To those readers who have already discovered Magician, who wonder if it’s in their interests to purchase this edition, I would like to reassure them that nothing profound has been changed. Returning it may be self-indulgent, but as this was material I felt belonged in the original book, it has been restored. My editor wasn’t sold on the idea of a sequel, then, so some of this was cut. The slightly lengthy discussion of lore between Tully and Kulgan in Chapter Three, as well as some of the things revealed to Pug on the Tower of Testing were clearly in this area. Other material was more directly related to the books that follow, setting some of the background for the mythic underpinning of the Riftwar.
My desire is to restore some of those excised bits, some of the minor detail that I felt added to the heft of the narrative, as well as the weight of the book. So, with the old admonition, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ ringing in my ears, I return to the first work I undertook, back when I had no pretensions of craft, no stature as a bestselling author, and basically no idea of what I was doing. In any event, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the original publication of Magician, I have been permitted to return to this work, to reconstruct and change, to add and cut as I see fit, to bring forth what is known in publishing as the ‘Author’s Preferred Edition’ of the work. The relationships between characters, the additional details of an alien world, the minor moments of reflection and mirth that act to balance the more frenetic activity of conflict and adventure, all these things were ‘close but not quite what I had in mind.’ While I could live out my life with the original manuscript as published being the only edition ever read, I have always felt that some of the material cut added a certain resonance, a counterpoint if you will, to key elements of the tale. Mostly line by line, but a few scenes were either truncated or excised. When the penultimate manuscript version sat upon my editor’s desk, I was informed that some fifty thousand words would have to be cut. Magician is by anyone’s measure a large book. It turned out that several million readers – many of whom read translations in languages I can’t even begin to comprehend – found it one that satisfied their tastes for such a yarn as well.īut insofar as it was a first effort, some pressures of the marketplace did manifest themselves during the creation of the final book. 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. 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. 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. Magician, the first novel in what became known as The Riftwar Saga, was a book that quickly took on a life of its own.
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. 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. This is especially true if the book was his first effort, judged successful by most standards, and continuously in print for a decade. 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 book is dedicated to the memory of my father,
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