by Clive Barker
Personally, I’ve never much cared about the details of one edition over another. While it’s very pleasurable to turn the pages of a beautifully bound book, immaculately printed on acid-free paper, the words are what count. The first copy of Poe’s short stories I ever read was a cheap, gaudily covered paperback; my first Moby-Dick the same. A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Duchess of Malfi were first encountered in dog-eared school editions. It mattered not at all that these enchantments were printed on coarse, stained paper. Their potency was undimmed. I hope the same will proved true for the tale you now hold: that the form it comes in is finally irrelevant.
With that matter addressed, might I delay you a little longer with a few thoughts about the story itself? At signings and conventions I am repeatedly asked a number of questions about the book, and this seems as good a place as any to briefly answer them.
Firstly, the question of pronunciation. Imajica is full of invented names and terms, some of which are puzzlers: Yzorddorex, Patashoqua, Hapexamendios, and so forth. There is no absolute hard and fast rule as to how these should trip, or stumble, off the tongue. After all, I come from a very small country where you can hike over a modest range of hills and find that the people you encounter on the far side use language in a completely different way to those whose company you left minutes before. There is no right or wrong in this. Language isn’t a fascist regime. It’s protean, and effortlessly defies all attempts to regulate or confine it. While it’s true that I have my own pronunciations of the words I’ve turned in the book, even those undergo modifications when — as has happened several times — people I meet offer more interesting variations. A book belongs at least as much to its readers as to its author, so please find the way the words sound most inviting to you and take pleasure in them.
The other matter I’d like to address is my motivation for writing the novel. Of course there is no simply encapsulated answer to that question, but I will offer here what clues I can. To begin with, I have an abiding interest in the notion of parallel dimensions, and the influence they may exercise over the lives we live in this world. I don’t doubt that the reality we occupy is but one of many; that a lateral step would deliver us into a place quite other. Perhaps our lives are also going on in these other dimensions, changed in vast or subtle ways. Or perhaps these other places will be unrecognizable to us: they’ll be realms of spirit, or wonderlands, or hells. Perhaps all of the above. Imajica is an attempt to create a narrative which explores those possibilities.
It is also a book about Christ. People are constantly surprised that the figure of Jesus is of such importance to me. They look at The Hellbound Heart or at some of the stories in the Books of Blood and take me for a pagan who views Christianity as a pretty distraction from the business of suffering and dying. There is some truth in this. I certainly find the hypocritical cant and derisive dogmas of organized religion grotesque and oftentimes inhumane. Plainly, the Vatican, for instance, cares more for its own authority than for the planet and the flock that grazes upon it. But the mythology that is still barely visible beneath the centuries-old encrustation of power plays and rituals — the story of Jesus the crucified and resurrected; the shaman healer who walked on water and raised Lazarus — is as moving to me as any story I have ever heard.
I found Christ as I found Dionysus or Coyote — through art. Blake showed him to me; so did Bellini and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and half a hundred others, each artist offering his or her own particular interpretation. And from very early on I wanted to find a way to write about Jesus myself; to fold his presence into a story of my own invention. It proved difficult. Most fantastique fiction has drawn inspiration from a pre-Christian world, retrieving from Faery, or Atlantis, or dreams of a Celtic twilight creatures that never heard of Communion. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but it always left me wondering if these authors weren’t willfully denying their Christian roots out of frustration or disappointment. Having had no religious education, I harbored no such disappointment: I was drawn to the Christ figure as I was to Pan or Shiva, because the stories and images enlightened and enriched me. Christ is, after all, the central figure of Western mythology. I wanted to feel that my self-created pantheon could accommodate him, that my inventions were not too brittle to bear the weight of his presence.
I was further motivated by a desire to snatch this most complex and contradictory mystery from the clammy hands of the men who have claimed it for their own in recent years, especially here in America. The Falwells and the Robertsons, who, mouthing piety and sowing hatred, use the Bible to justify their plots against our self-discovery. Jesus does not belong to them. And it pains me that many imaginative people are so persuaded by these claims to possession that they turn their backs on the body of Western mysticism instead of reclaiming Christ for themselves. I said in an interview once (and meant it) that the Pope, or Falwell, or a thousand others, may announce that God talks to them, instructs them, shows them the Grand Plan, but that the Creator talks to me just as loudly, just as cogently, through the images and ideas He, She, or It has seeded in my imagination.
