I didn't catch the mistake until the very end of the proofing process.ĭid it even matter? Within the book itself, not at all. And so it turned out that the Agincourt-esque battle mentioned in the book would fit better with Edmund III.īy then I'd long forgotten that the manuscript itself still said Edmund II. Much later in the process I drew up a family tree, and merely listing successive kings hinted at a background arc: a failed king a son who conciliates his subjects a grandson who takes advantage of the revitalized monarchy to beat up on the neighbors. The name was intended simply to evoke the Edwards of Plantagenet England. At some point in writing the manuscript I needed to mention a former king of Lyonesse, one of Catherine's ancestors, and made him Edmund II. The population and technology of Renaissance France were sufficient to support the French royal court given a comparable kingdom, the royal court of Aquitaine did not need to be explained, only invented.Īs a result, I nearly got caught by a stray round of canon fire. The world of the book is meant to be evocative of our own, similar enough that the mechanics did not need to be worked out and tested for fit. In Catherine of Lyonesse I did little worldbuilding of the classic SF/F sort. Getting the first couple of copies of C of L off the print run was a wondefully solid experience.Įven more wonderfully the copies smell like books.Īnd the canonical version is right there in cold print. But print - generating numerous identical copies of a text - surely amplifies this effect.

This effect of canonicity does not depend on the technology of print: Omar Khayyam wrote long before the printing press. Now they are canonical, or will be come the official publication date - August 14 - and the release of the book. Events and details that previously were fluid, contingent, subject to revision, are now fixed in place beyond the reach of piety or wit. Thus, in the course of the spring, Catherine of Lyonesse has taken on its final, official form, the text gradually setting like concrete. Even the digital era has not, so far, changed this in essentials - ebook editions, at least from commercial publishers, are as fixed as their print counterparts. What previously were tentative, fluid possibilities are transformed into either fixed facts or equally fixed nullities. The moving finger can even, as in this case, return after an indecently long interval to write more.īut most to the point, the moving finger, by hitting the publish button, establishes canon.

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, The Moving Finger writes, and having writ,

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