The Books Of Stormgate

Poul Anderson's twelve page juvenile short story, "Wingless," was originally published as "Wingless on Avalon" in Boy's Life, July 1973, of which this image, apparently, is the cover.

In The Earth Book Of Stormgate, Hloch's Introduction to "Wingless" says:

"As for the creation and history of our choth upon Avalon, that is in The Sky Book Of Stormgate."
-Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), p. 294.

This reminded me of:

"As for the other events of Zimri's reign...are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel?" I Kings 16. 20.

One historian may refer to the works of another, even though that other is no longer extant. I think that it is fully appropriate to compare the Books of Stormgate to the Bible. In these Books, as in the Bible, already existing texts have been collected and edited to tell the history of a people who left one place to colonize another. In both cases, the narratives are of different kinds and lengths.

Hloch writes:

"...these annals...are garnered from different trees, and few of them will seem at once to grow toward the same sun. Yet they do, they all do. This is the tale, told afresh, of how Avalon came to settlement and thus our choth to being."
-Poul Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1979), p. 2.

"...how Avalon came to settlement..." sounds Biblical indeed. Critical readers may or may not accept the editor's claim that his garnered annals grow toward the same sun. Malachi 4.2 tells us that the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings but not all readers of the Hebrew scriptures accept that that Sun rises in the New Testament.