Friday 17 April 2015

Reviewing STL Future Histories

Here are three pieces of science fiction jargon:

sf;
STL;
future histories.

Poul Anderson's sf (science fiction) includes six STL future histories (fictitious histories assuming slower than light interstellar travel):

Flying Mountains, about asteroid colonization;
Rustum, about extrasolar colonization;
the Directorate, also about extrasolar colonization;
Kith, about interstellar trade and exploration;
the Harvest Of Stars tetralogy, about human-AI interaction:
Genesis, about human-AI interaction and post-human AI.

The arrival of the third NESFA collection of Poul Anderson's short works has diverted me from posting about Starfarers, the Kith future history novel. Instead, there have been posts on Rustum and Flying Mountains.

Tales Of The Flying Mountains is a single volume future history series comprising seven installments linked by a long introductory and interstitial conversation presented in a Prologue, six Interludes and an Epilogue. Four of these installments are re-presented in NESFA collections.

In NESFA Volume 2:

"The Rogue," with part of its introductory Interlude, under its original title, "Industrial Revolution";
"Say It With Flowers."

In NESFA Vol 3:

"Sunjammer";
"What'll You Give?" whose title had been translated into French for Tales...

That leaves only "Nothing Succeeds Like Failure," "Ramble With A Gamblin' Man," and "Recruiting Nation" which, I think, will not appear in any NESFA collections because they were first published in Tales... and therefore had not originally been published as "short works."

In "Sunjammer," which I have just reread, a sailship transports isonitrate to Earth whereas, in "What'll You Give?" a scoopship collects the ingredients for isonitrate from the Jovian atmosphere, so I will reread "What'll You Give?" next.

5 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Have you noticed any textual differences between the NESFA Press versions of the Flying Mountains stories vis a vis the same stories found in TALES OF THE FLYING MOUNTAINS? I asked because I wondered how to handle these stories in any COMPLETE COLLECTED WORKS OF POUL ANDERSON edition. If any serious differences exist, then the magazine versions will have to be relegated to being an appendix of TALES, which should be considered canonical. In any case, I don't think TALES should be broken up in any complete COLLECTED WORKS, but kept intact.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
I have not noticed differences but then I have not looked for them yet. TALES should not be split up because it is a unity. It is interesting how much had not been published before but first appeared in the collection: not only the Prologue, Epilogue and Interludes but also 3 of the 7 episodes, including those that begin and conclude the series.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Good! We agree, TALES OF THE FLYING MOUNTAINS should not be broken up in any COMPLETE COLLECTED WORKS. The question that remains is whether the portions originally pub. in magazines differ textually from the collected book edition.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
The Acknowledgments in TALES say, "Parts of this book have appeared, in somewhat different form..."
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Aha! So, the stories first appearing in magazines may have some miinor textual differences from the versions we see in TALES. It means those stories will have to appear in any COMPLETE COLLECTED WORKS as appendices to TALES.

Sean