Leonardo Rigassi finds Mirkheim.
One year later, the Baburites seize Mirkheim.

Sources

Satan's World describes the Satan episode.
"Lodestar" describes the Tamethan uprising and van Rijn's search.
Mirkheim notes Falkayn's search and Rigassi's discovery and describes the Babur War for Mirkheim and Hermes.

Chronologically slightly confusing. Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization allows only ten years between "Lodestar" and Mirkheim but see also here.

The Lunar Surface In Science Fiction

We are used to reading descriptions of the lunar surface in science fiction:

Verne's characters look down on it;
Wells' land on it;
Heinlein's live there.

However, from his suite in the Hotel Universe, Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn sees an altered landscape. Forcefields hold air, an ozone layer, soaring trees and fountains, great blossoms and lamps on vine-like posts although beyond them are a crater floor, a ringwall, jewel-like stars, the silver Milky Way and the blue and white Earth, all making van Rijn's opulent suite look tawdry.

David Falkayn visits Elfland in Lunograd, a park with grass, arbors, flowers, tall trees and fountains, towers, colonnades, birds, elevated streets, small suns on bronze vines and an Avenue of the Sphinxes although again beyond them are a crater floor, a ringwall, stars in a black sky and Earth with the lights of megalopolises visible on its night side. Although technology makes the Moon inhabitable and even comfortable, the stellar universe remains beyond the works of men.

Going one stage further, Poul Anderson also wrote a short story about a project to terraform the Moon.

Satan

David Falkayn explains "Satan" to Chee Lan:

"'The enemy of the divine, the source of evil, in one of our terrestrial religions.'"
-Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (New York, 2010), p. 457.

The Cynthian replies:

"'But any reasonable being can see that the divine itself is - Oh, well, never mind.'" (ibid.)

Why does Chee break off and how would she have continued? Surely she could only have said, "...the divine itself is the source of evil"? And I agree. If the divine is the source of everything other than itself, then it is the source of evil. And, if it is not the source of evil, then it is not the source of everything other than itself. If Satan sinned through pride, then he could have been created without the pride or with enough good motivation and will power to resist any temptation towards pride.

We confidently predict that a good man will perform good actions without believing that his predictability precludes his "free will." Thus, an omnipotent and omniscient creator could have created a host of angelic free agents knowing that none of them would rebel.

Nicholas van Rijn

Adzel accuses Nicholas van Rijn of "'...dangerous pride...'" in unilaterally assuming responsibility for deciding how to respond to the Shenna threat.
-Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (New York, 2010), p. 519.

Van Rijn replies:

Adzel is too naive and trusting;
most other people are too stupid, hysterical, ideological, greedy (!) or cruel;
van Rijn can pray for the intercession of St Dismas;
he is in fact informing and conferring with other good people as far as possible, although discretely;
he does go on to discuss the matter further with the "naive" Adzel.

Adzel acknowledges that he himself does not want the responsibility. We might laugh at van Rijn saying that some others are too greedy but, in fact, he knows better than to enjoy luxuries while Rome burns, so to say. It is others who wreck the Polesotechnic League by doing that. Van Rijn's faith in saintly intercession seems superficial but turns out to be sincere. It is his last point that clinches the argument. He does in fact "'...make connections in this life too...'" (p. 520), as he puts it. And, as he also says, even if he did hand the decision-making to someone else, that itself would be a decision of his for which he would be responsible.

I am sure that most of us see the Shenna as nothing but a threat but van Rijn has the imagination to realize that they are an entire race and even to recognize potential customers among them! Mercantile, but better than militarist. Finally, his faith in St Dismas turns out to have a practical application when his small statue of the saint becomes a weapon in a fight against an individual Shenn. Poul Anderson draws out every possible implication of his fictional premises.

Know Your Enemy V

Recently, I reread some passages of Poul Anderson's Satan's World, then of his Mirkheim (London, 1978), because I wanted information about Nicholas van Rijn's adversary, Edward Garver. However, I soon got back into rereading Mirkheim from cover to cover because it is such a concentrated piece of the Technic History and the real turning point of the entire series.

In "Lodestar," Chee Lan refers to "the Terran Empire" as a possible (worse) replacement for the Solar Commonwealth and the Polesotechnic League. I now think that "Lodestar" should appear near the end of an omnibus collection to be entitled Decline Of The Polesotechnic League and that Mirkheim should appear, as indeed it does in Baen Books The Technic Civilization Saga, at the beginning of an omnibus entitled Rise Of The Terran Empire. The descent into the Troubles preceding the Empire, that Indian Summer of Technic civilization, begins here.

