Word of God on The Worldcrafters: Conversations with Geary Gravel

[Darmani]

Hello fellow M&M fans!

Many of you are aware of the M&M novels written in the 90's by Geary Gravel, The Dreamwright and The Shadowsmith, though they are hard to come across. (For anyone in Boston, we have one of the world's largest SF & Fantasy libraries, where I found them.) They're a feat of worldbuilding, with a set of races and beasts unlike any other, and hints of greater secrets. The mysterious hooded figure, the pack animals that may be something more. What secrets does this world hold?

Burning with curiosity, I got ahold of Geary Gravel, and asked. He has given permission to publish all of our correspondence, minus some recent unrelated work of his which is still under wraps. If anyone else has more questions for him, reply and I can forward them along to him, although he warns that his memory is spotchy of this 30-year-old incomplete project. Over the next several days, I'll upload our correspondence in this thread.

Note: The rest of this thread may contain spoilers.

[Darmani]

First, two of the biggest mysteries. Who is this hooded figure who twice grants Hitch a powerful gift, speaks cryptically about future events, and then disappears? What is the secret of the yeofolk?

A long time ago you had asked me about the "mysterious robed figure who gave Hitch the gifts." This was to have been one of the Guardians, referred to in these notes as "biological robots." The yeofolk, which you had also asked about, were my own creation, meant to be the original inhabitants of this world and far more intelligent than the human settlers knew.

I have updated the Wiki with this information:

https://mightandmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Hooded_figure
https://mightandmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Yeofolk

[Darmani]

Second, it's been said that his novels capture the M&M aesthetic very quickly. This alas looks to be partially a coincidence, for he was told very little.

In terms of the M&M aesthetic, it's nice to hear that people thought that, but truth be told, I had decided from the start to take the opportunity to write the books in a style similar to that of Jack Vance, one of my all-time favorite sf/fantasy authors.

[Darmani]

What happened when The Worldcrafters was canceled?

I just did a little googling and found these two references, the second a lot more faithful to the facts than the first:

1. https://mightandmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Geary_Gravel
Whoever wrote this said that after DW and SS I was asked to write a third Might & Magic novel unrelated to the first two. Not true. When the packager decided against a third M&M novel, he asked me to fulfill my three-book contract by writing him a fantasy novel completely unrelated to M&M, which would have involved the creation of a totally new universe, something I balked at doing, since I felt I had already created one for him. My agent agreed with my perspective, and got me released from the contract. This article also says that I set the M&M novels in the same universe as my Fading Worlds series. The truth is, I inserted a very brief cameo of three characters Hitch glimpses when looking at other worlds, whose description implies that they could be three of the main characters of A Key for the Nonesuch--but this was in the nature of an in-joke and never intended to imply a shared universe. As I recall, I also put a brief scene that was meant to hint at beings mentioned in my other series, The Autumnworld Mosaic.

Also, it looks like Marzhin misquoted him 15 years ago, losing a joke.

2. https://www.celestialheavens.com/forum/11/3723
This is much more in line with what actually happened. (Oh, except the article's author misquoted the About the Author from The Dreamwright, which was intended to be facetious.)

From the article: "Geary Gravel effortlessly balances his twin careers of writing and sign-language interpreting. Prolific and punctual to a fault, he has never missed a book deadline, nor taken exception to an editor's request for changes to a manuscript. The Dreamwright is an example of his fiction at its imaginative best."

Makes me sound a bit swell-headed, don't you think? Sigh. This is what it really said in the About the Author:
"Geary Gravel effortlessly balances his twin careers of writing and sign-language interpreting. Prolific and punctual to a fault, he has never missed a book deadline, nor taken exception to an editor's request for changes to a manuscript. The preceding is an example of his fiction at its imaginative best."

If there's demand, then coming up next: scans of his notes from 1993 from his original meetings with NWC.

[Darmani]

It was wondered whether we would actually encounter the Ancients in the planned next novel. Indeed, this was to be the case:

Hitch and Diligence were indeed going to meet the Ancients in this novel. Unfortunately, the book was in the early planning stage when the plug was pulled, and I hadn't gotten around to deciding any of the details, which tend to come to me as the story unfolds. However, I will make an effort to track down those couple of opening pages for Worldcrafters.

Also, a special offer on the table for anyone who wants it:

By the way, you mentioned that copies of The Dreamwright and The Shadowsmith were hard to come across. If you know anyone who'd like an (autographed!) copy and is willing to spend ten bucks for the book and postage, I've still got a drawerful of unread ones myself. Hey, I'll even throw in a trading card . . .

[Darmani]

As promised, I am uploading scans of Geary's original notes, along with transcriptions of the more difficult-to-read pages: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ays ... zzTv8/edit

[Pol]

Thanks Darmani

Interesting to see. Now I might ponder how much would be these books better than warcraft books.