Hell's Faire

Author’s Afterword

David Drake considers explanations of books to be “bad art.” Well, I’m going to engage in some bad art as a means of apology.

What you have just finished reading is the ending of another book. I had never intended more than three books in this first portion of the novels that have come to be known as The Legacy of the Aldenata. I believe that a trilogy means three books, not four, five or nine. The reason there are four books comes down to the most unpleasant two words in modern America: September 11^th.

On the morning of 9/11 I had already completed ninety thousand words on When the Devil Dances. And then my brother called me and told me to turn on the television. At that time I was well on schedule for a delivery date of October 1^st but from 9/11 to the beginning of October, I failed to complete a single additional word on that novel.

The novel was already scheduled, already announced. My publisher gave me extra time and more time, until it was down to the very wire. We cut some proofreading, it was hastily set and then off to the printer. And, of course, it was truncated. All my fault.

I’ll admit that the maximum range of an excuse is zero meters; this is not a request to be excused, I’m just telling you what happened and why. And, like Shari, I will not cry over an incomplete book. Compared to 3,000 dead, thousands out of work and the ongoing war, one book that’s not completely up to snuff seems a pretty minor point.

So if you take the two books and put them together, rip out the “and back in the last book” stuff in this one, you have one complete book called When the Devil Dances, the originally conceived third book in the trilogy.

Go ahead. Feel free. Rip the back off of WtDD, get some scissors and glue…

Changing subjects, quickly, people have asked me quite a few questions about this series, and since this “trilogy” is done I thought I’d share a few of the answers in this venue.

The Posleen War was originally conceived sometime in 1985. There was a glimmer of an idea before that but the major pieces, a technologically inept enemy, “friends” that had many levels to them and a major ground war, came to me while I was on guard duty on a mountain in Sinai.

I had been… dissatisfied with some of the other novels that had handled alien invasion. Admittedly, if a space-faring species with faster than light travel wants to take Earth they are probably going to succeed. Once a species “owns” the gravity well, there’s not much you can do about it.

Ergo, for humanity to survive (and have the book be much more interesting than “and then all the humans died and the evil aliens lived happily ever after”) the aliens have to be hamstrung. But, why would aliens with FTL be incapable of using their full potential?

The few novels that had approached this problem I found unsatisfactory. So, to address this, I developed the Posleen. Starting from certain premises I traced the logic back and as I did many things derived from the logic rather than forcing the logic. Tom Clancy says that the two parts to a successful novel are “what if” and “what’s next”?

What if… there was a species that… (but that would be telling). And what next?

I originally had intended for them to be able to destroy artillery, for example, but the logic of their origins militated against it. Likewise their enormously resistant physiologies. Yes, any oxygen breather will have trouble with cyanide. But at what concentration? And for what duration? But is it possible to design a species that would be highly resistant to truly weird environmental conditions? Planets where most of the atmosphere is gaseous sulphur, planets with semi-sentient and aggressive biospheres? Take every horror planet ever conceived in science fiction and design a race to survive them, and even thrive on them. And, if so, wouldn’t they be resistant to any chemical attack?

And so, with some logic in hand and a vague series of images I set out to write a book. It was not intended to be published (indeed, until about three months before I sent Hymn Before Battle off to Baen Books I had never considered becoming a published author), but rather it was a book for me, something that I wanted to read, an alien invasion where the “good guys” (that’s us) got to really sink their teeth into the bad guys (that’s the Posleen). No gray areas, no ambiguity. Victory or death. Vive le morte! Once more unto the breach! Take that bunker or die trying!

I mean, if it isn’t victory or death, what’s the point? (Oh, Art? Excuse me while I laugh. Go read some of the reviews of Dickens.)

At some point in the future there will be stories that expand upon the logic and reveal all the strings behind the curtains. And books in which the focus slides completely off of the Posleen as the enemy and onto newer, more silvery, pastures. And, yes, books that are “grayer.”

But, alas, the writing of those books will be some time. I’ve sort of “burnt out” on the Posleen and I’m going to be writing some other stuff for a few years. I don’t think that there will be anything in them that will cause any of my current readers to go astray and I hope that they are more “approachable” to some of the readers who, let us say, don’t care for piles of yellow, leaking corpses.

Rest assured, though, Mike O’Neal, Papa and of course Cally (as if I was going to kill her) will be back. In the meantime just imagine them out there. Mike is retaking planets from the Posleen and Papa and Cally are covering his back. Kickin’ ass and not even bothering to take names.

Whether he knows it or not.

Take care and just remember; the good guys always win in the end.

John Ringo

Commerce, GA

October 6, 2002