Meanwhile, to summarize on Garver - like Flandry and Tachwyr, both of whom we meet later, he rises in rank or status each time he appears or is mentioned:

director of the Lunar Federal Centrum of Security and Law Enforcement;
Lunograd delegate to the Parliament of the Solar Commonwealth;
Minister of Security for the Solar Commonwealth.

Thus, his Ministry combines his former directorship of Security with his later Membership of Parliament. He passionately hates van Rijn as an archetype of everything to be abominated in the League. We are to understand that bad things do happen in the League:

"Many grudges were genuine...Reckless exploitation of societies and natural resources...introduction of modern technologies to backward races...irresponsibly, for a quick credit..." (pp. 104-105)

- although we also learn not to identify van Rijn with such practices. But he would have wanted to use Mirkheim merely to enrich himself further if Falkayn had not persuaded him otherwise.

How would I respond to the League if I were a contemporary of Garver? Here are three things not to do:

seek election to Parliament;

strengthen the state;

waste mental energy by investing it in personal hatred of van Rijn or of any other League merchant.

Many Anderson readers would probably want to join a trader team. This would not suit me unless, improbably, the crew included a full time academic whose sole role was to analyze and compare xeno languages, political systems and religions. (Perhaps I would have fitted better into the Grand Survey period.)

Below are a few things that I might try to do as a citizen of the Solar Commonwealth.

(i) Seek a well salaried post in public service, not in the private sector.

(ii) Campaign against particular abuses and injustices. Would such campaigns be among the "...exciting causes..." of which Anderson is rather dismissive? (p. 104)

(iii) Campaign also for a more cooperative and communal approach to economic and social life (an even more exciting cause!) with the understanding, first, that such a movement, if it gained any momentum, would be opposed by powerful invested interests, secondly that, in adverse circumstances, it could all too easily degenerate into just another bureaucracy and thirdly that the only way to prevent bureaucratic degeneration is for a movement to remain under the control of its members whose ideas might diverge from those of its founders. Thus can the founders be prevented from becoming "'...our Saviors with a capital ass...,'" in van Rijn's phrase. (p. 102)

(iv) Alternatively, join an expedition to found an extrasolar colony on radically different principles. This was the sort of thing that happened during the earlier period of the Breakup.

(v) Organize trade unions? This job needs to be done but I would prefer to leave it to those with more appropriate temperaments and aptitudes. I have had all too much experience of how union leaders and their employees can become bureaucrats contemptuous of their members. It is probably inevitable that trade unions reflect the society of which they are part. Since unions are merely defensive organizations, they are, like parliamentary parties, part of the status quo, not a way to anything better.

(vi) Support the Supermetals Company (if we knew its back story)?

Know Your Enemy IV

"[Garver] was not a cruel man." (Poul Anderson, Satan's World, New York, 1977, p. 79)

Who tells us this? Is the proposition that Garver is not cruel communicated directly to the reader by that omniscient narrator who can also tell us what occurs unobserved elsewhere in the galaxy or does he instead inform us of Garver's own self-perception? This matters. If the narrator speaks from his own omniscience, then his statement is true within the fiction whereas Garver's self-perception could be self-deception.

In fact, it has to be the latter because the proposition that he is not cruel is clearly untrue. He tortures a prisoner - and morally blames the prisoner for it. If this is not cruelty, then it will do until the real cruelty comes along!

There are always important issues underlying Anderson's fictions. A South American general interviewed on British television seemed to think that, in a civil war, the torture and murder of prisoners was only to be expected and fully acceptable. It is to be hoped that anyone wearing a military uniform understands that, whatever the nature of the conflict, there are laws and conventions governing the treatment of prisoners. I would assure the general that, if he became my prisoner, then he would not be tortured.

An unlikely scenario but who can tell what will happen to any of us in the future? Reading science fiction might help to prepare us for almost any scenario. According to Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization, the twenty-first century will include "...a violent period of global unrest known as the Chaos." (IN Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy, New York, 2012, p. 795)

We would like to read some stories set during the Chaos but, instead, we might live through it.

Humor II

I reread parts of Poul Anderson's Satan's World (New York, 1977) in order to learn about Nicholas van Rijn's adversary, Edward Garver, but I also found some Andersonian humor - I mean apart from the description of Garver himself!

"'We did not invite you to smoke,' Anastasia Herrera said frigidly.
"'Oh, that's alright, don't apologize, I know you got a lot on your minds.' Van Rijn lit the cigar..." (p. 75)

Amusingly, van Rijn pretends to misunderstand while simultaneously demonstrating his complete control of the conversation.

