A Black Nebula Series?

PLANET STORIES covers sent by Sean M Brooks as possible illustrations for his article, "Anderson's PLANET STORIES Tales", have at least three noteworthy features:

(i) female figures in poses common to such covers;

(ii) we recognize AA Craig as one of Hloch's sources for The Earth Book Of Stormgate;

(iii) the left hand cover somewhat dishonestly describes "Sargasso of Lost Starships" as "a Dark Nebula novel" whereas it is the Dark Nebula short story.

Imagine the implications if say three or more Dark Nebula novels were to be incorporated into Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization! What other planets would be in the Nebula? Why is the cosmic energy source more accessible from there than from anywhere else? Would the cosmic energy generate different powers in organisms with different biologies? Did the Chereionites visit there in the galactic past? Might Flandry have to go there on behalf of the Empire?

We can at least imagine Anderson continuing to write his series in some happy realm of the hereafter. In Valhalla, Vikings fight all day and are resurrected to feast every night. For some of my former teaching colleagues, the equivalent would be cricket all day followed by food and beer back at the Punch Bowl Inn every evening. An author might write a new novel each day and discuss it with fellow writers and fans in a Convention bar in the evening?

After speculating about the Resurrection, CS Lewis wrote:

"Guesses, of course, only guesses. If they are not true, something better will be." (Letter To Malcolm: Chiefly On Prayer, London, 1966, p. 124)

I can only say, "Myths, of course, only myths, but ones that express the best that we can conceive or imagine."

From the Black Nebula to Valhalla to the Punch Bowl to a Convention in the Sky to Heaven and back:

"Methinks it is no journey."

Later: In Heaven, presumably an unlimited realm of permanent negative entropy:

we would not read but live novels;
authors would not write fictitious texts but program virtual realities;
we would experience van Rijn's hospitality, the planet Avalon, Flandry's space battles etc;
or, as Lewis wrote, if not this, then something better.

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.  

Sargasso Of Lost Starships

Poul Anderson's "Sargasso of Lost Starships" is thematically similar to his "The Queen of Air and Darkness." In both stories, mentally powerful aliens pretend to be supernatural in order to manipulate human beings who are easily intimidated because they are far from home in a daunting universe. On rereading "Sargasso...," I liked the idea that men approaching a Black Nebula in an atomic-powered spaceship could be persuaded that their ship and even the entire Nebula were haunted... Sometimes, fantasy and science fiction ideas can be powerfully combined.

The Arzunians have two super-powers:

telekinesis;

teleportation, i.e., personal bodily hyperspatial travel as far as planets on the fringes of their Nebula.

Thus, they can:

appear as gods and exact sacrifice of goods and materials on the fringe planets;

teleport onto a spaceship and vibrate molecules of air near each spaceman's ears warning him away from the Nebula;

or, since they themselves lack technological aptitudes, capture spaceships and try to induce the crews to fly them beyond their own personal range, into the Terran Empire.

The physical description of one Arzunian, Morzach, matches those of two other Anderson villains, both time travelers, Brann and Merau Varagan: tall, black-caped, white-faced.

The story belongs in the Technic History, introducing green Shalmuans and centauroid Donarrians and the planet Ansa and informing us that the Manuel who had founded the Empire has been succeeded by his son, then by a grandson, Manuel II, who has almost completed the building of the Empire as a defensible socio-economic unit. Van Rijn's contemporaries had drunk Ansan wine.

For their powers, the Arzunians must tap into a cosmic energy source which I suggest is also the basis of the Chereionites' telepathy. Later, Flandry and Aycharaych clash in a nebula that is also regarded with superstitious awe by a nearby race. I think that "Sargasso of Lost Starships" fits into the History better than I had previously realized.

Sargasso Of Lost Starships, Continued

(This Planet Stories cover advertises "Sargasso of Lost Starships" (see here) as "a Black Nebula story by Poul Anderson" as though there were a series of this name.)

The Imperials are called "Terrans" more often than "Solarians." Perhaps both English words translate an Anglic term that can be used in either sense?

Helena Jansky, commanding HM Ganymede, is from Valor, one of several inhabited planets that are mentioned only once in Anderson's Technic History. Valor is Sirius A IV, the fourth planet of the brightest star in a binary or multiple system. Exercise: google Sirius.

Ansans:

"'...fought Shalmu when the greenies wanted to take what we'd built, and then we made friends with them.'"
-Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), p. 383.

