End of the Century (71 page)

READERS OF MY PREVIOUS NOVELS
may recall that I am the type of person who feels cheated when “The End” are the last words in a book and who never buys a DVD if the “Special Features” are nothing more than theatrical trailers. While I feel that stories should explain themselves, I nevertheless like a little extra material to explore when I finish the story itself, a bit of behind-the-scenes business that I can dig into after the credits roll.

With that in mind, I offer the following notes:

On the Origins of
End of the Century

As a student at the University of Texas at Austin, I chanced upon a reference in Alfred Douglas's
The Tarot
to parallels between the four suits of the Tarot, the Grail Hallows of Arthurian legend, and the Treasures of Ireland. The seeds of this book were planted that day, and in the years that followed I filled countless notebooks with little bits and pieces, started and subsequently abandoned the project several times, and only finally, nearly twenty years later, did the idea fully germinate in my overheated brain.

I can only hope that, with the idea finally out of my head and onto paper, I can at last have those long-occupied parts of my brain back…

On the Bonaventure Family

The characters Roxanne Bonaventure and Peter R. Bonaventure (to say nothing of the infant Jules) all belong to a large extended family of explorers and adventurers, the Bonaventure-Carmody clan. Documented in the pages of
Cybermancy Incorporated
;
Here, There & Everywhere
;
Paragaea: A Planetary Romance
; and
Set the Seas on Fire
, in addition to Roxanne and Peter this family includes officer in Nelson's navy and time-lost adventurer Hieronymus Bonaventure, WWI-era aviator Jules Bonaventure, secret agent Diana Bonaventure, and research magician Jon Bonaventure Carmody.

The Bonaventure-Carmody clan owes much to the von Bek/Beck/Begg stories of Michael Moorcock, to the Diogenes Club stories of Kim Newman, to the superhero comics of Alan Moore—for this and too many other reasons to mention the present work is dedicated to them—and especially to Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton stories—to whom the earliest Bonaventure-Carmdoy novel,
Cybermancy Incorporated
, was humbly dedicated. Any reader who enjoyed any aspect of the present volume is encouraged to seek out the work of all of these brilliant writers without delay.

On Further Reading

Though
End of the Century
is intended to stand alone and on its own merits, many of the characters in the novel have previously appeared in some of my other books. Readers curious to learn more about Roxanne Bonaventure, Sandford Blank, or even the later adventures of Peter R. Bonaventure's infant son Jules are recommended to sample
Here, There & Everywhere
. Those wishing to read more about the past adventures of “Jules Dulac” might be interested in
Set the Seas on Fire
, while
Paragaea: A Planetary Romance
explains the origins and strange nature of the being calling itself Iain Temple. The at-present out-of-print
Voices of Thunder
(tentatively scheduled for reissue as
Book of Secrets
in late 2009) is largely concerned with William Blake Taylor's extended family. And while the likewise out-of-print
Cybermancy Incorporated
features Aria Fox, hints as to what befell Lord Arthur Carmody when he relocated
to the United States, and what
really
happened to his son thought lost in Africa (hint: he was raised by lions), those readers who are interested to learn the truth behind what befell Peter R. Bonaventure, Jules Dulac, and Mervyn Fawkes on the Floating Island are encouraged to visit my Web site,
www.chrisroberson.net
, where the relevant chapter of that novel, “Secret Histories: Peter R. Bonaventure, 1885,” is made freely available.

On Sources

To list all of the books, stories, comics, and films which inspired the present volume would tax the patience of even the most indulgent reader, but I would be remiss if I didn't point out a select number of works without which this book would not have been possible. These include, in no particular order:
The Great Captains
by Henry Treece, a portrait of Arthur as both man and king that was a significant influence on the development of Artor in these pages;
The Mammoth Book of King Arthur
by Mike Ashley, an invaluable road map to the history of the legend;
Londinium: London in the Roman Empire
by John Morris and
London: The Biography
by Peter Ackroyd, for helping set the scene;
Inventing the Victorians
by Matthew Sweet and
Pax Britannica
by James Morris, for much needed detail about life in 1897 London, and about the Diamond Jubilee festivities in particular;
A Dictionary of Irish Mythology
and
A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology
, both by Peter Berresford Ellis;
Aubrey Beardsley
by Stephen Calloway and
The Wilde Album
by Merlin Holland, two biographies offering invaluable glimpses into London's fin de siècle culture;
Seized
by Eve La Plante, for much-needed insight into the fascinating world of temporal lobe epilepsy; and
The Physics of Immortality
by Frank J. Tipler, a book of fascinating ruminations on eschatology, physics, and information technology that inspired the creation of the lacunae and their master, Omega.

Chris Roberson

Austin, TX

C
HRIS
R
OBERSON
's novels include
Here, There & Everywhere
;
The Voyage of Night Shining White
;
Paragaea: A Planetary Romance
;
X-Men: The Return
;
Set the Seas on Fire
;
The Dragon's Nine Sons
;
Iron Jaw and Hummingbird
; and
Three Unbroken
. His short stories have appeared in such magazines as
Asimov's
,
Interzone
,
Postscripts
, and
Subterranean
, and in anthologies such as
Live without a Net
,
FutureShocks
, and
Forbidden Planets
. Along with his business partner and spouse, Allison Baker, he is the publisher of MonkeyBrain Books, an independent publishing house specializing in genre fiction and nonfiction genre studies, and he is the editor of the anthology
Adventure Vol. 1
. He has been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award four times—twice for publishing and once each for writing and editing—twice a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and three times for the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History Short Form (winning in 2004 with his story “O One”). Chris and Allison live in Austin, Texas, with their daughter, Georgia. Visit him online at
www.chrisroberson.net
.