COYOTE RISING: A Novel of Interstellar Revolution
Foreword by Allen Steele
"Coyote was originally intended to be a stand-alone novel. Or at least that was what I told myself while I was writing it. One book, then we’d go on to something else … perhaps a new novel in the Near-Space series for which I’d been making notes over the past several months.
But as I began to write “Glorious Destiny”, the last of the Coyote series for Asimov’s, I began to realize that, even though I’d reached the end of the novel, I hadn’t yet reached the end of the story. I couldn’t just leave those characters there, with an invasion from Earth underway and most of Coyote still unexplored. As a reader, I knew I would disappointed if the author just left things hanging. So I deliberately left the ending open – indeed, I was greatly tempted to write “To Be Continued” instead of “The End” at the bottom of the last page of the manuscript – with the intent of eventually writing a sequel. Perhaps in a few years, after I’d written another novel or two.
I’d never written a sequel before. Even the Near-Space cycle had been a series of novels and stories that shared the same background and had a few characters in common, with none of them meant to be read in any particular order. Yet something about Coyote had gotten under my skin. I had just written a novel that was a shadow-text of the discovery of America; it only seemed that natural that the next book would be about the Revolutionary War, with the Civil War serving as a subtext as well.
After I sent off “Glorious Destiny” to Asimov’s and turned in the novel to Ace, I spent the summer of 2001 on my living room couch, staring at the ceiling and trying to decide whether I wanted to commit myself to a second book. Coyote had been tough to write, and I wasn’t eager to throw myself into something like that again.
When Labor Day weekend rolled around, I went off to Philadelphia for the World Science Fiction Convention. A novelette I’d published in Analog, “Agape Among the Robots”, was up for a Hugo that year, but for once my chances of taking home another rocket wasn’t my chief concern; I was still trying to decide whether I wanted to write a second Coyote novel. By then, several people had read the manuscript. Ginjer Buchanan had several suggestions for final revisions; we discussed then over breakfast one morning during the convention, and when we were done, I broached the idea for a sequel. To my surprise, she said that, yes, she’d like to see it.
Later that day, I had coffee with Ron Miller, the artist who’d done the cover illustrations for the Asimov’s series and who would eventually be hired to do the cover art for the novel. Ron encouraged me to write a second book; indeed, he pointed out that, according to my original hand-drawn maps of the planet (which he’d later revise for book publication), there were several volcanoes; he wondered if any of them were active, and what might happen if one of them were to erupt, thus planting the seed of an idea that would become crucial to the plot of the second book.
And the following day, I had a chat with Gardner Dozois, who told me that he was sorry to see the series come to an end. Asimov’s readers had liked the stories, and he wouldn’t mind if I decided to keep it going.
So there were three “aye” votes. But the clincher came when my wife read the manuscript. Linda is my toughest critic; there are a couple of novels of mine that, frankly, she hasn’t enjoyed very much, and her marriage vows don’t prohibit her from telling me so. In this case, when she reached the end of Coyote, she said one word -- “More!” -- that pretty much settled the issue. I’d write another book, and that was that.
Well … not quite. I’d just finished the revisions to Coyote and was gearing up to write “The Madwoman of Shuttlefield,” the first story of the second series for Asimov’s, when the terrorist attacks of 9/11 occurred. Like everyone else in the U.S., this catastrophe hit me at very deep psychic level; for a couples of months or so, I suffered writer’s block, and when I finally came out of it, I found that I didn’t want to write Coyote Rising after all.
So I put away my notes for the second book, told Ginjer and Gardner that the jig was up, and tried to write that long-delayed Near-Space novel instead. Yet Mountains of the Moon didn’t gel. Indeed, after a hundred pages or so, it gradually occurred to me that all I was really doing was avoiding the task of writing Coyote Rising. So, once again, I stashed away the unfinished manuscript of Mountains of the Moon and pulled out my Coyote notes again, telling myself all the while that this would be the last time I’d visit 47 Ursae Majoris. Once this book was done, I would go on to do something else.
Right. And boids will fly..
"
- Allen Steele
