blurred with the intensity of his staring, or was the blur in his eyes? Surely
now there was more color in the air than they had ever blown into it, and the
colors were shimmering. His ears rang with silence.
Lalo sank back on his heels and drew the two storm-children close against him,
and together they watched as the rainbow arched over Sanctuary….
AFTERWORD
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Which is the skungiest city of them all?”
You know what the mirror replied,
with a sneer at having to state the obvious.
SOME BLATANTLY PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS
Andrew Qffutt
Hanse and I have been in Sanctuary since the foundation stones were set, in a
February 1978 letter from genius-creator Asprin. We earliest settlers (eight of
us writers then, I think) received maps and descriptions, Hakiem’s original
background tale, copies of each other’s character sketches and sort-of-maybe
outlines, and letters from HQ: the Asprin mind. Everybody was excited and pretty
chattery. The little description I began of a fellow to be called Hanse became
three pages, physical and psychological, with footnotes and sidebars. By the
time I’d written all that three or four times, I knew what the first story was
about and what sort of stories he had to be in, if there were to be more.
As it developed, letter by letter by letter and packet of Xeroxed materials and
All-Points-Bulletins to and from us beginners of that project that seemed such
fun, I addressed an envelope to
“Robert L. Asprin
COLOSSUS: The Thieves’ World Project.”
Only a few weeks later, came the next Asprin APB for us first Thieves’ World