Shalmuans as aggressively acquisitive does not fit with what we know of them from a perhaps more reliable source later in the Technic History. However, the Ansans might be more than capable of misrepresenting the cause of a past war?

A nebula thought to be haunted? A whole nebula? But then the whole universe is haunted to those who perceive it as indwelt by a mysterious and awesome presence.

This nebula is a spherical dust cloud a light year in diameter ten parsecs from Ansa towards Sagittari, the least and outermost of the clouds concealing the Galactic Center. Natives of planets on the edge of the Nebula either worship it or regard it as the home of the gods. Natives of Heim sacrifice food, fur, tools etc which their gods come and take...

Worshiping Celestial Bodies

In Larry Niven's and Jerry Pournelle's The Mote In God's Eye, the Coal Sack nebula appears to some extra-solar human colonists as a hooded head and shoulders with a red giant star as the single eye, thus as God's Face. They interpret a scientifically explicable brightening of the Eye as God's awakening.

In Poul Anderson's World Without Stars, inhabitants of a planet in intergalactic space worship our galaxy as God.

In Anderson's "Hunters of the Sky Cave," the Ardazirho believe that a nebula:

The Sky Cave
Unborn Planets

- is the abode of the dead.

In Anderson's "Sargasso of Lost Planets," inhabitants of most planets near the Black Nebula either worship the Nebula or believe that it is the home of the gods. The inhabitants of the nearest planet, Heim, sacrifice foods, furs and tools which they claim the gods take.

Later...

Poul Anderson, "Sargasso of Lost Starships" IN Anderson, Rise of the Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 363-436.

"Basil Donovan was drunk again." (I, p. 367)

We are still in the Technic History, in The Technic Civilization Saga and even in Volume III but centuries have passed. There is no reference to Falkayns, Ythrians or Avalon but there is historical continuity. In "The Star Plunderer," the Commonwealth had disintegrated and was about to be replaced by the Empire. Now, the Empire is expanding. Donovan is not a new series character but his planet, Ansa, is referenced elsewhere in the Technic History. The story introduces quadrupedal Donarrians and green-skinned, tailed Shalmuans who also appear elsewhere. 

"Ahead lay Sagittari, Galactic center and the Black Nebula." (II, p. 381)

The Black Nebula is specific to this story, which may be a fiction within the fiction, but Sagittari and Galactic Centre are strong background links to Poul Anderson's earlier future history series, the Psychotechnic History.

Upward and outward. 

A Haunted Nebula?

In Poul Anderson's "Sargasso of Lost Starships," as in his Psychotechnic History, characters refer to "Galactic sectors" as if their field of action were the whole "Galaxy," not, as in the rest of the Technic History, a small part of one galactic arm.

We are not used to ghost stories on an interstellar scale:

the superstitious say that the Black Nebula is haunted;

there are stories of ships disappearing in the Nebula, of ghostly things seen and whispers heard in ships passing nearby and of men going mad;

there was inexplicable physical trouble with engines, lights etc;

Donovan recommended abandonment of the base on the planet Heim at the edge of the Nebula;

he suggests that Nebular radiation affects particles and nervous systems.

Research into reported apparitions at Muncaster Castle includes investigation as to whether zinc in the ground affects nervous systems. (I think.)

Curdled Silver II

"Sargasso of Lost Starships."

The colonized planet, Ansa, is fifty light years from Sol. The Imperial ship, Ganymede, departs from Ansa in the opposite direction toward:

"...Sagittari, Galactic center and the Black Nebula." (p. 381)

Sagittari = Sagittarius? Presumably the Black Nebula is much closer than galactic center?

Exactly one page of the text (pp. 381-382) is Andersonian description of the cosmos as seen from space followed by the viewpoint charater's reflection on the cosmic insignificance of man. This passage has seven familiar features.

(i) Sol is "...lost in the thronging glory of stars." (p. 381)

(ii) "The Milky Way foamed in curdled sliver around that enormous night, a shining girdle jeweled with the constellations." (ibid.)

This is the second time that we have found the Milky Way described as "curdled silver." See Curdled Silver, which also refers to Sagittarius. In the "Sargasso..." passage, the "curdled silver" is also "a shining girdle" and "jeweled with the constellations": three descriptions.

(iii) In "Sargasso...," after the Milky Way, Anderson next describes other galaxies. These have been mentioned a few times and maybe I should be listing the references to them as well? See here.

