Preface
by David Afsharirad
Poul Anderson wrote the first story in what has become known as The Psychotechnic League in 1947, the last in 1968. In those twenty-one years, he chronicled nearly ten centuries of future history, beginning just after World War III in the late 1950s and continuing through the next millennium as humanity spread throughout the galaxy. At the center of Anderson’s Psychotechnic League stories is the rise-and-fall cycle of human civilizations and the revolutionary science of psychodynamics, which enables the prediction and guidance of human cultural and sociological evolution. Working clandestinely, The Psychotechnic Institute seeks to direct humanity toward greater rationality, a one-world government, and the colonization of the Solar System and beyond. Wars erupt, societies rise and crumble, and through it all, Anderson deftly navigates the complex and ever-changing landscape of his creation.
As Heinlein did when writing his seminal future history, Anderson wrote the Psychotechnic League out of order, picking and choosing when within his future chronology to set each new tale. (In this and the following two volumes, they have been assembled according to the stories’ in-world chronology, rather than by publication date.) Similarly, Anderson did not limit himself to telling one kind of story. Reading through the short stories, novelettes, novellas, and novels that make up The Psychotechnic League, readers will discover tales of political intrigue, espionage thrillers, interplanetary adventure, and stories every bit as pulpy as the paper they were first printed on back in the 1940s and 50s, all shot-through with Anderson’s meticulous world-building and assured style.
Though Anderson wrote the final Psychotechnic League story in 1968, he had all but abandoned the series by the late 50s. This decision was partially due to his becoming uncomfortable with certain aspects of the stories, particularly the role played by the United Nations. But in addition to changing philosophical alignments, Anderson’s shift away from the Psychotechnic League has a more quotidian explanation: a worldwide atomic war did not, in fact, break out as he had predicted. No doubt a good thing for humanity, but something of a disaster for Anderson’s future history.
But just as War of the Worlds is still infinitely readable despite the fact that we have yet to be invaded by Martians, and 2001: A Space Odyssey remains a cinematic classic though the year that gives the film its title is now in the rearview, so too does Poul Anderson’s The Psychotechnic League remain as entertaining as when the stories were first published more than a half-century ago. What’s more, when Jim Baen first collected the Psychotechnic League stories in the 1980s, Sandra Miesel was enlisted to find a way to make them work for a contemporary audience. Rather than alter what Anderson had written, Miesel recontextualized Anderson’s future history as alternate history. Miesel’s forward and interstitial story introductions are reprinted here, enabling readers to suspend their disbelief if not more easily, then in a different manner.
In any case, it is not really the job of science fiction to accurately predict the future. In truth, science fiction is always about the time in which it was written; and great science fiction is about the always changing yet eternally constant human condition. Though certain elements of Anderson’s Psychotechnic League stories are now outdated, the universal truths at their center are as timeless today as when they were first written. What’s more, these are wonderful examples of a master storyteller at work. And great storytelling never goes out of style.
So turn the page and fall into the history of a future that might have been . . .