"Raymond E. Feist - Riftwar 1 - Magician2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Feist Raymond E)

BEVISEI EIXHON

It is with some hesitation and a great deal of trepidation that an author
approaches the task of revising an earlier edition of fiction. This is
especially true if the book was his first effort, judged successful by most
standards, and continuously in print for a decade.
Magician was all this, and more. In late 1977 I decided to try my
hand at writing, part-time, while I was an employee of the University of
California, San Diego. It is now some fifteen years later, and I have
been a full-time writer for the last fourteen years, successful in this craft
beyond my wildest dreams. Magician, the first novel in what became
known as The RiHtwar Saga, was a book that quickly took on a life of its
own. I hesitate to admit this publicly, but the truth is that part of the
success of the book was my ignorance of what makes a commercially
successful novel. My willingness to plunge blindly forward into a tale
spanning two dissimilar worlds, covering twelve years in the lives of
several major and dozens of minor characters, breaking numerous rules
of plotting along the way, seemed to find kindred souls among readers
the world over. After a decade in print, my best judgment is that the
appeal of the book is based upon its being what was known once as a
"ripping yarn." I had little ambition beyond spinning a good story, one
that satisfied my sense of wonder, adventure, and whimsy. It
turned out that several million readers-many of whom read translations in languages
I can't even begin to comprehend-found it one that satisfied
their tastes for such a yarn as well.
But insofar as it was a first effort, some pressures of the marketplace
did manifest themselves during the creation of the final book. Magician
is by anyone's measure a large book. When the penultimate manuscript
version sat upon my editor's desk, I was' informed that some fifty thousand
words would have to be cut. And cut I did. Mostly line by line, but
a few scenes were either truncated or excised.
While I could live out my life with the original manuscript as published
being the only edition ever read, I have always felt that some of
the material cut added a certain resonance, a counterpoint if you will,
to key elements of the tale. The relationships between characters, the
additional details of an alien world, the minor moments of
reflection and mirth that act to balance the more frenetic activity of
conflict and adventure, all these things were "close but not quite what I
had in mind."
In any event, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the original publication
of Magician, I have been permitted to return to this work, to
reconstruct and change, to add and cut as I see fit, to bringforth what is
known in publishing as the "Author's Preferred Edition" of the work.
So, with the old admonition, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it,"ringing in
my ears, I return to the first work I undertook, back when I had no
pretensions of craft, no stature as a bestsdling author, and basically no
idea of what I was doing. My desire is to restore some of those excised


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