Foundations Of The Technic History

On careful examination, each detail of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization turns out to be just right, exactly appropriate. The eleven installments collected in Volume I of Baen Books' The Technic Civilization Saga, compiled by Hank Davis, plant solid foundations for the pyramidally-structured future history that reaches its apex in "Starfog" at the end of Volume VII.

I have listed some of these foundations before but by no means all:

the transition from current affairs (references to mid-twentieth century psychiatry and television) to near future history;
the Jerusalem Catholic Church;
first contact with Ythri;
Captain Gray, after whom an Avalonian city will be named;
early references to Cynthian trade-routes, Wodenite hexapods, a Hermetian farm, the University of Nova Roma on Aeneas and the steppes and rings of Altai;
early exploration of Avalon;
the Ythrian Faiths, Old and New;
the League;
Adzel;
van Rijn;
David Falkayn's early career;
the planet Ivanhoe that will later join Falkayn's Supermetals Company together with Woden, some of the Cynthian trade-routes and many other planets;
the planet Diomedes that will be a source of unrest in Flandry's time;
van Rijn's relationship with the future Duchess of Falkayn's home planet, Hermes;
Emil Dalmady, some of whose children will move to Avalon with Falkayn;
the planet Babur that will wage war against Technic civilization;
bipartite intelligences, discovered by van Rijn, comparable to the tripartite intelligences studied by the Aeneans and later encountered by Flandry.