"[Adzel] assumed the quadrupedal equivalent of the lotus position,..." (p. 80)

We wonder what that must look like as the sentence continues:

"...which is quite a sight." (p. 80)

Here, for comical effect, Anderson seriously compromises the remote impersonality of the omniscient narrator. Only someone who had seen the quadrupedal lotus would be able to comment that it is "...quite a sight."

When van Rijn turns the tables on an opponent, the latter has to put a brave face on it:

"'Freeman van Rijn generously" - Kim had a fight to get the adverb out - "offered us advice.'" (p. 82)

Again:

"'...Freeman van Rijn will, sub rosa, be our broker.
"'At a fat commission,' Garver groaned.
"Kim could not refrain from groaning back, 'Very fat.'" (p. 82)

"'You have made your own settlement - with van Rijn?' Garver whispered.
"'Yes,' said Kim, like one up whom a bayonet has been rammed." (p. 83)

Humor is a sudden realization of incongruity. In these dialogues, there are repeated realizations of an incongruity between reality and appearance in the exchange between van Rijn and Kim.

Know Your Enemy III

The part of Nicholas van Rijn's career that we know about is bookended by "Margin of Profit" and Mirkheim. Between these two works are fourteen others of different lengths. Of these (in total) sixteen works, van Rijn appears in ten and his adversary, Edward Garver, in two of those ten - Satan's World and Mirkheim.

In Satan's World (New York, 1977), Garver is unflatteringly described thus: short, thinning hair, pugdog face, severe gray tunic, uncommonly wide shoulders, surrounded - almost guarded - by secretarial machines, never married, no personal desk items but many animated wall pictures of himself shaking hands with successive Solar Premiers, Lunar Presidents etc. (p. 65) His title is director of the Lunar Federal Centrum of Security and Law Enforcement. (p. 66) He hates the Polesotechnic League for its intrigue, bribery, corruption, disregard for laws, arrogance, feudalism, capitalism, license and profiteering. (p. 67)

Garver thinks that he will be able to charge van Rijn with several serious crimes including even murder but then finds that he cannot. Van Rijn says, just before switching off a communication screen, "'Gloat...'" (p. 83). Maybe I am no true Anderson fan but I cannot help feeling a little sorry for Garver at this point! As Flandry thinks about one of his superior officers, "It can't be much fun being Fenross." (Agent Of The Terran Empire, London, 1977, p. 113) - or Garver.

Both Garver and Fenross are presented to make the reader feel contempt for them and pleasure at their discomfiture, although perhaps some sympathy would be more appropriate, especially for Fenross when Flandry speculates about how the feud between them started. Fenross is not "the enemy," not a Merseian, but he is nevertheless Flandry's personal enemy, sending him on missions to get him killed.

Flandry has no regular "M" equivalent. He takes his orders from Abrams once, Kheraskov once, Fenross twice and Molitor once but otherwise has a roving commission. Meanwhile, I have digressed from love-to-hate-him Garvey but his misdemeanors in Mirkheim will have to wait till a later post.

Satan And Mirkheim

(Warning: in this post, I might discuss some Poul Anderson novels that I have not reread sufficiently closely, sufficiently recently. If I later spot any omissions or errors, I will correct them then but, meanwhile, page viewers are invited to point out any that they notice.)

Satan, in Satan's World, is a rogue planet that becomes industrially valuable when its frozen environment is re-activated by a close swing around Beta Crucis. Mirkheim, in "Lodestar" and Mirkheim, is a former super-Jovian planet whose sun went supernova and is industrially valuable as the only known source of supermetals. These are the sorts of resources that corporations compete to control and that civilized planets wage wars about.

There are two levels of speculative fiction here:

Might such planets exist out there in the galaxy so that they could be, for example, detected by Earth-based astronomers or discovered by a single expedition traveling at sub-light speed?

Might an interstellar civilization with faster than light capability be able to exploit such planets - with what economic, political and military consequences?

Satan's World and Mirkheim are the two trader team novels and both are centered on the discovery of a rare and industrially valuable planet. The non-scientific reader must be careful to remember why each of these planets is valuable and also how they differ.

The Grand Duchy of Hermes gained the stewardship of Mirkheim which, however, was later taken from the Duchy and placed directly under the control of the Empire. What of Satan? Vice Admiral Kheraskov tells Dominic Flandry that, in their time, Satan is "'...an ancient possession of the Duke of Hermes.'" (The Rebel Worlds, London, 1973, p. 21) Why should Hermes have got Satan also? Is it because Nicholas van Rijn controlled Satan and his protege, David Falkayn, was Hermetian?

