Multiple Characters

Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization is a multi-character series:

in "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson," James Ching and Adzel are students on Earth;
in "Margin of Profit," Captain Torres works for Master Merchant Nicholas van Rijn;
in "The Three-Cornered Wheel," David Falkayn is an apprentice to Master Polesotechnician Martin Schuster on Ivanhoe;
in "A Sun Invisible," Falkayn is van Rijn's factor on Garstang's;
in "The Season of Forgiveness," Juan Hernandez is an apprentice to Master Trader Thomas Overbeck on Ivanhoe;
in "Esau," Emil Dalmady is van Rijn's factor on Suleiman;
in "Hiding Place," Captain Bahadur Torrance works for van Rijn;
in "The Trouble Twisters," van Rijn asks Falkayn to lead a team that will include Adzel...

At last these three characters appear in a single story! And the rest is history... But the earlier stories are also history. Anderson builds a substantial future history by showing diverse facets of the Polesotechnic League involving many characters apart from the few who come to dominate the series.

Bite-Size Books? IV

Volume X
Ensign Flandry -

- introducing:

Dominic Flandry;
the Abrams family;
Naval Intelligence;
John Ridenour;
Tigeries;
Dragoika;
the Merseian Roidhunate;
Tachwyr the Dark.

Volume XI

A Circus Of Hells -

- introducing:

Irumclaw;
Talwin;
references to Aycharaych and Chereion;
a geas on Flandry.

Volume XII
The Rebel Worlds -

- introducing:

the Virgilian system;
the planet Dido;
Aenean tinerans;

the ancestors of the Kirkasanters.

(The point of these lists is the number of elements introduced in each installment that become significant in later installments: the pyramidal structure of a Heinlein-model future history. There are elements that I would not have thought of until I compiled the lists.)

Definitive Passages

The two defining passages for the Polesotechnic League are:

the passage beginning "It is a truism that..." which occurs early in "Margin of Profit," and is repeated as an introduction to "Territory," the second story in Trader To The Stars;

the passage beginning with the quotation, "The world's great age begins anew...," which introduces Trader To The Stars and is attributed to "Le Matelot."

These two passages need to be highlighted at the beginning of the League period in any uniform edition of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization so I suggest that Volume I of the History should begin with:

the three pre-League stories;
the "Le Matelot" passage;
"Margin of Profit" -

- which is followed by no less than four stories about different aspects of the League before its hero, van Rijn, returns as a series character. Thus, the Polesotechnic League becomes a substantial setting for later adventures of van Rijn and his protege, Falkayn.

The defining passage for the decline of the League is "Lodestar" at the end of Volume II. The implications of "Lodestar" are worked out in Mirkheim and indeed arguably in the remaining volumes of the Technic History.

Length And Brevity

Imagine if Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization comprised only:

a novelization of "The Saturn Game";

a novel and a collection in which the Polesotechnic League and the Terran Empire co-exist in different parts of the galaxy;

Tau Zero set during the Long Night.

This is my way of comparing the Technic History with James Blish's longest future history, the Cities In Flight Tetralogy. The point here is to contrast length with brevity, not to denigrate Blish. On the contrary, for a very long time, I rated Blish much more highly than Anderson and thought that the Technic History was just the van Rijn and Flandry series strung together with a few extras. I now think instead that it is the best of the Heinleinian future histories - although perhaps there are only three of these, Heinlein's and two by Anderson? In any case, the Technic History is superb, whether it belongs to a large or a small set of future histories.

Cities In Flight just makes it into future historical status but, having recently reread it yet again, I can confidently state that it is a great work of science fiction and that each of its four volumes has unique merits that differentiate it from the others.

Update

I have been away from this blog for a while, first posting on other blogs, then away from computers for most of a week. Rereading and blogging about Poul Anderson got me into rereading and blogging about James Blish and I am still currently focusing on Blish.

