I was having a lot of trouble getting 'Conrad's Crusade' written, when I found this other contract from Del-Rey lying around. Two books on any subject I wanted, and it was only a few years overdue. I laid Conrad aside, 'only temporarily' I told myself.

A good conversation with an intelligent old friend is one of the great joys of life. Almost up there with sex with a beautiful, eager woman, and way ahead of smoking and drinking. I wanted to write a book about two intelligent, middle-aged friends talking and arguing about anything that came up. I wanted it to be real, without any of the currently mandatory thought control and 'Political Correctness'.

Then, there were these ancient legends about the Western Isles off the coast of France, where King Arthur came from. One story has it that the Apostle, St. Thomas (the one who wouldn't believe that Christ had arisen until he proved it for himself) settled down there in the end. Think about the sort of Christianity he would have founded. Certainly, it would not be violently anti-scientific!

The Western Isles actually show up on some of the oldest maps, you know. And there are the ancient Irish legends about huge floating islands being seen along the western coast, and sometimes getting stuck there for a few years.

There is a light weight volcanic stone called 'Feather Rock' that floats away in big chunks from Hawaii.

Add these things up, and any decent writer could turn out a book!

The excellent Owen Lock had by then been promoted up into the airy corporate heights of Random House, but he was the editor of record on that contract. He liked the book, signed for it, and I got paid.

The twit who was now running Del-Rey was horrified! After some delays, she refused to publish something where the characters actually discussed the Latin derivation of the word 'Nigger', and whether or not it was proper to call someone a 'Polack'.

The rights to two of my books were returned to me.

Actually, I got to keep the advances on three books, one of which hadn't been written.

Not bad, until you realize that I was back on the streets again.

Then Jim Baen came along and rescued me, but I've written about that elsewhere in this web site.

He paid me another nice advance on The Fata Morgana, and put it in print, where it still infuriates people regularly. As Monty Python said, some people deserve to be insulted.

Enjoy.