Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard

Начало книги

The creation of any book takes significant time, but the origin of Barsk goes back almost thirty years. This pretty much guarantees that I will forget to express my appreciation to one or more people who helped to make this book possible, so the first acknowledgment has to be both generic and anonymous. I know you remember who you are and what you did and why I am grateful, and I trust you will vigorously remind me of this when next we meet.

All of this began with a random comment made to a student at New College during the fall semester of 1987, my first term as a college professor. The ink was still wet on my doctorate, and I was living on campus in the dorms. The student, Watts Martin, was editor of Mythagoras, a magazine of anthropomorphic fiction and artwork. I wrote two chapters for him, and the rainy world of the Fant was born. Thanks, Watts.

I wasn’t a good enough writer to actually craft the book that I wanted to write (though I tried). Eventually, I set it a drawer pending the day when I had the necessary skills. Years passed, and in 2010 I climbed the mountain and attended Walter Jon Williams’s Taos Toolbox, where he and Nancy Kress generously showed me many things I didn’t know that I didn’t know. Anything compelling in this novel’s plotting or clever in its clarity of language stems from their instruction. I am forever in their debt.

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