The newest post on the James Blish Appreciation blog, "Sequel, Serial, Series," compares Blish (quality), Anderson (both quality and quantity) and Star Trek (much greater quantity but at the expense of quality).

I will probably reread and comment on Blish's The Star Dwellers and Mission To The Heart Stars before returning to Anderson maybe with Twilight World.

Series Omnibus Titles?

I can never get this right but this is my latest attempt to suggest appropriate titles for omnibus collections of Poul Anderson's "History of Technic Civilisation" future history series. I agree with Baen about collecting the entire series in seven volumes although I would re-arrange the contents of most of the volumes.

My idea is to suggest titles that convey not only the connections between the volumes but also the progression of their contents. My current proposals are:

The Polesotechnic League
League Traders
League And Empire
Young Flandry
Flandry And Empire
Children Of Empire
After The Empire

Introductions and Developments

The opening six stories of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilisation introduce:

two organisations that will be important later, the Jerusalem Catholic Church and the Polesotechnic League;
the version of hyperspace to be used in this series;
two species that will be important later, winged Ythrians and dinosauroid Wodenites;
two less prominent species, inhabitants of Ivanhoe and extra-solar colonists of Mars;
three individuals who will be important later, the Wodenite Adzel and the human beings Nicholas van Rijn and David Falkayn;
the "Grand Survey" discoverers of other planets that will be re-visited later;
one planet, not yet named Avalon, that will be important later.

Thus, half a dozen short stories introduce a dozen aspects of the series. These six works are followed by:

five about van Rijn of the League;
six in which Falkayn works for van Rijn (in five, he leads a Trader Team including Adzel);
two further stories set during the League period;
two stories about the joint human-Ythrian colony on Avalon founded by Falkayn;
two stories introducing a third important organisation, the Terran Empire, rising from the ruins of the League;
one novel about Avalonian resistance to the Empire;
many volumes about the Empire and its opponents, the Merseians, who were introduced in a Trader Team story;
a last Empire-Merseians novel in which the Wodenite Axor has, like Adzel, converted to a Terrestrial religion, in this case Jerusalem Catholicism;
four works set in three different periods after the Empire.

It is remarkable that the History continues indefinitely, as it seems, through several successive, developing stages. The overall story goes somewhere. Seeds planted earlier grow later and sometimes flower later again. Narratives intersect, eg, Avalon and Empire, but there are others. Every end is a new beginning. However much is told, there is always more that could have been. The very last story potentially initiates a new sequence about a later form of interstellar organisation. The entire series is the longest most substantial single author future history in science fiction.

Near and Past Futures

A future history typically comprises stories or chapters set in the near future followed by others set in a further future. Several times now, the readers and the author if still alive have lived into the real near future and, of course, found that it differed from the imagined near future. This is not a problem because fiction is not prediction. Further, classic science fiction (sf), like The Time Machine or The War of the Worlds, endures over a century after it was written. On the other hand, more mediocre "past futures" come to seem dated. More significantly, it can be difficult for a still living author to continue writing a future history whose earlier parts contain not only counterfactual history but also outmoded science.

In his History of Technic Civilization, Poul Anderson avoided creeping counter-factualism by setting his earliest episode much later than any of us can expect to live. "Wings of Victory," for many years the earliest story in this series, is set on an extra-solar planet so that Anderson did not have to describe a near future Earth or even a near future Solar System, although he did speculate elsewhere about how Technic civilization and the Anglic language could had evolved from the world familiar to us. (1)

Later, Anderson did add one story set earlier, in the mid-twenty first century, describing exploration of the Solar System, and he took this opportunity to contradict a premise of much earlier sf. (2) Would immense time, energy and effort be invested in enabling three or four space-suited human beings to spend a few days in a single locality on the surface of Mars? Surely instead vast solar sailed colony ships containing entire communities of scientists and their families would cruise the System sending probes and manned craft to planetary surfaces? This might happen if industrial development of space became a way to save Earth from ruin.

