Christopher Anvil's Interstellar Patrol stories, which make up the bulk of this volume, are part of a broader range of stories. Probably the best way to explain it is to quote from part of a letter which Anvil sent to me last year:
Dear Eric:
. . . As for what to call the group of stories that relate to colonization of interstellar space by humans—including stories about the Interstellar Patrol, the Space Force, Planetary Development Administration (or Authority, depending on what part of it is being discussed, and by whom), the Stellar Scouts, etc., and the colonists themselves—I think John Campbell and I both thought of these stories as the "Colonization series."
Within the stories themselves, the organizations and the colonists all add up to an entity called "the Federation," or, formally, "the Federation of Humanity." This Federation, strictly speaking, consists only of the various government organizations, the colonists, and the traders, businesses, and political movements of the colonists. But, from the viewpoint of the Federation's neighbors (Stath, Crustaxans, Ursoids, etc.), the Federation is the formal main bulk of humanity, plus a cluster of irritating smaller entities known as "independent planets," which, since they have proclaimed their independence, hopefully can be lopped off from the Federation without having to contend with the Federation's armed forces.
As for whether the stories should fit together to make a whole, well, they were written to fit together. That is, the individual stories were written with the overall picture in mind as background . . . they are all out of the same universe, so they naturally fit together and tend to reinforce one another.
All told, the Colonization series consists of one novel—Warlord's World—and almost forty stories of shorter length, ranging from short stories to novellas. Two science fiction novels, if we count Strangers in Paradise as one of them. Strangers in Paradise was a heavily edited reissue of the first three stories in the Interstellar Patrol series—"Strangers to Paradise," "The Dukes of Desire," and "The King's Legions," all of which are included in this volume. Since Anvil himself prefers the original magazine version of the stories to their later reissue in novel format, it is those original versions which appear in this anthology.
The Colonization series can accurately be characterized, I think, as Christopher Anvil's magnum opus. Taken together, counting number of titles, the stories constitute almost one third of Anvil's science fiction output, totaling something like four hundred thousand words of writing.
Broadly speaking, the stories can be viewed as existing on three different levels. It might be better to say, using an onion for an analogy, in three different rings.
At the center are the Interstellar Patrol stories themselves—i.e., the stories featuring the characters of Roberts, Hammell, Morrissey, Bergen, and Colonel Valentine Sanders. In the "second ring" are the stories involving the various organizations which are closely affiliated to the IP as well as individuals who run into one or another of these organizations. And in the final, or outermost ring, are a number of stories involving the adventures of various colonists, traders, spacemen, etc.
In this volume, we are reissuing about half of the Interstellar Patrol stories—covering the early careers of Roberts and his friends—as well as a number of stories from what I've characterized as the second ring. In the next volume of this series, we will be reissuing the remainder of the IP stories as well as all of the stories involving such outfits as the Space Force, the PDA, etc. (I.e., all the stories remaining in the "second ring.")
What will appear in the next volume is the novel Warlord's World, along with five IP stories of shorter length. Included are such well-known stories as "The Throne and the Usurper" and "The Claw and the Clock." We will also be including three other stories, two of which—"Goliath and the Beanstalk" and "Facts to Fit The Theory"—involve the machinations of the alien Stath and are among my personal favorites.
So, if you enjoyed these stories, don't go away. There will be a lot more coming.
—Eric Flint