Out Of Sequence

"Hiding Place" is:

the first of three Nicholas van Rijn stories collected as Trader to the Stars;

not in The Earth Book of Stormgate, a volume of previously uncollected items;

the last of eleven instalments collected as The Technic Civilization, Volume I, because by then at last the entire Technic History is collected in chronological order of fictional events.

This leaves us with two optional reading orders. Since the entire series should be read at least twice, maybe it could be read first in the original publication order and secondly in chronological order?

"It's always fun to see things out of sequence, so you can later go, 'Oh, that's why he's the way he is.'"

-Neil Gaiman, interviewed in Hy Bender, The Sandman Companion (London, January 2000), 5, p. 68.