Daybreak Zero

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.