Introducing Ivar Frederiksen

If we have been reading Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization History in chronological order of fictitious events, then we have become accustomed to a continuing character named Dominic Flandry defending the Terran Empire. However, between the Young Flandry Trilogy and the Captain Flandry series, we find two works, "Outpost of Empire" and The Day Of Their Return, featuring sympathetic characters resisting the Empire, although with different outcomes. Thus, this fictitious history begins to resemble real history in terms of ambiguity and complexity.

When we meet Ivar Frederiksen, he leads a group of young Aeneans waiting to ambush Imperial marines. In the generation before mine in these islands, young men waited to ambush Imperial troops. My parentage comes from both sides of that conflict. I was first uninformed, then misinformed, about it. (Truth is the first casualty of any war.) The issues of that war have been left behind to some extent. My present family unit is of mixed Catholic, Protestant and Jewish descent; our neighbors are Muslim; my practice is Buddhist; our meditation group hires a room from the Quakers, whose tradition originated in an earlier period of religious and political upheaval. As Flandry said, the Empire is a melting pot even if it is the pot that is melting.

Although Frederiksen leads his fellow guerrillas to their deaths hundreds of light years from Earth and a thousand years in our future, his struggle does not seem to be very far away. Also, although we have not been told this yet, Aeneas at that time is in a state not only of political turmoil but also of apocalyptic expectation - so, again, there are parallels with our recent and current experience.