Satan is in Sector Alpha Crucis of the Terran Empire whereas Hermes and nearby Mirkheim are in Sector Antares. The Rebel Worlds informs us that, during the Troubles, which separated van Rijn's era from the Empire, ownership of Satan "...varied...wildly..." and that "For a while it was abandoned." (p. 87) Eventually, "...an Imperial aristocrat sent down a self-piloting freighter..." (p. 88), but we are not told that that aristocrat was the Duke of Hermes.

"The defense of Satan became a major reason to garrison and colonize Sector Alpha Crucis." (p. 88)

So it does not sound as though Hermes, in Sector Antares, is involved in that defense? I wonder whether, when Anderson had Kheraskov tell Flandry that Satan belonged to Hermes, he was temporarily confusing Satan with Mirkheim?

Wealth Of Imagination And Economy Of Writing

This article was unsuccessfully submitted for publication elsewhere. Since then, several of its themes have been presented separately in posts on this blog. For what it is worth, here is the original article.

Although Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization is a long series, forty three fictional works of different lengths, it is economically written. The History divides into several periods each of which could have been treated at greater length. Six works about Master Merchant Nicholas van Rijn of the Polesotechnic League lead to five about one of van Rijn's trader teams, then to five about the aftermath and consequences of the van Rijn period. Thus, these three divisions, comprising sixteen works, are less than half the total.

The trader team of the series is:

the human Hermetian colonial David Falkayn, Master Merchant, Polesotechnic League;
the dinosaur-like male Wodenite Adzel, planetologist;
the squirrel-like female Cynthian Chee Lan, xenobiologist;
the consciousness-level computer, "Muddlehead," in the spaceship, Muddlin' Through.

One story had already introduced Adzel and the League and two had introduced Falkayn so we are now considering nineteen works.

The five about the team are:

"Trader Team"/"The Trouble Twisters"
"Day of Burning"
Satan's World
"Lodestar"
Mirkheim

"Trader Team" was re-entitled "The Trouble Twisters" when it was re-published in a three-story collection called The Trouble Twisters. However, the other two collected stories describe earlier events in Falkayn's career, not later adventures of the team. Thus, "The Trouble Twisters" is not the opening story, Part I, but the culmination, Part III.

The story, published in 1965, provides an illuminating example of how future histories are written. It informs us that the dragon-like Adzel sang Fafnir and paraded at Chinese New Year while a student on Earth. This information is imparted along with some characterization. Adzel affirms his appreciation of other cultures by mentioning his singing of Fafnir, Chee snidely retorts by mentioning the less dignified street parades and Falkayn tells them to stop squabbling. But the information provides the basis for a later written story. "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," published in 1974, narrated by human student James Ching, who is never seen again in the History, tells us how James', his girlfriend's and Adzel's problems were all solved by Adzel's dragon performances.

In "Trader Team"/"The Trouble Twisters":

van Rijn explains the trader team or "trade pioneer crew" idea to Falkayn;
the team has its first adventure, on the planet Ikrananka;
afterwards, Falkayn defines their new profession:

"...we're a new breed. Not troubleshooters. Trouble twisters. I suspect our whole career is going to be a sequence of ghastly situations that somehow we twist around to our advantage." (1)

The team does not explore new planets beyond the frontiers of known space. Explorers had already bypassed many planetary systems as not of immediate interest. Van Rijn's Solar Spice & Liquors Company sends robot probes to these nearer systems. The team explores any that seem promising. But "The Trouble Twisters" is the only story in which we see them do this. In "Day of Burning," they are on Merseia which had been visited two centuries before during the Grand Survey. Merseia will be devastated by a nearby supernova unless League merchants supply force screens that will both protect Merseian civilization and enable Technic scientists to use Merseia and its moons as bases for study of the supernova. Muddlin' Through happened to be the nearest League ship when the dual problem of how to study the supernova and how to protect Merseia was identified. Divisions between Merseians cause problems obliging the team to "trouble twist." Falkayn tells a Merseian leader that he has seen planets devastated by nuclear wars, the only time in the series when we are told this. Potentially, a story could have been told about one of these.

Satan's World differs again. The team seeks intelligence by consulting a data-processing firm within the Solar System where Falkayn is both lionized and spied on because he is:

"Right-hand man and roving troubletwister for Old Nick." (2) ("Trouble twister" has become a single word.)

So a lot more has occurred than merely the two adventures of which we have been informed. Van Rijn and his team must now address not "trouble" on one planet, another Ikrananka or Merseia, but a threat to Technic civilization. Van Rijn splits the team, keeping Adzel with him but sending the others elsewhere. The two teams re-join on a hostile planet from which they might not escape. This third episode potentially ends the trader team sub-series. First the team is split, then it might not survive and indeed its entire civilization is endangered. Although an immediate end is averted, the external threat from the Shenna has served as a warning that Technic civilization is not as secure as it seems. Satan's World was potentially a turning point and we will see that the remaining two works are indeed turning points. Further, civilization is threatened not only by external enemies but also by its internal contradictions.

