The Polesotechnic League is a series of novels by Poul Anderson the American science fiction writer. The first novel in the Polesotechnic League series was the 1958 published “War of the Wing-Men” that also goes by the name “The Man Who Counts”. With the first novel of the series receiving many accolades and becoming an almost instant hit with fans, Anderson wrote several more titles in the series that culminated with the publication of “The Earth Book of Stormgate” that he published in 1978. Similar to most his colleagues in the period, Anderson wrote the Polesotechnic series in the tradition of Robert Heinlein. In writing the series, the author includes aspects of chaos theory, an analysis, and intellectual distrust of history and it’s rewriting, and prejudice favoring individual freedom. The series is thus more of an emotional departure from encompassing systems and the embracing of the individual as a person who can influence his own destiny. In this regard, the series of novels was not written in chronological order. Similar to Robert A. Heinlein’s practice of going back and forth in time in his Future History series, the novels in the Polesotechnic League also employ the same technique. Nonetheless, Sandra Miesel the authority on anything Poul Anderson made a timeline of the order of the series that were posted on the Chronology of Technic Civilization.The Polesotechnic League series is the one of the most popular sagas in science fiction. It is set in the twenty-second century at a time when humans were still trapped in the Solar System after recovering from a predicted period of chaos. The series ends five millennia later, at a time when humanity has managed to get out of the solar system to settle all over the galaxy. The present tells the narrative of humanity still recovering from a longer period of chaos popularly referred to as “The Long Night” that is the aftermath of the destruction of the Terran Empire. The writing of the saga-spanned quite a long time, as it started with the publication of the novella “Tiger by the Tail” in 1951 and ended with the 1985 published “The Game of Empire”. The lead protagonist in the series is the bigger than life, vulgar, and blustering both figuratively and literally human volcano, Nicholas van Rijn. Van Rijn is a merchant prince from the Polesotechnic League, which is a loose confederation of like-minded interstellar merchants. According to Sandra Miesel, the word Polesotechnic was invented by Karen Anderson, Poul’s wife, who got it from the Greek word for “selling skills”. In that regard, van Rijn makes for one of the most polesotechnical of all the inhabitants of his polesotechnical world.The Polesotechnic series of novels featuring the lead protagonists David Falkayn and Nicholas van Rijn are set in the 25th century. However, it is important to note that there are some novel sequences without either of the characters.

A little knowledge Poul Anderson [in] Analog : science fact – science fiction ; vol. 87, no. 6, Aug. 1971 PDF

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