What Happened After II

Of course we know what became of the Ythrians after their "Discovery" in "Wings of Victory." That is part of the Technic History.

We do not know what became of Peter Berg and his theological problem after "The Problem of Pain." We do know that, if Berg returned home to Aeneas, then he could have become involved in religious movements that would reach a crisis point several centuries later but that is a historical, not a biographical, issue. We know nothing further of Berg as an individual except that, while on Lucifer, he did recount his Avalonian experience to the unnamed first person narrator of the framing passages of "The Problem of Pain." That narrator returned to Terra and engaged in a private correspondence which was preserved by his heirs and acquired by a visiting historian who deposited it in the archives of the University of Fleurville on Esperance where Rennhi found it, thus enabling her son, Hloch, to include this extract in the Earth Book: complicated details, going far beyond what the story itself tells us. 

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" introduces Adzel and we know much about that individual's later exploits. However, Adzel is introduced in a first person narrative by his friend and fellow student, James Ching, so what becomes of Ching? At the end of the story, Jim becomes apprenticed to a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League. Hloch tells us that, after that, he became:

"...a spaceman who eventually settled on Catawrayannis."

-Poul Anderson, "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" IN Anderson, The Earth Book Of Stormgate (New York, 1978), pp. 55-70 AT p. 55.

Jim wrote reminiscences kept by his descendants who shared them with Rennhi.

"Margin of Profit" introduces Nicholas van Rijn. Need I say more?

"Esau" features not only van Rijn but also Emil Dalmady and Hloch does tell us something more of the latter. Having become a van Rijn-sponsored Polesotechnic League entrepreneur, Dalmady spends some time near the planet Ivanhoe, thus obtaining from one of the persons involved the story recounted in "The Season of Forgiveness." Secondly:

"Children of [Dalmady's] moved to Avalon with Falkayn." (p. 100)

One of them, Judith, wrote "Esau," "The Season of Forgiveness" and "Wingless" for the Avalonian periodical, Morgana. Hloch collects all three in the Earth Book.

Again, Hloch tells us much more than we could have learned from the texts of the stories themselves.

"To those who read, good flight." (p. 13)