At the very end of Satan's World, as Muddlin' Through accelerates outwards, Falkayn remarks:

"I don't know why we're starting out again when we're rich for life." (3)

Chee replies:

"I know why you are...Any more of the kind of existence you've been leading, and you'd implode...And me, I grew bored. It'll be good to get out under fresh skies again." (3)

Adzel, the Buddhist convert, adds:

"And find new enlightenments..." (3)

Falkayn concedes:

"Yes, of course...I was joking. It sounded too pretentious, though, to declaim that the frontier is where we belong." (3)

And Muddlehead resumes the poker game. With the crisis averted, they leave the Solar System and return to "troubletwisting." However, again, we do not see them doing it. The next time we see the team, at the beginning of "Lodestar," they have taken a few days off at the League outpost on the planet Tametha - where, however, they do encounter some unexpected trouble, a native uprising against exploitation by League companies. Here, not "troubletwisting" but mere combat skills and Muddlehead's ability to take off fast are essential.

"Lodestar" is equally a trader team story and a van Rijn story. When the team has escaped from Tametha, the scene shifts to van Rijn ten years later. We are informed both that nearly a decade has passed since the Satan episode and that:

"...pioneers like the Muddlin' Through team...kept finding him profitable new lands." (4)

But we do not see them doing it. Van Rijn takes to space again. (In his own series, he had been in space in four works and had received employees' reports in two.) Here, he seeks a source of industrially valuable supermetals and learns that his team had discovered such a source ten years earlier on "Eka-World" but had given it to the poorer planets, not to him. Falkayn had sought a supermetal source on his own initiative, not in response to data from a SS&L robot probe. And he has broken his oath of fealty to van Rijn. This potential conflict is the turning point of the series. Exploitation on Tametha had made Falkayn reflect on problems in the League and he has tried to address some of the problems by helping races that are being left behind by Technic civilization.

There are anticipations of the future. Hirharouk, the Ythrian captain of the ship in which van Rijn had traveled sees the shadow of God the Hunter (we might say the shadow of death) on van Rijn's way of life and advises:

"Let the new come to birth in peace." (5)

When Falkayn started to reflect on the problems, Chee had asked him whether he would prefer the Terran Empire - which does not yet exist, Chee is merely speculating - to free enterprise. On a personal level, van Rijn had been accompanied by his granddaughter, Coya Conyon, who, we realize, is attached to Falkayn. En route to their climactic confrontation with Falkayn, Coya had reflected that League self-regulation was breaking down and that competition was becoming more cutthroat.

"The Pax Mercatorica was drawing to an end and, while she had never wholly approved of it, she sometimes dreaded the future." (6)

The story shows the passage of time for the characters. Falkayn feels old, though he is not yet, and Coya sees that van Rijn is. The Ythrian spaceship crew links this story back to two earlier stories that had introduced this species so we are now considering twenty one works, just under half of the forty three in the Technic History.

Finally, Mirkheim is a definitive conclusion to the trader team sub-series, therefore a turning point for the Technic History. In fact, it begins with the team's days already over and informs us of events that we have missed between "Lodestar" and Mirkheim:

Falkayn married Coya;
Coya joined the team for five years;
the Falkayns retired when their daughter was born;
they have lived in the Solar System for three years;
Chee joined another trade pioneer crew;
Adzel has been a lay brother in a Buddhist monastery in the Andes for three years;
Coya is pregnant again;
van Rijn re-assembles the team minus Coya to investigate the planet Babur, introduced in a van Rijn story, which has suddenly claimed the right to take possession of the supermetal source, now called Mirkheim, thus precipitating an interstellar crisis.

So the old team sets out again but not as before.

"And so we fare forth again, we three and our ship, like our young days come back," Adzel sighed, "except that this time our mission is not into the hopeful yonder." (7)

Anderson simultaneously writes both a trader team novel and a post-trader team novel! The Baburites occupy not only Mirkheim but also Falkayn's home world, Hermes, in the process killing Admiral Michael Falkayn of the Hermetian Space Navy. Thus, the younger brother, David Falkayn, is drawn into these epochal events not only as van Rijn's employee but also as the new president of the Falkayn domain according to the constitution of the Grand Duchy of Hermes. The characters' lives have changed and will change again.