That said, I must tell you that the deeper I got into writing Imajica, the more certain I became that completing it was beyond me. I have never come closer to giving up as I came on this book, never doubted more deeply my skills as a storyteller, was never more lost, never more afraid. But nor was I ever more obsessed. I became so thoroughly immersed in the narrative that for a period of several weeks toward the end of the final draft a kind of benign insanity settled upon me. I woke from dreams of the Dominions only to write about them until I crept back to bed to dream them again. My ordinary life — what little I had — came to seem banal and featureless by contrast with what was happening to me — I should say Gentle, but I mean me — as we made our journey toward revelation.
It’s no accident that the book was finished as I prepared to leave England for America. By the time I came to write the final pages, my house in Wimpole Street had been sold, its contents boxed up and sent on to Los Angeles, so that all I had that I took comfort in had gone from around me. It was in some ways a perfect way to finish the novel: like Gentle, I was embarking on another kind of life, and in so doing leaving the country in which I had spent almost forty years. In a sense, Imajica became a compendium of locations I had known and felt strongly about: Highgate and Crouch End, where I had spent a decade or more, writing plays, then short stories, then Weaveworld; Central London, where I lived for a little time in a splendid Georgian house. There on the page I put the summers of my childhood, and my fantasies of aristocracy. I put my love of a peculiar English apocalyptic: the visions of Stanley Spencer and John Martin and William Blake, dreams of domestic resurrection and Christ upon the doorstep some summer morning. Gamut Street I placed in Clerkenwell, which has always seemed haunted to me. The scenes with the returned Gentle I set on the South Bank, where I had spent many blissful evenings. In short, the book became my farewell to England.
I do not discount the possibility that I will one day return there, of course, but for now, in the smog and sun of Los Angeles, that world seems very remote. It’s extraordinary how divided it can make you feel, having been brought up in one country and coming to live in another. For a writer such as myself, who is much concerned with journeys into the strange, and the melancholia and joy of such journeys, it’s proved an educative experience.
I offer these scraps of biography in the hope that they illuminate the story that follows, and that some of the feelings that brought me to this novel will be left with you when it’s finished. Christ and England have not left my heart of course — they never will — but writing about a subject works an extraordinary magic. It magnifies the passions that inspired the story, and then — with the work finished — buries them, out of sight and mind, so as to allow the writer to move on to another place. I still dream of England, now and then, and I last wrote of Jesus walking on Quiddity’s waters in Everville, telling Tesla Bombeck that “lives are
leaves on the story-tree.” But I will never again feel about them as I did when I wrote Imajica. Those particular forms and emotions have disappeared into the pages, to be rediscovered there by somebody who wants to find them. If it pleases you to do so, make them your own.
Dream the rest
A sequel to Imajica just doesn’t seem possible to me. It is my favourite amongst my books. But it ends with the hero beginning on a journey of salvation that I’m not sure I would ever want to set to words. Sometimes it’s just best to allow readers like yourself to dream the rest.
From an AOL chat, September 1, 1995.
Some of the material in this section is also collected in Clive Barker: Revelations, an online publication devoted to Barkerania and located at www.clivebarker.dial.pipex.com.
About the Author
CLIVE BARKER is the internationally bestselling and award-winning author of eighteen books, including Weaveworld, Galilee, and Coldheart Canyon. He regularly shows his art in Los Angeles and New York, and produces and directs for both large screen and small. Recent projects include the Oscar-winning Gods and Monsters, and his phenomenal series of books for children, The Abarat Quartet, which will begin being published in fall 2002. He lives in Los Angeles.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
About the Compiler
HANS RUEFFERT has lived and breathed the air of the Imajica. As the codesigner of the critically acclaimed Clive Barker’s Imajica Customizable Card Game, published by HarperCollins, he became steeped in the intricacies of this complex and wondrous universe. Hans was also involved in the development of the Aliens Predator CCG through his company ZI Games. These days, Hans is the creative spirit behind Luna7.com, a Web site dedicated to fantastic art. Hans is working on a children’s book and is currently developing exciting new projects in partnership with Richard Kirk. In his free time Hans runs the historic Woodbridge Inn in North Georgia and thrashes Kudzu monsters with a chef’s knife!
