Robert Asprin: The Dead of Winter

Right after reading Wings of Omen (same time you did: last November, just before I wrote the story in this volume), I wrote Paxson and Bailey each a fan letter of congratulations and thanks. Did you? Why don't you write me, you bum!

Could those be letters to me that Bob brags about piling up by the bag in his home?

Like your family, we work together and separately. We get along and we argue or even fall out. When Janet Morris and I include Hanse and Tempus in each other's stories, we exchange manuscripts and say "OK, but (Tempus or Hanse) wouldn't use this word or phrase," or "wouldn't drink this much," or "he is not blond." (I thought Zip was, and Janet fixed that in my story last time. Zip looks like that swine who tried to murder the Pope and Hanse resembles Lee Marvin at about age 23.)

Too, Janet sent me pages and pages of lovingly machine-copied (the Xerox people keep reminding us that "xerox" isn't a verb, and is capitalized) research notes, which I filed with my own Arms and Armor; Medieval Warfare; Smaller Classical Dictionary; Approved Tactics For Attacking and Trashing Publishing Offices; and other valuable research sources.

She and I met once, about five years ago. We must have exchanged at least thirty words on two occasions that day. She was on her way to someplace else, both times. You don't have to know people to be friends ... said the man who has collaborated on well over a dozen novels with people he still hasn't met!

Secret alliances, shaky relationships, and worse

Janet and I formed a secret alliance in 1980 ("Vash-anka's Minion" and "Shadow's Pawn," and no I do Not intend to write a nautical story called "Shad's Prawn" as one darling fan suggested in '81), and sprang it on Bob-I-mean-Dad, thus forcing him to run our stories back to back. He got even; his Jubal "sold" Tempus to that godawful Kurd, slicer of living humans. Then he and Janet colluded (does that word exist?-it does now; Offutt's the resident grammarian-linguician). The book ended with Kurd's industriously paring and sawing this and that part off immortal Tempus. A few months later, darling Dad-Bob called me. (This is always difficult. He speaks a shade faster than a Sten gun, and probably plays whole games of Risk while listening to my Kentuckianly drawled replies.)

"Andy! ThisisBob! Janet - and - Ineedyerhelp(beat)Kurd-has-Tempus-andwe-were wonderingifHanse'dget-himout!"

Beat, beat, beat: "Hi-i (beat) Boob," I said ...

So Hanse starred in "The Vivisectionist"-surely the ugliest word in this or any language. Right up there next to "edit"-in which he got the maimed Tempus out of the dripping hands of Kurd the Turd. We all loved each other, even Tempus and Hanse. Then H. saw how T. regenerated those lost parts, and got shaky. So did their relationship. Meanwhile, or rather about a year later, Bob and I had an egregious falling out and I Left Home in worse than a huff. Never To Return. That's why Volume 5, The Face of Chaos, is Hanseless and Andyless. Seemed a dreadfully dull book to me....

(Of course I read it. I had to; another year later I came home to Sanctuary to write a story in which Hanse split town; returning was necessary because fans told me rumors that Lynn and Bob were discussing Secret Plans with Janet at the World Fantasy Con: maybe going to kill Hanse or worse. It was a great homecoming with the typical Sanctuary feast: Bob served up the fatted mongrel.)

So ... we get along as all families do: usually. But not always.

For instance ... I fully expected UPS to bring me a ticking package from Morris after I killed Tempus's god and power-source, Vashanka. See, science fiction great Edmond Hamilton had a name for destroying planets; "World-Wrecker Ed," they called him.... That wasn't big enough for me; / put the hit on a god. (Besides, I'd birthed him. Now he's in another universe, eking out a precarious living selling hamsters to researchers.) God-Zapper Andy?

Well, no bomb came. Instead, Janet ignored my wicked ploy. She was busy writing her Tempus novel. Beyond Sanctuary. They keep telling me that Vashanka has been reborn as an infant. Hmp. Silly dam' dodge, that; he isn't even dead!-just to keep alive a krrf-head whose body heals all wounds. (Donation Alphons Francois de Sade should have thought of that. Such a person is the Perfect Victim, while by the end of the Marquis's Justine, she must have been covered all over in scars!)

Ils Saves!

This was not at all what I intended to write as After-word; it was going to be a sort of history, with snippets from our back-and-forth letters. This is what poured out, though, the same way the Hanse stories have: at the last minute (or later, with Lynn & Bob pulling out their hair in great ghastly gobbets) in a rushing beery flow of hand-scribbled phrases during which I never think of style, that thing "teachers" talk about because they aren't writers and can't think of much else except maybe the mech-aniwockle dumbness of 7-2 or 5-3 paragraphs, whatever that are or them is. Somehow the style is always about the same, because that's the way the Hanse stories write themselves. I reckon we can live with this: call it an Afterword, which is "epilogue" or even "epilog" in a living language.

Yours relatively truly takes credit for all the gods of TW; for Kadakithis's name and his becoming a person or nearly; for the detailed map of the Inner Maze that you've never seen; for Molin Torchholder and Sly's Place; and of course for the Great Pyramid, the economic recovery, and safety pins.

"And who," the witch begged of the mirror on the wall, having nervously noticed a new line in her face, "is the fairest of them all?"

The mirror sneered again. "Is Sophia still alive, dummy?"

Yeah, you're right: the inspiration for "The Veiled Lady" is Sophia Loren, who is married to a short, homely, balding and dumpy man. Never mind the inspiration for Jodeera's name. Wonder what's going to inspire me next time?

Name of Father Ils, how I wish I'd had the idea for Thieves' World to begin with! Then I too could be rich and famous with a basement full of mailsacks and get to exert the editor's prerogative of writing the Afterword to Thieves' World # 7.

-Andrew Offutt

KY, USA

20 November 1984

(Note to Bob and Lynn: Try to get that Big Word in the last sentence spelled right.)