Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

THINGS THE EDITOR NEVER TOLD ME

by Lynn Abbey

I had just administered the coup de gr&ce to my latest Thieves’ (Vor/rf

offering- my third – when Bob asked if I’d like to have the last word in Shadows

of Sanctuary, It was an offer I couldn’t refuse, though I’d no idea how I would

put into words the experiences of working on all three Thieves’ World volumes.

After many unsuccessful attempts at getting this essay down on paper, I began to

suspect that maybe Bob hadn’t known the right words either. He was smiling when

he made the offer, and he doesn’t usually give up a by-line that easily. Sigh.

Another example of Things the Editor Never Told Me.

Actually, a lot of things the editor didn’t tell us were things he didn’t know

himself. We were all nai’ve about the mechanics of a franchised universe back at

Boskone of 1978 when the Thieves’ World project was created. It sounded

wondrously uncomplicated: we would exchange character sketches and refer to a

common street map; Bob would write us a history; Andy Offutt would create our

gods. We only had to go to ground and write our 5,000-10,000 words. Fat chance.

Unexpected discovery number one: Sanctuary isn’t an imaginary anything; it’s a

state of mind recognized by the American Psychiatric Association.

We thought we’d gone to ground – it turned out that we’d gone overboard. Bob

hadn’t told us the things we’d really need to know, and none of us wanted to

dictate to the guy who’d created this fun-house, so each of us made great use of

the little vicissitudes of life that would add ‘grit’ and ‘realism’ to our