"Spans, Illuminates And Completes ..."

More about how the Earth Book "spans, illuminates and completes...":

the Earth Book  introductions and afterword are fictitiously written in the aftermath of the Terran-Ythrian War that is described in The People of the Wind;

the introductions impart further information about the characters and also about some fictional authors;

we first see Falkayn when he is an apprentice on Ivanhoe in The Trouble Twisters and there is more on Ivanhoe in the Earth Book;

the trader team is founded by van Rijn and has its first mission in The Trouble Twisters, then the Earth Book shows us the team's later mission to Merseia with no reference to van Rijn;

"A Little Knowledge" in the Earth Book features characters to whom van Rijn is a public figure seen on television;

the Earth Book also refers to the Terran Empire and to the planet Aeneas, both important later in the next major period of the Technic History.