Hi Ray, A friend and I have an on-going discussion about Kelewan. He has the impression that you borrowed a large number of elements of Kelewan from M.A.R. Barker's "Empire of the Petal Throne".
He cites a couple of articles: http://ferretbrain.com/articles/article-134.html under the "Why I only buy his books second hand" heading. The writer of the article claims you have admitted that Kelewan was very heavily from Barker's work in various conversations with fans. The other article is at http://www.rpg.net/columns/designers-and-dragons/designers-and-dragons13.phtmland has the following paragraphs around the middle of the article: "Midkemia's unique creation has also resulted in one bit of controversy: according to Feist, the original Midkemian Campaign run by Abrams and Everson contained some minor elements borrowed from Tékumel, as described in TSR's Empire of the Petal Throne (1975). Those elements were, of course, not brought into any of Midkemia Press' published books. However, Feist wasn't aware of this genesis, so some of these elements did find their way into the world of Kelewan — which opposed Midkemia in the Riftwar. Feist says the ultimate impact of Tékumel on the novels is "superficial", with other sources like Alan Dean Foster's Thranx and Jack Vance's Big Planet being just as important. Ultimately, we outsiders can never know the exact influence of the EPT world filtered through a house campaign upon Feist's writing. Suffice to say, it might be more than professional writer Raymond Feist is comfortable with and probably is a lot less than fans have suggested over the years." I keep bringing up how you have always stated that you borrowed from Japan, China, etc etc (the answer you always give when someone asks about the influences for the Tsruanni society). Just wondering if you would like to share your thoughts on the issue. -- Anestis Kozakis | [email protected] | http://www.akozakis.id.au/