The story asks how human psychology would be affected by long periods of isolation in an entirely artificial environment. Not only is the story narrated in the third person but most of it lacks a single viewpoint. We read a dialogue involving three or four characters but do not perceive the dialogue from the point of view of any single character. However, italicized passages recount a fantasy psychodrama hypnotically played out by several of the characters in this hard sf environment. On the surface of Iapetus, they imagine Ginnungagap. Anderson wrote both sf and fantasy and here, as in "The Queen of Air and Darkness," combined them, although, in both these cases, the fantasy is a fiction within the fiction. Two characters in a life-or-death situation in the real world can end their distracting fantasy only by killing their characters. We must read on to learn whether they have killed or been killed in reality also. They have not but the fantasy had become a nightmare to which they cannot return.

The only internal evidence that this story is part of the History is that one of its characters is a former member of the Jerusalem Catholic Church which exists later and is important. The History begins with four stories preceding the introduction of the first series character, Nicholas van Rijn, as it ends with four works set after the period of the third series character, Dominic Flandry. 

The stages of the History are: 

interplanetary exploration;
interstellar exploration;
interstellar trade, the League;

League merchant, van Rijn;
van Rijn's protege, Falkayn;
Falkayn's colony, Avalon;

post-League Troubles;
Empire founded;
early Empire;

Empire v. Avalon;
Flandry defends Empire;
Flandry's daughter;

post-Imperial "Long Night";
civilization restored;
a later civilization.

"The Saturn Game" presents interplanetary exploration.
"Wings of Victory" and "The Problem of Pain" present interstellar exploration and introduce Falkayn's non-human fellow colonists.
"The Problem of Pain" also introduces the planet they will colonize.

"How to Be Ethnic in One Easy Lesson" introduces the League and Falkayn's later companion, Adzel.

"Margin of Profit" introduces van Rijn.
"Three-Cornered Wheel" introduces Falkayn and the planet Ivanhoe.
"A Sun Invisible": Falkayn working for van Rijn's company.

"The Season of Forgiveness": later events on Ivanhoe.

"A Little Knowledge": a League story referring to van Rijn.
The Man Who Counts: the first of five further works about van Rijn.
"Trader Team": the first of five works about van Rijn's team, including Falkayn and Adzel.

"Wingless": Falkayn's grandson on Avalon.

"Rescue on Avalon": later events on Avalon.
"The Star Plunderer": Troubles and founding of the Empire.
"Sargasso of Lost Starships": the early Empire.

The People of the Wind: Terran-Avalon war.

Ensign Flandry: the first of seven volumes about Flandry.
"Outpost of Empire": the first of two other works contemporary with Flandry's early career.
The Game of Empire: a novel about Flandry's daughter.

"A Tragedy of Errors": one story set during the Long Night.
The Night Face: the first of two works set in the Allied Planets period.
"Starfog": a story set in the Commonalty period.

The Chronology of Technic Civilization informs us that the establishment of the League preceded "The Problem of Pain" but I do not think the text of the story confirms this. The next three stories after "The Saturn Game" are all first person narratives although their narrators are not necessarily their central characters.

In "Wings of Victory," the first person narrator remains in the spaceship orbiting the newly discovered planet Ythri but recounts what her colleagues discover on the surface. In "The Problem of Pain," the first person narrator and his colleague Peter Berg explore the planet Lucifer where Berg recounts his earlier experience with Ythrians on the planet Gray/Avalon. The extended flashback to events on Gray is recounted in the third person. "How to Be Ethnic..." introduces Adzel but is narrated by James Ching who appears only here. However, the story ends with Ching about to be apprenticed to a Master Merchant of the League so it is an appropriate prequel to the introduction of Master Merchant van Rijn. 

(1) Poul Anderson, "Concerning Future Histories" IN Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, Vol 14 No 3, Fall 1979, pp. 11-12.
(2) Poul Anderson, The Saturn Game, New York, 1989.