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Volume 2Introduction to the Science Fiction Book Club edition of Prisoner's Hope and Fisherman's HopeAs I write this, I'm bidding a sad farewell to a friend who's dominated my life for the last eight years. It wasn't easy to live with him - he's been arrogant, at times unfeeling, perhaps a bit obsessed with his own actions. Yet I found him touching -- he strove so to set an example, to justify his existence on this earth, though always, in his heart, he felt he often fell short. I'm going to miss him terribly. I'm referring, of course, to Nicholas Ewing Seafort. The Nick Seafort novels you are about to read -- Prisoner's Hope and Fisherman's Hope, were completed over a year ago. That's the way it works in publishing. Months, even years pass between the time a publisher buys your work and the time it sees the light of day. My four novels were actually sold to Warner Books in April, 1993, and it was seventeen months -- November, 1994 -- before Midshipman's Hope was released. Since then, another book in the series has been issued every five months or so. Of course, I'm not one who can write a novel and put it down to go on with something else. No, I'm not that lucky. I have to fiddle with it, rewrite, tinker, clean it up, change words, until the final galleys are sent back for correction. Even then, I wish I could keep at it. My first novel, Midshipman, still has three words I'd just love to change. But Fisherman's galleys were sent to Warner months ago, and the book will ship a week from today. Why, you might ask, am I just now saying good-bye? Because, though Fisherman is the climax and conclusion of the series, it's . . .well, not quite. You see, after finishing Fisherman, another idea percolated for months, and finally resulted in Voices of Hope, to be published October 1996. It is a sort of epilogue, meant to stand alone, a book you can read without having first read the series, yet in another sense, it caps and completes the Nick Seafort series in a way I could not have anticipated while writing Fisherman. And as it happens, I write this introduction for the SF Book Club edition while my laser printer is cranking out the final version of Voices of Hope, for Warner's copyedit. Late last night -- actually, early this morning -- I made final adjustments to the text, and closed the file. I'm not sure I know how to face life without Nick. Partings have always been hard for me, ever since my mother died suddenly when I was eleven. It's something I've never gotten over -- I cry at good-byes in movies, and at any scene involving death of a sympathetic character. Hey, you may be saying, Seafort's just a guy in a book. Not so. Not for me. The only way I know how to write is to get so deeply into the characters that they become utterly real. As most any novelist can tell you, there are those moments when the characters nudge you aside and take over the telling of their own story -- the dialogue, the action, even the plot twists become theirs. I, the author, am reduced to a transcriptionist, writing what I hear as fast as they speak. I live for those moments. And, thank God, they come often. But because Nick Seafort is real to me, his pain is real as well. So it's been a harrowing eight years. The more so in that I have to write a paragraph far more slowly than you read it. So while you live through it in seconds, I feel it in minutes that stretch into hours. I experience Nick's pain in slow motion. This is true for me for all characters, even minor ones. I visualize them utterly -- I see their height, their faces, their physical attitudes -- I know exactly what makes them tick. The final scenes of Voices are more intense than anything I could imagine writing. To finish the novel, I immersed myself in the climax, writing six, eight, ten hours a day. When the first draft was done, I was an emotional basket case, mooning about the house, exhausted, ragged, weeping at the slightest provocation. The fan mail I get -- and I'm amazed how much I receive -- shows that readers feel something of the emotion I've endured. They respond by reaching out to me, with questions about Nick, with praise, with arguments about his world and his choices, with thanks. Flattered? Of course I am. I love it. But what I love best is that we shared a moment of communion about Nick, about the struggle to find and do right. I think that's why so much of my mail demands I keep writing. I will, but not about Nick. At least for now. My next work is a fantasy, which Warner has bought and will release sometime about August, 1997. It's mostly completed, but I have a ways to go. The central character isn't like Nick Seafort -- he doesn't have Nick's implacable morality -- but he, too, is enduring pain as he grows and matures, and the writing is difficult. --------------- I received an interesting letter not long ago. A reader said, more or less, "All right, I understand Nick Seafort's religion and where he comes from. But where do you stand? What are your beliefs? Are you a Christian? Do you believe in damnation? In redemption?" At first, I was indignant at what sounded like an interrogation. Then I came to understand he'd given me high praise indeed. If he didn't know where I stand, if I hadn't clobbered him with my own point of view, then as an author I've done my job, and stayed completely out of sight. My characters speak for themselves, and perhaps the story raises moral issues for you to consider. What I personally believe is in a way irrelevant. It's what you decide that matters. How, then, do I see my job as an author? First, the obvious: to tell a story we both care about. One worth your time to read, that doesn't leave you feeling cheated. One that I feel was worth my struggle to write. Second, to be competent. To tell my story cleanly and precisely. I hate to be hauled abruptly out of a book, wondering, "What in hell did that sentence mean?" Or, "Why does he keep overusing that word?" In my early drafts of Midshipman, for example, I always had people "glaring" or "growling". I had to use word-search to seek and destroy the skulking repetitions. About certain things I am compulsive. Finding exactly the right word, for instance, and not just a near neighbor. Using crisp dialogue that advances the plot, reveals the motivations of the characters, delineates the characters by style differences, and creates tension. You'd be surprised how hard that is, at least for me. My dialogue is polished and repolished fanatically, until I'm finally satisfied. Eliminating excess words, showing emotions rather than labeling them, ending sentences on strong words, not belaboring the obvious... Man, I work hard at trying to get good. At book signings and through e-mail, folks ask me which book of mine I like best. I always tell them it's the last one. They think I'm joking, but I really mean it. You see, in each book I've learned something more about the craft of writing. In my first novel, Midshipman's Hope, I learned how to tell a coherent, publishable coming-of-age story. But it was episodic, and therefore loose. In Challenger's Hope I learned to tell a single story, straight as an arrow, with no diversions, with the tension building throughout. In Prisoner's Hope I learned to tell several stories at once, merging them all into a powerful climax. In Fisherman's Hope, I learned how to travel through time, telling two interconnected stories about two different eras of Nick's life. And in Voices of Hope, I learned to tell a tale through several alternating points of view, never losing focus on the advancing action. Therefore, each book, in my view, was better than the last. You have, in the following pages, the result of my schooling, and the climax to which the Nick Seafort saga has steadily built. I stumbled across the ending to Fisherman halfway through writing previous novel, and in fact I put Prisoner aside for a couple of weeks to write a draft of the ending to Fisherman I didn't dare lose. So here they are, the last two novels of the series. Hope you like them. Do let me know. David Feintuch
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