The Steel Remains (60 page)
Authors: Richard K. Morgan
Then he faced himself in the mirror once more, and found he was no longer afraid of what he saw looking back at him.
He waited, patiently, for the flicker of blue fire to show itself again, and for whatever else might come with it.
In case the influences worn so prominently on the sleeve of this novel should remain unclear, thanks are due to the following, for initial, momentous inspiration, way back when:
To Michael Moorcock for Hawkmoon, Elric, and Co rum.
To the memory of Karl Edward Wagner for Kane.
To the memory of Poul Anderson for
The Broken Sword
and
The
Dancer from Atlantis.
There are a lot of little anchoring glints of realism embedded in the fantasy of
The Steel Remains,
and for making some of these possible, I'm indebted to Robert Low, author of
The Whale Road,
and to Jon Weir. I'm also grateful to Alan Beatts for sowing a seed with his comments about sanity, and to Gillian Redfearn for hemming and hawing about the dimensions of staff lances.
For the rest, endless appreciation once again to my editors Simon Spanton and Chris Schluep, for— quite literally— buying into the idea in the first place, and then for putting up with the butchered and mutilated bodies of deadlines when things took longer than expected to whip into the shape I wanted. And thanks also to my agent Carolyn Whitaker for her continuing weather eye and all- around support.
And finally, and most of all, thanks to Virginia, for living day in, day out with the brooding excesses and antisocial abandon of Morgan the Barbarian, for the time it took to complete the work.
RICHARD K. MORGAN
is the acclaimed author of
Thirteen,
which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award,
Woken Furies, Market Forces, Broken Angels,
and
Altered Carbon,
a
New York Times
Notable Book that also won the Philip K. Dick Award. Morgan sold the movie rights for
Altered Carbon
to Joel Silver and Warner Bros. His third book,
Market Forces,
has also been sold to Warner Bros. and was the winner of the John W Campbell Award. He lives in Scotland.
Copyright © 2009 by Richard Morgan
All rights reserved.
DEL REY
is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of
Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-345-51344-1
v3.0