ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AND A THIRD-HAND STATEMENT
Among people who were
very useful in formulating this second installment of the story
were Ashley Grayson, Soren Roberts, Diane Talbot, James Fallows,
Trent Telenko, S. M. Stirling, John Ringo, Tom Holsinger, John E.
Johnston III, Mike Robell, Jack Greene, and the utterly invaluable
Howard Davidson. Special thanks are due to Susan Allison for
immense patience and for a number of absolutely necessary
commandments; to Michelle Kasper, the production editor, who took
the immense, sprawling mess I had made and my notes about what I
wanted it to become and fought with the mess and the notes until
they worked together, making it look as if I’d known what I was
doing all along; and to Deanna Hoak, who achieved the miraculous: a
copy edit which was a positive pleasure for me to review. Because
of all those good people, this is a much better book than it might
otherwise have been, and I’m deeply grateful.
Len Deighton
attributed to James Jones the statement that “Readers should
remember that the opinions expressed by the characters are not
necessarily those of the author.” I would go farther and say that
if the author is keeping faith with characters and readers, it is
essential that any opinion expressed by a character be the opinion the character would have in the imagined
world, rather than anything the author might have in the
real one. That is, characters should—artistically, must—hold the ideas and say the words that fit with
who, what, and where they are imagined to be, taking the actions
they take, and not the ideas and
sayings that the author might have included in a letter to the
editor or a blog post. (Unless the unfortunate character has been
created to always agree with the author, a situation which I think
is best avoided, however difficult it may be to avoid.) Within the
imagined world, the author, of course, has full responsibility to
the readers for whatever happens, which
necessarily reflects the author’s sense of what is possible in the
universe of human thought, feeling, and behavior. Any
responsibility of the author to the characters for what happens in
their universe must be answered as Jehovah answered Job, except
without giving them all their stuff back.