Foreword to the Revised Edition
Chapter Nine: Mac Mordain Cadal
Chapter Eleven: Sorcerer’s Isle
Book 2: Milamber and the Valheru
Chapter Twenty-One: Changeling
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Emissary
Chapter Thirty-One: Deceptions
Chapter Thirty-Four: Renaissance
Acknowledgement to the Revised Edition
Foreword to the Revised Edition
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 Riftwar 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