Muddlin' Through, returning from missions to Babur and Mirkheim, is commandeered under emergency powers by the government of the Solar Commonwealth so that the trader team must use a Hermetian naval vessel to smuggle Falkayn home. Again, the team has to be divided. When Falkayn returns to Earth with the intelligence that some League companies have secretly armed Babur, there is literally civil war in the League, a mortal wound for the institution, even though the conspirators are defeated, their lightly defended properties easily attacked by Hermetians and by independent merchants.

The malcontents within Technic civilization, who provide a mercenary army for the invasion of Hermes, include some Merseians, members of that species which will be the main opponent of the Terran Empire, the League's successor, later in the History. Falkayn and Chee in combat on Hermes for me evoked the human and non-human members of the Green Lantern Corps, a comic book sf superhero team, recently filmed. For anyone who knows both series, the comparison is unavoidable. There was even a squirrel-like GL, just like Chee, and, like the GL's, Chee flew, in her case with a gravity harness, on Merseia. But there is a more general point here. The Technic History is comparable to several better known sf series: Star Trek, Star Wars, Foundation and Dune. Like them, it presents a fictitious history of interstellar wars and empires but Anderson's series is more imaginative and substantial. It is more firmly grounded in knowledge of both the physical and the social sciences. It is also comparable to the original Future History of Robert Heinlein but performs the same task, presentation of a pyramidal structure with earlier stories providing the basis for later stories, on a vaster spatiotemporal scale.

After the Babur War:

Hermes gains the stewardship of Mirkheim and the protectorate of Babur;
Hermetian aristocratic society will continue to be democratized (everything changes and the History as a whole is about social change);
the Falkayns will look for somewhere to begin afresh;
Adzel and Chee will return to their home planets but will continue to confer about the futures of their respective races in the times ahead;
van Rijn in Muddlin' Through might lead an expedition outside known space...

The characters sum everything up -

Adzel (shortly before Chee and he return to their respective home planets): "...those were good years...I will miss my partners." (8)

Chee: "We can't go home to what we left when we were young; it may still be, but we aren't, nor is the rest of the cosmos...We enjoyed the trader game as long as that lasted." (9)

Van Rijn: "You take the Long Trail with me!...A universe where all roads lead to roaming. Life never fails us. We fail it, unless we reach out." (10)

The novel ends: "Above the cliffs, a few eastern clouds turned red." (11)

This is mixed symbolism. Red is the color of sunsets. Something is ending. But these are eastern clouds. This is a morning. Something is beginning. We will see what when we turn to the next work in the History.

The next five works are:

"Wingless"
"Rescue on Avalon"
"The Star Plunderer"
"Sargasso of Lost Starships"
The People of the Wind

Nicholas van Rijn was the personal link between the van Rijn series and the trader team series. Nicholas Falkayn, great-grandson of Nicholas van Rijn and son of David Falkayn, is born near the end of Mirkheim and addresses his own young son in "Wingless." Thus, this second Nicholas is the personal link between the trader team series and what comes next and we now learn where the Falkayns began afresh. The opening paragraph of "Wingless" informs us that Avalon was the first planet jointly colonized by two species. The second paragraph informs us that the two species are human beings and Ythrians. In an earlier story, members of both these species had explored an as yet unnamed planet which The Earth Book of Stormgate informs us was Avalon.

At least three generations, David, Nicholas and Nat, live in the Hesperian Islands on Avalon although Nicholas, an engineer, is among those who plan the colonization of the Coronan continent. Ivar Holm works in an Andromeda Mountains Rescue Station when the two Avalonian authorities, the Parliament of Man and the Great Khruath of the Ythrians, divide the continent between the species. Christopher Holm and Tabitha Falkayn marry in a later period when the Terran Empire, founded in "The Star Plunderer" and expanding in "Sargasso of Lost Starships," has lost its war to annex Avalon so that the colony remains independent as its Founder, David Falkayn, would have wanted.

When Avalon resists Terra, the Great Khruath is addressed electronically from "...the olden site, First Island in the Hesperian Sea..." before the house of David Falkayn. (12) But we have not seen the Falkayns living in this house. That would have happened off-stage during "Wingless." This "olden site" is new to us, although we have read of the Hesperian Islands.

Anderson, whose descriptive passages always vividly evoke several of the senses, directs our attention to the sky at the end of The People of the Wind, as he had done at the end of Mirkheim:

"The sun stood up in a shout of light.
"High is heaven and holy." (13)

Falkayn informed Coya and thus us that he had been dealing with nonhumans for over thirty years and that Adzel, Chee and he were an efficient unit. Entire additional series could theoretically have been written about:

the early days of the trader team;
James Ching's adventures in the League;
the team's further adventures between the Satan and "Lodestar" incidents;
the five years when Coya joined the team;
the other trade pioneer crew that Chee joined;
the Falkayns' early days on Avalon;
van Rijn's expedition outside known space;
the colonization of the Hesperian Islands and Corona.