"Far and away wheeled the mysterious green and blue-white of the other galaxies, sparks of a guttering fire with a reeling immensity between." (ibid.)

(iv) "Looking toward the bows, one saw the great star-clusters of Sagittari, the thronging host of suns burning and thundering at the heart of the Galaxy." (ibid.)

Humanity migrates in that direction in Anderson's Psychotechnic History. See Sagittarius.

(v) Next, Donovan begins to reflect and thus touches on three more familiar themes. First:

"And what have we done? thought Basil Donovan. What is man and all his proud achievements?" (ibid.)

"What is man...?" is a Biblical quotation. See also A Note...

(vi) Donovan continues:

"Our home star is a dwarf on the lonely fringe of the Galaxy, out where the stars thin away toward the great emptiness." (ibid.)

Thus, he contradicts the earlier implication that mankind operates on a "Galactic" scale and also connects with the familiar theme of  "the edge of one spiral arm."

(vii) Finally, his continuing reflection reminds me of some short passages that I quoted here from Anderson's "Flight to Forever":

"We've ranged maybe two hundred light years from it and it's thirty thousand to the Center! Night and mysteries and nameless immensities around us, our day of glory the merest flicker on the edge of nowhere, then oblivion forever - and we won't be forgotten, because we'll never have been noticed." (ibid.)

Two hundred light years is supposed to be the radius of the Empire in Flandry's time but see:

"The Astronomy Of The Technic Civilization Saga" by Johan Ortiz, here.

Deductions About A Planet

The Imperial Solar spaceship, HM Ganymede, remotely controlled by aliens, crashes on a planet in the Black Nebula. Approaching the planet, it is possible to see that its star is an old, burnt-out dwarf. Since planets form at an early stage of stellar evolution, it follows that the planet also is old. On the surface, rocks, vitrified when the star exploded before its collapse, are almost completely eroded, a process that takes millions of years. It follows that rotation has slowed, therefore that the night will be long and cold.

However, there is still a breathable albeit thin atmosphere, frozen water and vegetation. These can have survived only with artificial help. Therefore, the planet is inhabited - by the aliens that wrecked the ship.

Additional information provided by Donovan, who has had previous contact with the aliens:

the star is near the center of the nebula in a hollow where the dust is too thin to force the planet into the star. Further, the star shares the nebula's velocity and therefore remains in the hollow.

Quite an exotic setting, like many others imagined by Poul Anderson, such as the Sky Cave and the Cloud Universe, both encountered in later periods of the Technic History. 

Collecting Clues

"Hunters of the Sky Cave."

At the Crystal Moon, Aycharaych describes violet orchids as black. Flandry deduces that the Chereionite is color-blind in the blue wavelengths but sees further into the red, therefore that his home sun is cooler and redder than Sol. (II, p. 162)

The Ardazirho are covered in red fur (VII, p. 200) but describe themselves as "'...the Black People...'" (XII, p. 244) Their kilts have squares of rose next to scarlet or of crimson between two yellows. (VII, p. 200) Temulak describes Flandry and the Vixenite colonials as "'...gray people...'" (XI, p. 233)

Svantovik refers to "'...the Sky Cave...'" (XII, p. 245) and swears by "'Great unborn planets!'" (XII, p. 247) Ardazir's sun is not in Imperial catalogues because it is hidden behind "...the Hatch...," (IX, p. 221), a small dark nebula visible from Vixen, and there has not as yet been any exploration in that direction. From its far side, the Hatch is discovered to be "'...faintly luminous: a proto-sun.' " (XV, p. 268) On hearing this:

"Flandry stiffened. 'What's the matter?' snapped Walton.
"Nothing, sir. Or maybe something. I don't know." (ibid.)

Flandry is experiencing a moment of realization as he remembers Svantovik's moment of realization when the latter exclaimed, "'Great unborn planets!'" (See above.) Elaborating slightly, Flandry says that he has a hunch, that some of the Ardazirho use the expression, "the Sky Cave," that it describes a dark hole which is the entrance to hell in some of their religions and that the higher-ranking Svantozik, who knows more than the others, swore by "'Great unborn planets.'" 

