Appendix C:
The Making of Fifth Millennium
The world of the Fifth Millennium began as three separate settings in the imaginations of three authors, still teenagers, long before they met.
Karen Wehrstein’s conception of Yeola-e dates back to age 12; the character Fourth Chevenga first appeared two years later (Friday, March 14, 1975, to be exact) when Wehrstein wondered what sort of life a person would lead who was granted both heroic abilities and foreknowledge that his life would be cut short.
The character Megan Whitlock was first conceived while Shirley Meier was in university in London, Ontario. For a literature class she was given the choice of writing either a short story or an essay; she chose the story, the first image a small woman standing on a rain-washed staircase, looking down into a city: F’talezon.
Shkai’ra Mek Kermak’s-kin and her world started with an afternoon in winter woods near Ottawa, Ontario. The deep cold, the snow weighing down the branches of the trees, and a raven launching itself through the woods ... and S.M. Stirling suddenly had the opening scene of his first novel, Snowbrother. That work took shape while Stirling was going through law school, which he believes may account for the savage and bloodthirsty tone.
Wehrstein and Stirling met at a party in Toronto in 1981 and were naturally drawn together; neither had ever before met anyone so interested in writing. At this time, though, violently opposing political and philosophical views precluded any collaboration. Stirling and Meier made friends at a convention in 1983; it was at a folk festival, watching Morris dancers, however, that they first wondered what would happen if Megan and Shkai’ra were to meet. Scrawling in a notebook passed back and forth, they began the first Fifth Millennium collaboration. The book grew slowly at first, mostly through correspondence.
The year 1985 marked the founding of the Toronto writers group the Bunch of Seven, at whose first meeting Stirling introduced Meier and Wehrstein to each other. This was after he had extolled to both the others’ virtues fulsomely for several months, leading each to expect the other to be much taller, more elegant and more sophisticated than she actually is. Reassured by their mutual mere humanity, the two women hit it off and began collaborating almost immediately on as yet unpublished works.
It was around this time that, despite no strong single common influences more specific than Tolkien and classical mythology, the three noticed that their respective fantasy settings and approaches had certain elements in common. All three used a time period several thousand years after a world holocaust, with technology at a pre-industrial but not entirely primitive level; diverse cultures created with extreme care to plausibility and detail; psychological realism and concern with growth and relationships; unexpected flashes of a dry but occasionally wicked situational humor; and a continual pondering of morality, particularly the morality of conflict and power.
It occurred to them that combining their worlds would give the resulting universe qualities of dissonance and discontinuity reflective of real life. A world built by one maker generally has a uniform flavor derived from the author’s worldview. A world built by three has a sharp variousness whose synergy surprises even the authors!
The process employed in Fifth Millennium collaborations is very close-knit, almost a dialogue, in which the writers try to surprise, inspire and move each other. They agree beforehand who has creative control over which character, and sometimes the three, particularly Meier and Wehrstein, use improv theater techniques to realize scenes. Other divisions of labor play on their respective writing strengths. As a rough guide for readers wanting to know which geographical region of the Fifth Millennium world was created by which author: solo novels take place in that author’s territory.
The Fifth Millennium Series
The Cage by S.M. Stirling & Shirley Meier
Lion’s Heart by Karen Wehrstein
Lion’s Soul by Karen Wehrstein
Shadow’s Daughter by Shirley Meier
Shadow’s Son by Shirley Meier, S.M. Stirling & Karen Wehrstein
Snowbrother by S.M. Stirling
Saber and Shadow by Shirley Meier and S.M. Stirling
Saber and Shadow Page 35