The later History also contains several potential series. We read most of the career of Dominic Flandry, who defended the Empire, but only the beginning of the career of his daughter, Diana Crowfeather. We read only one episode in the life of Roan Tom, star rover during the post-Imperial Long Night, and one in the life of Daven Laure, "Ranger" in a much later and larger interstellar civilization. We are not told what became of the Merseians, Wodenites, Cynthians or Ythrians or whether Flandry's opponent Aycharaych survived Flandry's destruction of his home planet, Chereion. Before that, we had learned that Aycharaych was the last living Chereionite but not how the rest of his species had died. Further potential series are:

Diana Crowfeather and her crew who are similar to Falkayn's, including a Wodenite;
Roan Tom and the Long Night;
other species after the Fall of the Terran Empire;
Aycharaych and the Chereionites;
Daven Laure and his organization, the Commonalty;
the Allied Planets period between the Long Night and the Commonalty (two works are set in this intermediate period).

But no one could have written all that and also written all the other works that Anderson did write. Thus, the works mentioned cover several incidents in depth but also skim the surface of longer periods which unfortunately must remain unchronicled.

(1) Poul Anderson, The Trouble Twisters, New York, 1966, p. 188.
(2) Poul Anderson, Satan's World, New York, 1977, p. 3.
(3) ibid., p. 220.
(4) Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN The Earth Book of Stormgate, New York, 1979, pp. 370-408 AT p. 375.
(5) ibid., p. 407.
(6) ibid., p. 385.
(7) Poul Anderson, Mirkheim, London, 1978, p. 34.
(8) ibid., p. 216.
(9) ibid., pp. 217-218.
(10) ibid., p. 215.
(11) ibid., p. 218.
(12) Poul Anderson, The People of the Wind, London, 1977, p. 107.
(13) ibid., p. 191.

A Non-Linear Sub-Series

The "Trader Team" sub-series in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization comprises just five works. In the first, "Trader Team"/"The Trouble Twisters," Nicholas van Rijn explains his trade pioneer crew idea to David Falkayn:

robot probes will investigate as yet unexplored planetary systems that have been bypassed by the frontier of known space;
a crew comprising a Master Merchant, a planetologist and a xenobiologist of different species will visit any that seem promising.

In this story, Falkayn leads his team on their first mission and coins a term for their new profession, "trouble twister." (1)

It might be expected that the remaining four works would describe four more missions but they don't. On the one hand, we are to understand that Falkayn's and other teams enrich van Rijn by continuing to pioneer for several decades. On the other hand, the remaining works present different kinds of events that are turning points for the team, for their civilization or for both.

In the second work, "Day Of Burning," the team is not pioneering but is on a rescue mission simply because theirs was the nearest League ship to the planet Merseia when a threat to all life on that planet was detected. Falkayn claims to have seen planets devastated by all-out nuclear strikes. That must have happened between stories and would not have been on a pioneer crew mission. This story is a turning point for Technic civilization because the Merseians later become the main adversaries of the Polesotechnic League's successor, the Terran Empire.

 In the third work, Satan's World, the team is on yet another kind of mission, investigating a data processing company based in the Solar System where, because of exploits that we have not read about, Falkayn is known to be:

"Right-hand man and roving troubletwister for Old Nick." (2)

(Falkayn's coinage has become a single word.)

This novel is a turning point for Technic civilization because it shows that the Polesotechnic League could be vulnerable to external threats which, in turn, is a prelude to recognition of internal threats to the League's continued prosperity and stability. The novel is a potential ending for the series: the team has to be split up and might not survive, as indeed Technic civilization might not. When, at the very end, they have defeated their enemies and are embarking on a new pioneering mission, things have changed. They have passed a turning point. Their share in Satan's World has made them rich for life. They now pioneer because they want to, not because they have to. In that sense, the first phase of their troubletwisting career has ended.

And this sub-series could have ended there. However, Anderson next wrote "Lodestar," based on an idea suggested by his editor John W Campbell, for a John W Campbell Memorial Anthology. The team visits an established League base. Thereafter, the story follows van Rijn and his granddaughter, Coya, who finally discover that Falkayn and his team have secretly worked against van Rijn's business interests in order to help the poorer rational species whose needs are ignored by the League. This is a turning point for the League, for the relationship between van Rijn and Falkayn and, we later learn, for the relationship between Coya and Falkayn who have married and started a family by the time of the fifth and last work in this sub-series, Mirkheim.