Later, when Svantovik, now captured by Flandry, looks at the Hatch, which he calls the Sky Cave, from its far side, he sees:

"'The Great Dark. The Gate of the Dead, as those who believe in religion call it....' His tone, meant to be sardonic, wavered." (XVI, p. 279)

The Sky Cave is black. Svantovik does not see its dim red luminosity, visible to Flandry. The Ardazirho are red-blind, seeing further into the violet than human beings, the opposite of Aycharaych. They see human beings as gray and themselves as black. The mismatched red and yellow squares on their kilts are equally dark to them.

Exploiting Ardazirho awe of the Gate of the Dead, Aycharaych the telepath directs the Packmasters from within the Sky Cave. (XVII, p. 283)

Energy Source

(The (spherical) Black Nebula is not the Horsehead Nebula but the latter comes up in google searches for "dark nebulae" so let's appreciate it here.)

Takahashi theorizes that Arzunian life can control mass-energy because it is linked to atomic probabilities but does not discuss the source of the energy for this control. However, Donovan, who has had more contact with the Arzunians, suggests that:

Arzunian metabolisms cannot generate enough energy, e.g., to project the Arzunians themselves out into space;

so they must instinctively tap into "'...some unknown cosmic energy source...'" (Rise Of The Terran Empire, p. 425);

but they do use nervous energy to direct the flow;

so they have to rest after strenuous efforts, as he can testify.

(Everything has limits, even the fantastic feats of the Arzunians.)

This helps to explain why the Terrans can fight and win, even with the kind of primitive weapons that are more familiar to the psychokinetic Arzunians:

as stated, the Arzunians also tire after exertion;
they are a dying race, their population confined to a single city;
most will flee when attacked, unused to victims who resist;
those who do fight have a superiority complex that prevents them from taking due care in combat;
they are undisciplined, without any plan of action;
the Earthmen need not defeat the entire planet but merely fight their way to the captured spaceships and escape in one.

With all this rationale to fall back on, Anderson writes some good fight scenes. In particular, the quadrupedal Donarrian, ridden by the Terran commander, wreaks havoc but succumbs to a spear wound and stays to finish the fight while the spaceship leaves.

After resisting the Arzunian allure, Donovan cannot maintain his hostility to Sol.

Some Quadrupeds

We are bipeds because our ancestors were quadrupeds. If they had been hexapods, we might have been quadrupeds. Could there be intelligent quadrupeds? (Larry Niven imagined intelligent tripeds.)

In Poul Anderson's works, Jovian Joe is a quadruped. Is the Centaurianess a centauroid? I have yet to reread that work to check its contents.

In Anderson's History of Technic Civilization:

every Didonian intelligence is a linkage between three organisms, including one quadruped;

one centauroid Donarrian fights in the Black Nebula, another is among Hugh McCormac's rescue crew and a third fights alongside Flandry in the Sky Cave nebula;

Anderson fans know two dragon-like Wodenites, the Mahayana Buddhist Adzel and the Jerusalem Catholic Fr Axor, but a third wise Wodenite appears just once in McCormac's reminiscences immediately before his rescue;

this unnamed being, McCormac's "...comrade in arms...", said:

"'You humans are a kittle breed...Together you can show courage that can cross the threshold of madness. Yet when no one else is near to tell your fellows afterward how you died, the spirit crumbles away and you fall down empty.'" (The Rebel Worlds, London, 1973, p. 10)

This recalls a line quoted in other Anderson works:

"This I know that does not die: how dead men's deeds are deemed."

McCormac replied that we began as animals hunting in packs. Here, of course, Anderson moves from considering the Wodenite's outward appearance, "...huge, scaly, tailed, four-legged, saurian-snouted..." (ibid.) to imagining its perception of human beings and thus uses the idea of an alien being to comment on humanity.

Stellar Deduction II And New Information

See Stellar Deduction.

The planet has breathable air, ice and vegetation;

atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere would not survive the expansion of the sun "'...without artificial help...'"; (p. 402)

therefore, the planet is inhabited.

Donovan, who has been here before, adds that:

the star is near the center of the Black Nebula;

it is in a hollow space where there is not enough dust to retard the planet and make it spiral inward to collide with the star;

further, the star has the same velocity as the Nebula and therefore stays in the hollow space.

Questions:

How can there be a hollow space in a dust cloud?
Do the Nebulites/Arzunians keep the space clear of dust psychokinetically?

These Are The Voyages Of H.M. GANYMEDE

"Sargasso of Lost Starships."

