In his
introduction, Hloch addresses a conundrum. On the one hand,
The Earth Book Of Stormgate should relate something of David Falkayn - because Falkayn founded the colony on Avalon and Stormgate is a choth on Avalon. On the other hand, Avalonians are already well informed about their Founder and printed stories about him remain widely available. Translated into our terms, that means that one collection and two novels about Falkayn had already been published. What can this new collection add to that? Fortunately, the stories of what Flandry did on Merseia and of how van Rijn came to Mirkheim (discovered by Falkayn) remain to be related/had not yet been collected.
To show us Falkayn and his trader team on Merseia is to import a planet from the Dominic Flandry series into the Polesotechnic League series. Thus, the two series merged into the History of Technic Civilization. Anyone who reads the History in chronological order of fictitious events has no way of knowing that "Day of Burning" will turn out to be a pivotal story. Without League help, the Merseians would have been reduced to "'...a few starveling primitives...'" (p. 220) at best and would never have been able to build an interstellar empire that would threaten the Terran Empire later defended by Dominic Flandry. Prequels can be implausible but this is a good one.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And while it would be unjust to attribute the racism and hostility shown by the much later Roidhunate to the Merseians seen in "Day of Burning," we do see certain ATTITUDES by Merseians in that story which contributed to what we later see. Only "attitudes," at most, because it took a long time for the ideology of racial supremacy driving the later Roidhunate to be worked out.
Sean
Post a Comment