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Malazan World

Page history last edited by PBworks 15 years, 7 months ago

From the Introduction in Night of Knives , by Steven Erikson

 

"The world of Malaz was born in 1982, and from that moment onward that world’s history slowly took shape. On summer archaeological digs and winters spent in Victoria, B.C. in the midst of degrees in Creative Writing, in Winnipeg and on Saltspring Island – wherever Ian (Cam) Esslemont and I crossed paths for any length of time. We were co-writers on a number of feature film scripts, and it was clear that our individual creativity was complimentary, and during our breaks from writing we gamed in the world of Malaz."

 

"When the notion of writing fiction set in that world was first approached, it seemed obvious the we would divvy up the vast history we had fashioned over the years. And so we did. (...)"

 

"This is a huge imaginary world, too big for a single writer to manage in a lifetime. But two writers...that’s different. The dedication in Gardens of the Moon was to Ian C. Esslemont. Worlds to conquer, worlds to share. I do not think I could have made my desire, and intent, more clear. (...)"

 

"Night of Knives is not fan fiction. We shaped the world of Malaz through dialogue; our gaming was novelistic and with themes that were, more often than not, brutally tragic. At other times there was comedy, usually of the droll variety. We duelled each other on understatement and absurdity, and we made it a point to confound the genre’s overused tropes. The spirit of that has infused every one of my novels set in the Malazan world. And it infuses Ian Esslemont’s writing in the same imaginary world. (...)"

 

"To this day, we continue to work on the Malazan world’s history, poring over its details, confirming the sequence of events, discussing the themes, subtext, and ensuring the consistency of cross-over characters. We hammer away at the timeline and the fates of countless characters, many of whom no one else has met yet. And we discuss deviousness, and as the readers of the Malazan Book of the Fallen know, deviousness abounds."

 

"From the beginning of the Malazan series, I was writing to an audience of one – Cam. And he has reciprocated. Thus, the dialogue continues; only now there are others, and they are listening in. Finally, to both sides of the conversation.

We hope it proves entertaining."

 

(NoK, PSpub thc, p.v-vii)

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