This story is like a Star Trek episode imported into the Technic History. Humanoid aliens, Arzunians, indistinguishable from human beings - so that actors would not need any make-up -, teleport into the Ganymede. The Arzunian woman, Valduma, knows Donovan from his previous trip inside the Black Nebula. He and she spend time together. In fact, wasn't there a Star Trek like this? We have asked this question before. See here. (Scroll down.) See also "Catspaw." "Sargasso..." is best thought of as a play within the play.

For the next week and a half, we will be away from home so it remains to be seen what will become of blog posts.

Captain Donovan, Earl Basil

Poul Anderson, "Sargasso of Lost Starships" IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 363-436.

Basil Donovan wears two tarnished insignia, stars for a captain and silver leaves for an Ansan earl. The blue-skinned, rhinoceros-bodied, gorilla-armed, ape-faced, tusked Donarrian, Wocha, has been Donovan's slave all their lives and was his batman during the recently concluded space war against Terra. Ansa has been defeated and occupied. After becoming very drunk in the Golden Planet among the bombed buildings of Lanstead, Donovan leads the singing of an Ansan rebel song, starts an anti-Terran bar fight and is arrested. Sam Olman, a peasant still loyal to the now dis-ennobled Donovans, is bayonetted in the fight.

I like to think that, even if "Sargasso..." is a fiction within the fiction, its author researched Ansan history and chose a real Earl Basil as his hero. Thus, we can imagine that that historically real former earl and space captain did get drunk and start a fight even if we do not swallow the main narrative in which he accompanies a Terran expedition to the mysterious Black Nebula.

Lawlessness

"Sargasso of Lost Starships" does not cross the line from sf into fantasy but Poul Anderson moves the text as far as he can in that direction:

"'We're entering the home of all lawlessness,' said Donovan. 'The realm of magic, the outlaw world of werebeasts and nightgangers. Can't you hear the wings outside? These ghosts are only the first sign. We'll have a plague of witches soon.'" (p. 392)

Donovan exaggerates. The "ghosts" are telekinetic and will not be followed by werebeasts, nightgangers or witches. But this is clearly the premise for an sf-fantasy synthesis: scientific laws in known space but magical lawlessness in the Black Nebula; spacemen learning to adjust from science and aliens to magic and ghosts. CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy suggests that this is a false distinction. Ransom encounters beings that are equally extra-terrestrial and supernatural.

"Ghost world, ghost army, marching through an echoing windy solitude to its own weird " (p. 408)

The rest of this paragraph makes clear that this description is metaphorical. The marching army comprises:

"The men of the Imperial Solar Navy..." (ibid.)

- but Anderson will later write heroic fantasies about men in long ships and their weirds.

Discrepancies

When discussing Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, we cite various authorities:

Poul Anderson;
Sandra Miesel;
Hloch of the Stormgate Choth;
Donvar Ayeghen;
Michael Karageorge.

Sandra Miesel comments on "Sargasso of Lost Starships":

"'Sargasso of Lost Starships' is an account filled with discrepancies, nevertheless it shows the early Empire defeudalizing Ansa to good effect."
-Sandra Miesel, "Afterword: The Price of Buying Time" IN Poul Anderson, A Stone In Heaven (New York, 1979), pp. 237-251 AT pp. 240-241.

Thus, the Imperial annexation of Ansa is historical even if the journey to the Black Nebula is fictional. This comment by Miesel synthesizes the messages of two recent posts:

Fiction Within Fiction?
Historical Continuity

Fictions Within Fictions

If we regard "Sargasso of Lost Starships" as a fiction within the fiction of Poul Anderson's Technic History, then we can imagine sequels that would not need to be consistent with any events occurring later in the Technic History. There could be a Black Nebula series and collection which could then be filmed as "Technic History: Non-Canonical."

Fictions within fictions are a vast untapped source of potential creativity. Fictional characters have to read something. Often they refer to works that we have read, like Alice In Wonderland or Sherlock Holmes, but they must read something else as well. Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series cannot be published or sold in the version of New York inhabited by Time Patrolman Manse Everard so what did Poul Anderson write instead of the Time Patrol series in the Time Patrol timeline? This is not a question that anyone usually even thinks of.

We do know, because we are told, that Wells' The Time Machine and Anderson's Maurai future history series and There Will Be Time are published in the There Will Be Time timeline. 

