Thanks to Andy Prieboy for allowing me to appropriate the lyrics of “Tomorrow Wendy,” performed by Concrete Blonde.
The phrase “monsters from the id” is a shout-out to the 1950s movie “Forbidden Planet,” which has aged surprisingly well - my kids still enjoy it. Like Frankenstein and so many other works of fiction since, it sets out the dangers of playing God.
The quote “the almighty gave us our lives, and I suppose he meant us to defend them” is from H. Rider Haggard, whose character “She” may be the archetype of the dark, tragic, immortal sorceress deep in the ancestry of C.S. Lewis’ White Witch, Glen Cook’s Lady, and Yoshana.
Seven paraphrases John Jay from the Federalist Papers and quotes George Santayana in Book Four. Demons are pretentious that way. Father Juniper quotes Dom Augustin Guillerand. Apparently priests can be pretentious too. Yoshana cites Reverend Arthur Liebscher (as quoted in Daniel Burke’s “The Pope’s Dark Night of the Soul”) when she says prophets were fine, but their adherents were hard to take.
The horror author H.P. Lovecraft needs no introduction or explanation. To the best of my knowledge, he never intended any of his fiction to be viewed through the Nietzschean lens that Dee ascribed to it. And as a supreme rationalist he might have been offended by Dee characterizing him as an occultist. I prefer to believe that wherever he is, he’s taken both ideas with the humor with which they were intended.
Among the ridiculous number of attributed quotes, there’s an unattributed paraphrase from Peggy Noonan. The original was, “But you go forward accepting the simple tragedy at the heart of life, that this isn’t Heaven, it’s earth, and man is crooked timber. You wouldn’t invade the Warsaw Pact countries even though they’ve been turned into outposts of evil.” I found it to be a powerful statement from one of the speechwriters for the president who called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.”
If I’ve borrowed the words of others liberally throughout this series, it’s because others have done a better job than I could of expressing thoughts that I found to be critically important.
Speaking of plagiarism, there would have been some really funny lines worked in from Paul Simon’s The Sound of Silence if either (1) US copyright law for song lyrics were a little less weird (apparently you don’t need permission to cover a song, but you need permission to quote the lyrics), or (2) I were persistent enough to get through the layers of bureaucracy shielding Mr. Simon from people like me, so I could get permission to quote them. As it is, use your imagination.
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I have to admit that I hadn’t figured out Prophetess’ first name until this novel. When it finally came to me, it was obvious. It’s a variation on the middle name of the person who inspired the character, and the first name of the person I’d wanted to edit the series for me. The latter is Eugie Foster, a Nebula Award-winning author and a friend of mine from high school. The fact that she died of cancer at forty-two is a pretty good argument for inventing the Darkness, and she might have thought messing around with it wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. I didn’t have a chance to ask her. You should read her books.
It seems only appropriate to acknowledge the great debt I owe to Kevin and Barbara, my guides in the Rite of Christian Initiation as an Adult. All errors in understanding and doctrine are entirely my own.
A quick but important shout-out to Karl Popoff, my unofficial (and very much unpaid) West Coast publicist, who has entirely out of the vast goodness of his heart being trying to promote this series. Karl has been a great friend and a great inspiration - thank you.
Finally, another shout-out to Richard, Gabriel, Duncan, and Lucia, who have been both inspirations and critics. But first, last, and always, this is for Veronica.
Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle Page 91