About the Illustrator
RICHARD KIRK is a Canadian visual artist and illustrator. In addition to working on the illustrations for Imajica, Richard has illustrated books for Caitlin R. Kiernan, Poppy Z. Brite, and others. Richard is interested in the forms and structures found in nature, the morphology of plants and animals, and the effect of time on materials. Richard works in a number of mediums, including pen/ink, watercolor, silverpoint, and oil. He also works with found materials such as metal, rust, rubber, fossils, bones, and text.
ALSO BY CLIVE BARKER
NOVELS
The Damnation Game
Weaveworld
The Great and Secret Show
The Hellbound Heart
Everville
Sacrament
Galilee
Coldheart Canyon
SHORT STORIES
The Books of Blood, Volumes I–III
In the Flesh
The Inhuman Condition
Cabal
PLAYS
Forms of Heaven: Three Plays
Crazyface
Paradise Street
Subtle Bodies
Incarnations: Three Plays
Colossus
Frankenstein in Love
The History of the Devil
ANTHOLOGY
Revelations
The Essential Clive Barker
FOR CHILDREN
The Thief of Always
Credits
Cover design by Todd Robertson
Cover photograph © Macduff Everton
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
IMAJICA. Copyright © 2002, 1991 by Clive Barker. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780061745010
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1991 by HarperCollins Publishers.
First HarperPrism edition published 1997.
First Perennial edition published 2002.
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Please visit www.perfectbound.com for free e-book
samplers of PerfectBound titles.
Books by Clive Barker:
COLDHEART CANYON*
A Hollywood Ghost Story
ISBN 0-06-018297-0 (hardcover)
Mingling an insider’s view of modern Hollywood with a wild streak of visionary fantasy, Barker paints an irresistible and unmerciful picture of Hollywood and its demons.
THE ESSENTIAL CLIVE BARKER
Selected Fiction
ISBN 0-06-019529-0 (hardcover)
A captivating narrative compendium of Barker’s twenty-plus years of writing—four full-length short stories and over seventy excerpts from his novels and plays.
EVERVILLE*
ISBN 0-06-093315-1 (paperback)
Between this world and the sea of our dreams sits Everville, where the forces that have shaped our past—and are ready to destroy our future—are at work.
GALILEE*
ISBN 0-06-109200-2 (mass market)
ISBN 0-694-51985-5 (audio)
Shortly after her marriage to Mitchell Geary, Rachel Pallenberg enters into an all-encompassing passion with Galilee Barbarossa that unleashes the long-simmering enmity between their two families.
Available wherever books are sold, or call 1-800-331-3761 to order.
Also by Clive Barker:
THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW*
ISBN 0-06-093316-X (paperback)
Barker journeys from the first stirring of consciousness to an apocalyptic vision emanating from the town of Palomo Grove, where two great armies are amassing.
THE HELLBOUND HEART*
ISBN 0-06-100282-8 (mass market)
A nerve-shattering novella of the terrors and ecstasies within the human heart.
IMAJICA*
ISBN 0-06-093726-2 (paperback)
ISBN 0-06-109414-5 (mass market Part I: The Fifth Dominion)
ISBN 0-06-109415-3 (mass market Part II: The Reconciliation)
Gentle, Judith, and Pie’oh’pah travel the five dimensions of the Imajica uncovering a trail of crimes and intimate betrayals leading them to a startling revelation.
SACRAMENT*
ISBN 0-06-109199-5 (mass market)
THE THIEF OF ALWAYS
ISBN 0-06-109146-4 (mass market—Young Adult Fiction)
Many children have visited Holiday House, a magical house where every day is fun and every night is Halloween—but none have ever returned.
* Also available as an e-book from PerfectBound: www.perfectbound.com
Available wherever books are sold, or call 1-800-331-3761 to order.