Arguably, the sub-series proper ends with "Lodestar." That is the last time we see Falkayn's team during that period of their employment by van Rijn. Mirkheim, set many years later, is a sequel in which, during many other epochal events, van Rijn reassembles the long dispersed original team but for a different kind of mission and in very different circumstances. We learn that Coya had married Falkayn and joined the team for five years but stopped pioneering when they started a family and that that had ended the team, with its members going their separate ways. Thus, there is another entire period, of Coya on the team, which is not covered by any of the stories.

As part of a longer history, the sub-series is also rich in both prequels and sequels that tell us what van Rijn and some of the team members did both before and after this period. But my point here is that Anderson, having defined the role of a trade pioneer crew, does not present merely a linear series about successive exploits of such a team. Taking it as given that they had such exploits, he instead paints a broader picture by spacing his stories out through time to show us what happened to the League throughout an entire historical period.

For what it is worth, I now think that the entire Technic History could best be collected as:

The Polesotechnic League (9 works);
Star Traders (9);
League And Empire (6);
Young Flandry (3);
Flandry And Empire (9);
Children Of Empire (3);
Long Night And Dawn (4).

It is possible to rethink this issue endlessly and to keep arriving at different conclusions. The problems are where to divide the omnibus volumes and what to call them. Van Rijn dominates his period, appearing not only in six works of his own but also in four of the five "Trader Team" works. Thus, the proposed Star Traders volume would, with the exception of "Day Of Burning," be an extended van Rijn series but with a pluralized title, Star Traders, not Star Trader, in order to acknowledge that this volume covers Falkayn and the team as well as Old Nick.

Again, Mirkheim's status as really a sequel to the Trader Team sequence could be acknowledged by placing it at the beginning of the following volume which would therefore be called League And Empire, not Avalon And Empire. Near the end of Mirkheim, Coya bears Nicholas Falkayn who addresses his son in the very next story set in the Falkayns' colony on the planet Avalon and this omnibus volume ends with Avalon resisting the Empire. Thus, League And Empire would be an appropriate title as showing not interaction (they do not coexist) but transition between the Polesotechnic League, beginning its decline in "Lodestar" and Mirkheim, and the Terran Empire, becoming territorially aggressive in The People Of The Wind.

(1) Anderson, Poul, David Falkayn: Star Trader (compiled by Hank Davis), New York, 2010, p. 206.
(2) ibid., p. 332.

Trader Team

I still cannot re-read Anderson's Technic History without rethinking its subdivisions. It seemed obvious that the Trader Team sub-series comprised: "The Trouble Twisters" "Day of Burning" Satan's World "Lodestar" Mirkheim However, I now regard Mirkheim not as part of but as a sequel to the series as I will explain below. The Trader Team has three periods. The first starts with "The Trouble Twisters" and ends with Satan's World. Only one work, "Lodestar," is set in the second period and no works are set in the third period which we are told lasts for five years. After the third period, the team disperses and is temporarily reassembled for a different purpose only once three years later in Mirkheim. In "The Trouble Twisters," Nicholas van Rijn explains his "trade pioneer crew" idea to his protege David Falkayn and Falkayn leads one such crew on its first mission. The reader might expect the remaining installments of the series to recount further missions of this crew but instead we do not see them on such a mission ever again. They are engaged in different kinds of activities in the next two works: a rescue mission in "Day of Burning" and a different kind of investigation in Satan's World. In "Day of Burning," Falkayn states that he has seen planets devastated by nuclear strikes although visits to such planets would not be a usual activity for a pioneer crew. In Satan's World, their entire civilization is threatened. The team has to be split up and might not survive. Thus, this volume is a potential ending to the series. It ends with the team members rich for life but setting out again as a pioneer crew not because they have to but because they want to. That is why I say it ends their first period. In "Lodestar," the crew takes a few days off on a pleasant planet, then Falkayn seeks out and finds a source of wealth which he gives to the poorer races, not to the wealthy van Rijn: an end of innocence for the team. The story features van Rijn's granddaughter, Coya. In the third period, which we do not see, Coya has married Falkayn and joined the team. This period ends when the Falkayns start a family and stop pioneering and the team disperses. In Mirkheim, van Rijn reassembles the original team not to resume pioneering but to address an emergency which is the beginning of the end of the League period. Thus, Mirkheim is a sequel. I now think that omnibus collections of the League period of the Technic History should be: THE POLESOTECHNIC LEAGUE STAR TRADER TRADER TEAM LATTER DAYS IN THE LEAGUE Volume I would comprise seven stories introducing, apart from the League, the Jerusalem Catholic Church, Ythrians, Avalon, Adzel, van Rijn and Falkayn. Volume II is van Rijn. III is the team. IV would be Mirkheim preceded by two other stories set during the League period.