Multi-Layered Narratives

In The Van Rijn Method:

Francis L. Minamoto introduces "The Saturn Game";

Hloch introduces seven stories that had previously been collected in The Earth Book of Stormgate;

Vance Hall and Noah Arkwright, respectively, introduce two stories that had previously been collected in The Trouble Twisters;

Le Matelot introduces one story that had previously been collected in Trader To The Stars.

Hloch informs us about the fictional authors of the Earth Book works. Thus, a daughter of the hero of "Esau" wrote both "Esau" and "The Season of Forgiveness" and both these stories had been published in the Avalonian periodical, Morgana, before Hloch collected them in the Earth Book. The main action of "Esau" is framed by a conversation between its hero and Nicholas van Rijn. Thus, throughout The Van Rijn Method, we experience multiple layers of narrative and historiography. In the case of "Esau":

Emil Dalmady in action

Dalmady in conversation with van Rijn

Judith Dalmady/Lundgren writing for Morgana

Hloch compiling the Earth Book

Or again, in the case of "The Problem of Pain":

Peter Berg on Gray/Avalon

the unnamed narrator in conversation with Berg

that narrator in private correspondence on Earth

a historian obtaining a copy of the correspondence

a transcription kept on Esperance

Hloch's mother, Rennhi, finding the transcription

Hloch explaining all this to his Avalonian readers 

Crossing A Threshold

Three continuing characters, Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn and Adzel, are distributed across seven of the eleven instalments collected in The Technic Civilization Saga, Volume I, The Van Rijn Method. However, these three characters do not co-appear in a single narrative until the second of the seven instalments collected in Volume II, David Falkayn: Star Trader. All three make their final appearances in the first of the six instalments collected in Volume III, Rise of the Terran Empire. Whether singly or together, these three characters  are featured in fourteen of the twenty-four instalments collected in Volumes I-III. Of the remaining ten instalments, three are pre-Polesotechnic League whereas five are post-League. Thus, these three (of seven) volumes in themselves present a future history series, i.e., a futuristic sf series covering a period longer than the lifetimes of any individual characters.

The very first Technic History instalment, "The Saturn Game," links the late twentieth century of the author, Poul Anderson, to the fictional future of the series. 

"The fact is that thresholds exist throughout reality, and that things on their far sides are altogether different from things on their hither sides. The Chronos crossed more than an abyss, it crossed a threshold of human experience.

"-Francis L. Minamoto, Death Under Saturn: A Dissenting View (Apollo University Communications, Leyburg, Luna, 2057)"

-Poul Anderson, "The Saturn Game" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, December 2009), pp. 1-73 AT I, p. 1.

One threshold is between reality and fiction. The characters in this fictional narrative cross the threshold between single-level activity and role play, then go further into the role play than anyone has done before, crossing another threshold. 

A threshold with altogether different things on its hither and far sides is what the philosopher, Hegel, called the "specific quantum." Thus, a liquid becomes solid below its freezing point and gas above its boiling point. These two points are specific quanta where a quantitative increase or decrease suddenly becomes a qualitative transformation. Another example is the straw that broke the camel's back. The most significant qualitative difference is that between empirically detectable neural interactions and subjectively experienced mental states.

"The Saturn Game" links back to the mass entertainment of the twentieth century and shows a plausible, or at least possible, programme of Solar System exploration in the near future. We might imagine that this near future does not after all lead to the Technic History. However, it does contain one precursor of later developments, the Jerusalem Catholic Church. Everything connects although there is no direct connection between "The Saturn Game" and the very last Technic History instalment, "Starfog." Both stories are about the exploration of space but in different millennia and in different spiral arms of the galaxy. More thresholds have been crossed, the most important being from slower-than-light space travel to faster-than-light.

The Universal Soldier

An idea for an sf novel:

a very long novel with many short chapters (could be endlessly serialized in magazines before eventual book publication);

each chapter shows the protagonist in combat in a major war, starting in prehistory, passing through many historical periods and the present and into the future which also has many dissimilar periods, e.g., war on Earth in the twenty-fourth century is very different from war on Mars in the twenty-sixth century;

no up-front explanation of why this guy is alive in all these periods (think of John Carter, always a soldier, remembering no childhood);

his name changes appropriately, i.e., Joannes becomes Johan, Jan, Jean, John, Sean etc;

some ambiguity as to whether he is killed at the end of some of the chapters, e.g., is he killed in an explosion or just concealed by smoke?;

maybe a future period of global peace when our protagonist does not seem to exist?;

a further future in which a Time Travel Institute plans to send a man to experience combat in many past periods;

if killed, he can be retrieved, resurrected and sent back.

Heinlein And Anderson: A Brief Comparison

Heinlein's Future History and the first of Anderson's several future histories could each be collected in two omnibus volumes. See here.

Each wrote three circular causality narratives. However, Anderson also wrote a time travel series that is complete in two long volumes and enough time travel short stories for a further collection.

Heinlein wrote more juvenile sf but Anderson wrote in several genres.

Heinlein's writing deteriorated badly whereas Anderson's remained creative and innovative into the twenty first century.

Lignin Degrader

Julian May, Intervention, 12.

Sf covers every kind of scientific advance, not just spaceships, aircars or superior weapons. James Blish's They Shall Have Stars goes into technical details about the discovery of anti-gravity and of antiagathic drugs. In Intervention:

"One of my nephew's underhanded acquisitions was a small genetic-engineering firm in Burlington, Vermont. This outfit had perfected and patented a bacterial organism called a lignin degrader, that broke down (i.e., 'ate') a common waste product of the pulpwood industry, converting it into a host of valuable chemicals that had heretofore been obtained from increasingly scarce petroleum." (p. 507)

Technology involves economics which involves business (and other) arrangements between human beings. Thus, the narrator's nephew, needing additional capitalization, approaches an even bigger crook to proposed a merger sealed by two Mafia-style arranged marriages.

An sf novelist combines scientific speculations with character interactions. 

The Disintegartion Of The Soviet Union

"In those dark days, when even persons of goodwill were soul-burdened with the malign aetheric resonances of hatred, fear and suffering, there were many people in the United States who watched the disintegration of the Soviet Union with righteous triumphalism: the godless Commies had finally got what was coming to them."
-Julian May, Intervention (London, 1988), 17, p. 549.

Intervention is copyright Julian May 1987. Chapter 17 is set in 2007.

Robert Heinlein had the first rocket to the Moon in 1978 as far as I can remember without going upstairs to check. Fortunately, World War III did not happen in the twentieth century but all those weapons still exist. Current affairs and future histories interpenetrate.

Catholicisms

Contrast the medieval Catholicism of Poul Anderson's The High Crusade (see here) with the modern and future Catholicism of Julian May's Pliocene/Intervention/Galactic series.

Denis Remillard, while confessing to a Jesuit priest in 1995, mentions that he values highly the opinions of two colleagues, a Neo-Marxist and a Tibetan lama turned idealistic humanist. The priest comments that, in both of those faiths, the good of society is paramount over that of the individual whereas Christianity and Western civilization give the individual sovereignty in reproductive matters, which is the issue that they are discussing. Thus, a reasoned exchange between alternative world views is possible.

Later in May's series, a woman Jesuit priest officiates at a same sex marriage. That will not happen in our timeline.