In Alan Moore's Watchmen, which is a comic strip, a character reads a comic strip. We see and read what he sees and reads and eventually want to know the outcome of this secondary or subsidiary story as well as that of the primary story. Both were filmed but separately, the inner story as an animation.

In Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, a very minor character is an actor who plays an irascible police inspector in a popular TV series. Thus, there could be two TV series, one of Millennium, the other about the inspector, with the same actor playing both the actor and the inspector.

But the truth is that authors and script writers are fully occupied with what they are already writing about.

Starships And Star Trek

I have made many comparisons with Star Trek.

Poul Anderson's "Sargasso of Lost Starships" has a human spaceship trapped in a Black Nebula by beautiful humanoid aliens with superior psychic powers and therefore obviously is a potential Star Trek episode. Larry Niven adapted a Known Space short story as a Star Trek animated episode, then Alan Dean Foster novelized the animation. A.E. van Vogt's The Voyage Of The Space Beagle is another potential Star Trek sequence and even has a Spock-like Japanese character. Charles Montieth, the British publisher, described James Blish's Cities In Flight as "...a higher and greater Star Trek." (Quoting from memory.)

I have posted about Spaceship Stories which obviously include Star Trek and much prose sf by Anderson and others. Some works would be easily adapted to Star Trek; others not.

Ansa and Avalon

In a "future history," stories are set in successive periods so that the events of earlier stories inform the background of later stories. By this criterion, one small part of Poul Anderson's Technic History, just four stories and one novel, is a miniature future history: 

the planet Avalon is colonized in the late twenty fifth century;

the Terran Empire is founded near the end of the twenty sixth century;

the Empire annexes the colonized planet Ansa in the twenty eighth century

but fails to annex Avalon in the twenty ninth century.

Hence, a Hegelian triad:

thesis - colonial freedom;
antithesis - imperial annexation;
synthesis - settling of border disputes, later followed by continued trade and cultural influence.

Dates are given not in the stories but in a Chronology compiled by Sandra Miesel after consultation with Poul Anderson. At the very least, we should understand that several centuries elapse between the twentieth century and the Polesotechnic League and a comparable period between the League and the Empire, then several millennia before the Commonalty. Some dates seem arbitrary. Thus, Dominic Flandry is said to be born in 3000 so that he is a nineteen year old Ensign in Ensign Flandry, said to be set in 3019. Nine volumes of the History cover only forty five years, till Flandry meets his illegitimate daughter, but events important to the Empire, like civil war and usurpation, occur in this period. Works set during the post-Imperial "Long Night" have round number dates: 3600, 3900, 4000 and 7100. The Long Night, three stories and one novel, is a second miniature history.

Returning to the first mini-history, "Sargasso of Lost Starships," about Ansa, originally published in Planet Stories in 1952 but not included in an Anderson collection until 2009, is definitely part of the History because it refers to Manuel Argos who founded the Empire that same year in Planet Stories. It also includes alien races known to Flandry. One of the Terran ships attacking Avalon in the later novel is called Ansa. No future history has ever comprised its author's total sf output. However, a future history may contain stories of variable quality from different periods of its author's career. The fantastic and implausible space opera of "Sargasso of Lost Starships" contrasts sharply with the scientific and political realism of the Avalonian stories. All that matters for the Technic History is that the Empire forcibly annexed Ansa. Whether Terrans and Ansans then encountered psychically powerful humanoids in a "Black Nebula" is another matter. Baen Editor Hank Davis added a fictitious introduction suggesting that this part of the story is early Imperialist propaganda, thus a fiction within the fiction. (1) From its title, I had expected "Sargasso of Lost Starships" to be hard sf about abandoned spaceships orbiting together, not a fantasy with alien characters resembling ancient kings and queens.

Anderson had already presented "The Star Plunderer," about Manuel Argos, not as a straightforward, presumably accurate, narrative but as an excavated text that may be either "...a genuine record..." or "...historical fiction..." (2) The stories included in The Earthbook of Stormgate are retroactively presented as narratives published on Avalon that may or may not be true accounts of the events described. This recognition of the stories' textuality would have enabled Anderson to write, for example, a longer account of Manuel's career without any obligation to remain consistent with Admiral Reeve's account in "The Star Plunderer." The History gains authenticity from the fact that readers may regard some of its parts as inauthentic.

(1) Davis, Hank, Introduction IN Anderson, Poul, The Rise of the Terran Empire, Riverdale, NY, 2009, pp. 263-264.

(2) ibid, p. 235.