Читать книгу The Farris Channel - Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Страница 4

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I never intended to write this book about the founding of the House of Zeor. But as Star Trek fans became immersed in the Sime~Gen universe, at first via the first novel, House of Zeor, then the first award winner, Unto Zeor, Forever, both about men who headed up the House of Zeor, they kept asking questions about the House of Zeor, the Farrises, the concept Sectuib, and how it all happened.

Being Star Trek fans, they wrote stories to argue for their own answers, Sime~Gen fan fiction stories. That body of fan fiction is now much larger than the professionally published novels, and available online for free reading via Simegen.com.

Jean Lorrah was particularly curious about how the channels ever became channels, and kept asking, none of my answers putting the matter to rest for her. Finally she wrote up a piece of fiction that incorporated my answers to date, gave it to me at a Star Trek fanzine oriented convention. She then posed more and more questions. Which I answered until I got laryngitis.

So I did what any self-respecting member of science fiction fandom would do, I told her to write her story up as novel. She did. It was terrific (she was already a professional writer, not to mention a Professor of English—she could write, oh boy, could she!). So I presented it to my editor at Doubleday, and they bought it. That novel is First Channel.

Thus Sime~Gen has two main entry points which are crafted to let you absorb the complex background by osmosis, without pausing as you read the story, House of Zeor and First Channel.

House of Zeor is for veteran Science Fiction readers, especially Star Trek or Vampire Romance fans who love to be challenged by a very different reading experience. First Channel is for general fiction readers who may be a little leery of science fiction, or who prefer to start reading a “series” at the “beginning.”

All of the Sime~Gen novels have a love story at the core of the plot, and some, like Jean Lorrah’s To Kiss or to Kill, are Romance Genre. Unto Zeor, Forever is a “doctor novel romance.” My ambition is to have a Sime~Gen novel in each of the recognized genres, to illustrate how Science Fiction is not a genre at all.

Despite being published as a Series, Sime~Gen is not a series, but a Universe. The novels are not all about one character, though if you pay attention you may find certain souls that reincarnate, having learned one lesson and now face yet another new lesson.

The Sime~Gen novels were framed as the story of The House of Zeor and the impact of its legend on the course of human history. It’s the story of a group of loosely affiliated souls who struggle with issues bigger than they are and apply various philosophies to their problems in different eras and epochs, including eventually space colonization.

All the previously published novels can be read in any order, and should be re-read in different orders to get the most out of them. They are re-readable books, books which reveal something new with each re-reading.

This novel, The Farris Channel, about the founding of the House of Zeor, assumes the reader has read a few of the previously published novels and needs answers to questions.

So here I must acknowledge all those who asked these questions that led to this novel. They number in the hundreds.

I must also acknowledge the contribution of Jean Lorrah who wrote First Channel and Channel’s Destiny, the two direct prequels to this novel, chronicling what happened when Rimon Farris discovered the trick of “channeling” and how this eventually led to the founding of something as odd in human history as a Householding. Those two novels made this novel absolutely necessary.

Now Jean is more interested in writing about her musician characters, Zhag and Tonyo, who appear in the short stories in The Story Untold and Other Sime~Gen Stories as well as the novel, To Kiss or to Kill. If you pay attention, you’ll find prior incarnations of those souls in The Farris Channel. The descendents of Zhag and Tonyo and the film/video industry they found, have as profound an impact on the course of history as the House of Zeor does.

But there is another story set chronologically between Channel’s Destiny and The Farris Channel. We call it “Compan­ions,” because it’s about the Gens of Fort Freedom and their role in the burgeoning growth of the Fort until it becomes such an irritant to the junct Territory that the Fort is destroyed, the survivors scattering to form the Forts you will read about in The Farris Channel. Because Companions has so much explosive action, flame-and-glory writ large, we are debating whether would make a better screenplay than novel.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

June 2011