Nations

The political background of the Nicholas van Rijn collection, Trader To The Stars, is the Solar Commonwealth. In the van Rijn/Falkayn/trader team novel, Mirkheim, the Commonwealth merges with the Home Companies, one of the two rival cartels in the Polesotechnic League, and thus becomes a corporate state. This development and the consequent civil war are the beginning of the terminal decline of the League and the reason why David Falkayn leads the colonization of Avalon outside human space. 

Hloch is our historian of this period of Technic civilization. In the interstitial passage between the first and second of the stories that he collects in The Earth Book Of Stormgate, Hloch explains to his Ythrian readers what a "nation" is and how the Commonwealth grew out of "nations" while at the same time curbing the potentially Earth-devastating conflicts between them. Even the contemporary Terran Empire cannot be fully understood without reference to "nation."

While the Commonwealth was developing, exploration and colonization spread through this part of the galaxy. The future Avalon was explored by Ythrians employing human beings although not yet colonized. Hloch's summary of this historical period is invaluable and would not have been written except as part of the Earth Book.