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The Last-Minute Queen takes place in the year 1978 on an Earth very much like ours at the same date, but more inclined towards reason and less tolerant of howling fanaticism. Because of this, it's had fewer "great" wars. Without the widespread waste of people and capital, and with research not interrupted or corrupted to military purposes, in most fields its science and technology in 1978 are equal or superior to ours in 2003. In no case are they behind our own world in 1978.
The Society for Creative Anachronism is an actual organization on our Earth; the Medieval Recreation Society, on the other hand, never existed. It was invented to explain how Aino could be eighteen years old in 1978, and her parents meeting at a tourney, when the SCA wasn't founded until 1967. The Society of the Golden Unicorn was proposed by the person called Baron Mezentius in this novel, as a cure to the incessant meddling of the SCA's Board of Directors; but we weren't wise enough to listen to him and make it happen. Calafia, Angels, Isles, Dreiburgen, Failte, Terra, Gyldenholt, Caid, and other SCA groups mentioned in the novel actually existed or used to exist.
Some of the people in this novel actually exist, and I have their permission to use their names, both real and Society, their likenesses, etc. For the most part, I have chosen not to use anyone's actual mundane or Society name even when I had such permission. Other people are "based on" one or more actual persons. Some actual persons are represented more than once, for example certain people who had so many interests and did so much that they would seem unrealistic if depicted as they actually are. And, yes, some people in this novel are completely made up and fictitious.
Some events in this novel are made up from nothing. But far more represent things that could have happened, and should have happened, if only the Society lived up to its potential. The vast majority of things in the novel actually happened at one time or another, and I was there to see it; just not in exactly the context or the order depicted, or to the persons named.
I was a member of the SCA for a long time. From 1970 to 1990, more or less, it was practically my whole life. Writing a series of novels using the SCA as their setting, creating a genre like westerns or mysteries, occurred to me a long time ago. My two previous attempts to write this novel failed because I didn't really have any characters to write around, just the basic idea of "he needs to find a queen at the last minute". Throwing Dean's SGU into the mix, setting the novel in the "Sleep of Reason" timeline, and basing the Suomainen women on some girls I knew in Oregon (with their permission!), turned an idea into a workable novel.
The basic idea remains, and is still the core of the book. But now we have all these other characters, each with his or her own life; we have the "Sleep of Reason" timeline to explore; and I'm deliberately exposing Isabella, and through her the reader, to every aspect of SGU life, and every kind of SGU event.
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
This page has been validated against XHTML Strict and viewed under Konqueror, Firefox, Opera, and Internet
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e-mail address on the home page.