Комментарий к книге "Fall from grace"

[DeJaVu]

Fall from Grace came about in somewhat convoluted manner; in 2005 I was approached by Fanpro Germany with a view to writing a novel for their German language releases and the story I proposed was always going to be a House Marik story, a no-brainer since I fell in love with them as a faction while writing FM: FWL. My idea was to write the last days of the Star League – basically Kenyon Marik and the First Succession War. They liked the idea but as they already had another writer (Michael Diel) producing stories in the early Star League they suggested I look at something in that era.

I was working on Housebook: House Marik at the time so set about the records and quickly picked up on some ideas. The first concerned Tomas Marik (who served as Captain-General twice) but that was a little late in the timeline (though Tomas does appear at a couple of points in FFG). The other main option came about in a rather odd way: The original House Marik had some inconsistencies and there was a big discrepancy between the text account of when Rhean left office and when the genealogy said she died. I quickly expanded on that idea, turning it into a full story spanning some 45 years and encompassing a number of key events in Inner Sphere history: The birth of the Star League, the Reunification War, the Freebooters war and the murder of Tanya Kerensky. The story also had to fit in with the stories Michael Diel was working on – there are a number of references to his books, both extant and planned – and some direct crossovers.

The result was an interesting beast. It doesn’t have much action – there’s only one real battle and a couple of skirmishes – and instead is about 50:50 political saga and romance. As with any tale, sometimes the story has a life of its own. Some plot threads grew organically during writing (in my outline, each chapter began life as roughly a paragraph of story info) and other elements came completely out of left field (that Kevin Steiner-Dinesen was somewhat enamoured of Evie Sukhanov became a running joke with Michael) but some elements were left on the cutting room floor. A two-chapter plot thread concerning Rhean’s “fall” was cut from the outline because it didn’t really fit with story as it played out, but most of the first draft was as you see it now. There were, however, two significant changes.

The first was the ending. As I originally wrote it, the epilogue was more downbeat (if you imagine it without Zane and with Sarah being in full on spite mode, you’ll have some idea of how it played out) but that was rather harsh and thus quickly revised into the happier version that exists now. The English version is slightly less ambiguous than the German original, but essentially the ending plays out the same.

Not so the other change: Chapter 11. While writing FFG I tried to be as consistent as possible to existing sources, but I missed the odd detail here and there. For the English edition the manuscript went though the fact checking process all Catalyst documents do now and many of the niggles were pointed out. Many were quick fixes, the odd date here, the odd spelling there, but Chapter 11 was another kettle of fish, with two main issues. Firstly, it was written to mesh with a scene in one of Michael Diel’s books, but it soon became apparent that the original portrayal of Kevin Steiner-Dinesen was out of sync with Handbook: House Steiner. As with my own work on Handbook: House Marik, Herb had corrected some inconsistencies in the history, one of which was a discrepancy between Kevin’s age as given in the genealogy (circa 25 in 2600) and his age as would fit the events described in the narrative (about 45 at that point). I’d portrayed Kevin as a younger man, and here aging him made him the senior member of the “kids clique” The second issue provided a similar disconnect: originally Nicholas Cameron featured, but closer examination of the Star League sourcebook made it clear that he would still be off in the Periphery (and about to have the accident that cost him an arm) and so his appearances were reworked. In both cases there’s not of huge impact with regards the story, but there is a significant disconnect with the German version (and Michael’s version of the scenes).

On the subject of crossovers, Zane’s house at Thonon-les-Bains first appeared in Loren Coleman’s Mechwarrior Dark Ages novel, Sword of Sedition, and the balcony that hosts the final scene between Caleb and his father is the same one where Zane and Rhean have breakfast. The “little bottling plant” is real (check out the labels in your local supermarket) as are Salle du Conseil in Geneva (part of the UN complex), Rhean’s chalet in Troistorrents (actually the house of some Swiss friends) and the cafй near the cathedral in Lausanne (who serve excellent hot chocolate with cream!).

As a side-note, while Fall from Grace is a self-contained story it wasn’t intended to be entirely a stand-alone. As mentioned earlier, it dovetails with some of Michael Diel’s work (notably Chapter 11 with Ьber dem Gesetz) but it also makes a sideways reference to some of what Michael was going to write in the “Shadow War” series (of which, I believe, only the first book, En Passent, was published though Carolina Mцbis was also going to write some side-stories). I had grandiose ideas for a much tighter story that slotted into the 2603-4 period (which is peripherally hinted at in Chapter 16 and also provided some details of why Albrecht hated Zane). I also laid the groundwork for the Tomas story I’d also considered and went so far as to write one of the scenes (which would probably serve as a stand-alone short story, but which wouldn’t mean much unless you knew the story of Fall From Grace) which formed a coda to Rhean’s story.

[Siberian-troll]

Хм, прочесть, что ли?