Multiple Narrative Layers

When Poul Anderson's "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" was collected in his The Earth Book of Stormgste, its text was not expanded. However, the narrative was extended by Hloch's introduction. The story as originally published ends when its first person narrator, James Ching, is about to become apprenticed to a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League. Hloch additionally informs us that:

spaceman Ching wrote running reminiscences throughout his career and settled in Catawrayannis;

his descendants let Hloch's mother, Rennhi, read the notebooks;

the text that we read as "How To Be Ethnic..." is an extract from Ching's reminiscences.

These few sentences fictitiously written by Hloch immeasurably increase the wealth of our information about Ching's career and about the Technic History.

Likewise with "Lodestar." Records transferred from Terra to Hermes by van Rijn and Falkayn include the log of the ship in which van Rijn had travelled to Mirkheim. Since the log discloses the names both of the ship and of its captain, Ythrian researchers are able to contact the Wyvan of Wryfields Choth on Ythri and, through him, Captain Hirharouk's descendants who allow the captain's journal to be read. The narrative that we read as "Lodestar" is composed by Hloch and Arinnian. The latter is Christopher Holm in The People of the Wind. Hloch's Earth Book introductions add multiple narrative layers to the Technic History.