Hloch And A.A. Craig

Hloch's The Earth Book Of Stormgate and A.A. Craig's Tales Of The Great Frontier are two volumes of narratives collected for different purposes. Hloch, tracing the origins of the Stormgate Choth on Avalon, gathers twelve accounts, beginning with the Discovery, i.e., the first contact between human beings and Ythrians, and ending with the colonization of the Coronan continent on Avalon. Thus, the Earth Book covers a historical period of several centuries.

Craig, writing earlier, during the Troubles, traveled widely to gather material for historical narratives about the galactic frontier where Avalon and many other planets are located. We do not know how many narratives Craig's Tales contains but we do know that the Earth Book borrows from the Tales:

"Margin of Profit," because this story describes military action on a spatial frontier by Nicholas van Rijn, mentor of David Falkayn, Founder of the Avalonian colony;

"Rescue on Avalon," which is Hloch's concluding account of Coronan colonization.

The Earth Book follows The Sky Book Of Stormgate, which we do not read, and overlaps by two stories with Craig's Tales, which we would also like to read. Poul Anderson conveys the sense that there is always more than he is able to tell us.