The stories in this volume together represent the greater portion of Grin's literary career and convey a sense of how his concerns and technique evolved over the years. The first two, "Quarantine" and "'She,'" are from the pre-Grinlandia period. The former is based on an episode in Grin's own life. When he joined the Socialist Revolutionaries, he was considered a suitable candidate for terrorist activities. Those recruited for such deeds were sometimes placed in a sort of quarantine, spending a length of time in another town in order to learn whether they were under police surveillance. If they were not, they would be dispatched to the location where a terrorist act was to be carried out. While Grin was with the SR branch in Nizhny Novgorod, he was sent to Tver, more than 350 miles away, to sit out his quarantine. During that time he came to the conclusion that he did not wish to kill anybody, and upon his return to Nizhny Novgorod, he refused to undertake the attack to which he had agreed. The story, one of Grin's earliest psychological studies, explores in depth the thought processes by which its protagonist comes to the realization that he lacks the soul of a terrorist.

"'She,'" unlike many of Grin's early stories, does not deal with either army life or revolutionaries but anticipates some of the qualities that recur in his later work. The anguished state of the tale's protagonist recalls Poe's writings, a likely influence that was to become even more evident in years to come and that was noted by critics even in the prerevolutionary era. Although the geography in the story is not imaginary, it is also strikingly unspecific: the events occur in a European country that uses the franc as currency, but even that much is not evident until toward the end. The not entirely benign role of the then–new cinema prefigures Grin's general suspicion of modern technology: movies, automobiles, airplanes, and the implements of modern warfare are treated with misgivings, if not outright hostility, in subsequent works.

Although "Reno Island," of 1909, is generally considered to be the first work set in Grinlandia, the considerably longer "Lanphier Colony," published just a few months later, at the beginning of 1910, offers the sharper presentation of iconic elements for such works: the self-reliant hero, who is in conflict with his surrounding society and often bears a name similar to that of Grin himself (Horn [Gorn in Russian], Grey, etc.); a stark distinction between good and evil figures; adventurous action in a warm clime on a sea or by the coast; odd names for both places and people; and the threat of or actual violence. Particularly important is the characterization of Horn, who, like Steel in "The Heart of the Wilderness," attempts to create his ideal community, but with far less felicitous results.

"The Devil of the Orange Waters" notably suggests that Grinlandia is located somewhere on the sea route between Australia and China. (San Riol, the port city for which Bangok and Baranov are heading, is one of the imaginary cities that recur in Grin's writings.) The story is of most interest, though, for Baranov, who is specifically Russian—and hence something of an alien presence in Grinlandia—as well as a political exile. Is he meant to be a former SR, with his despair and unfitness for life once again reflecting Grin's disillusionment with the movement and its members? In any case, Grin seems to hold this character at a distance, having him observed mostly through the eyes of Bangok, and not probing the inner person to the extent that Grin does with Horn and Steel, who are Baranov's antithesis.

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