The Fifth Season

Acknowledgments

This fantasy novel was partially born in space.

You can probably tell, if you’ve read all the way to the last line of the manuscript. The germination point for this idea was Launch Pad, a then-NASA-funded workshop that I attended back in July of 2009. The goal of Launch Pad was to pull together media influencers — astonishingly, science fiction and fantasy writers count among those — and make sure they understood Teh Science, if they were going to use it in any of their works. A lot of the falsehoods the public believes re astronomy have been spread by writers, see. Alas, by pairing astronomy with sentient rock people, I’m not so sure I’m doing the world’s best job of delivering accurate scientific information. Sorry, fellow Launch Padders.

I can’t tell you about the spirited, amazing discussion that seeded this novel in my brain. (This is supposed to be short.) But I can tell you that such spirited, amazing discussions were the norm for Launch Pad, so if you are also a media influencer and you have the chance to attend, I highly recommend it. And I must offer thanks to the folks who were in attendance at Launch Pad that year, who all contributed to the germination of this novel whether they realized it or not. Offhand that would be people like Mike Brotherton (the workshop’s director, a University of Wyoming professor and science fiction writer himself); Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer (it’s a title, see, he’s not actually bad, I mean… okay, just look him up); Gay and Joe Haldeman; Pat Cadigan; Science Comedian Brian Malow; Tara Fredette (now Malow); and Gord Sellar.

Also, big props to my editor, Devi Pillai, and my agent, Lucienne Diver, for talking me out of scrapping this novel. The Broken Earth trilogy is the most challenging work I’ve ever written, and at certain points during The Fifth Season the task seemed so overwhelming that I thought about quitting. (Actually, I believe my exact words were, “Delete this hot mess, hack Dropbox to get the backups there, drop my laptop off a cliff, drive over it with a car, set fire to both, then use a backhoe to bury the evidence. Do you need a special license to drive a backhoe?”) Kate Elliott (another acknowledgment, for being a perpetual mentor and friend) calls moments like this the “Chasm of Doubt” that every writer hits at some point during a major project. Mine was as deep and awful as the Yumenescene Rift.

Other folks who helped talk me off the cliff: Rose Fox; Danielle Friedman, my medical consultant; Mikki Kendall; my writing group; my day-job boss (who I am not sure wants to be named); and my cat, KING OZZYMANDIAS. Yeah, even the damn cat. It takes a village to keep a writer from losing her shit, okay?

And as always, thanks to all of you, for reading.