Stackpole, Michael A - Shadowrun (38 page)

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Authors: Wolf,Raven

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The original version is cruder and decidedly darker; but I like the version here much better. "Beast" was run in
Kage
in two parts, and succeeded in killing the magazine in 1994. Very few folks saw both halves, so, for all intents and purposes, there had been no Wolf and Raven stories published since "FG" in 1992.

Despite that hiatus, I kept being asked about the stories. I tried to interest FASA or ROC in collecting the stories into an anthology, but anthologies seldom sell as well as novels. (This is why this isn't an anthology. Nope. It's a
braided novel.
The difference, though subtle, is one we all hope makes itself apparent at the check-out counters.) Because of the sales issue, FASA and ROC both hesitated and I forgot about the idea of a collection while I dove into Star Wars® novels.

Apparently others did not forget. When Mike Mulvihill took over as the Shadowrun developer, folks asked him about Wolf and Raven. Even out on the Internet I'd see folks occasionally lamenting the lack of a Wolf and Raven novel. At Origins in the summer of 1996 when Mike and I were riding up an escalator and heading off to lunch, he asked me about these SR stories I'd written. I let him know I had nearly a book's worth of stories prepared and that Heyne, FASA's German publisher, was interested in doing a collection over there.

One thing led to another, and you've got the result in your hands. I finally completed "Designated Hitter"

for this collection and slotted it into place in the chronology where I had always intended it go. A couple of points were cleared up, some passages edited (or restored from the
Challenge
editions), and the rest is history.

A lot of folks—be they writers, critics, or academics— often opine that a writer's characters are really that writer; and since the Wolf stories are written in first person, it would be easy to assume Wolf is somehow my idealized self. Not true. Wolf gets away with things that would, quite rightly, get me killed.

And while I wouldn't mind having his car, I'll leave friends like Kid Stealth and a shadowrunning career far behind, thanks.

One of the coolest things about writing from Wolf's point of view is that my brain starts producing remarks that are a lot more witty or cutting or sarcastic than normal. Seeing things through Wolf's eyes seems to hone my sense of satire and the absurd. It also makes me prone to chuckling at various moments at nothing.

In writing the stories I very much enjoyed how the saga just slowly grew. In "Squeeze Play" you can read what I knew about Kid Stealth as I knew it—I had no idea who or what he was as that story was pouring out into the computer. The rest of Raven's aides have defined themselves as well, not becoming what I want or need to have for a story, but what they apparently were intended to be all the way along.

Lynn Ingold is a great example of this sort of thing. I had never intended to carry her beyond

"Quicksilver Sayonara," but she kept showing up. She adds a stabilizing and humanizing element to Wolf's life, which allows him to exert more and more control over the Old One. Since Wolf's life can be seen, in part, as a struggle to control the Old One, that makes Lynn very powerful. The fact that the Old One likes her, and is really only part of Wolf anyway, makes the whole set of relationships there
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something that might even seem to reflect
Literary Aspiration
on my part.

It's a passing phase, really. But it does go to show that a story is about characters, and even stories set in a commercial universe can have characters who develop and grow. I think a great deal of the positive response over the years to these characters is based not on what they do or have done, what they have killed or escaped or blown up, but on who they are and how much we like or fear them.

So the only other question to be asked and answered is this: will there be more Wolf and Raven stories?

There's only one other that's partially complete; the rest are ideas and fragments. I'm sure, someday, Wolf will become restless and force me to finish them.

But, that's what I like about Wolf—you can't keep him down. He keeps coming at you until he gets his way. In the matter of more stories I'm fairly certain he'll get it.

—Michael A. Stackpole
Phoenix, Arizona August 1997