Thanks Ray for the background story on the Kelewan series, which is one of my
favorite series! This is why I love this List, you can't get that kind of
answer with 140 characters or less! :)
And Anestis we all know you win the conversation! :D
Shells:)
-----Original Message-----
From: On Behalf Of Raymond Feist
Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2013 8:18 AM
Subject: Re: Discussion with friend about Kelewan
I've commented on this before, but in brief, what came through the game was the
concept of Great Path/Lesser Path magic, which was a mechanical way to deal
with why we had to concepts of magic, I should add, not that we were using EPT
Magic system. The only thing that ever made it's way into the game were the
EPT monsters.
So the concept of a riftwar was how we explained that. The one other concept
that held on to was the metal poor thing, because I thought it made for a cool
distinction technologically. Other than that, nada from EPT.
I dealt with this silly nonsense 20 years ago. I've heard "Feist stole his
ideas from Barker," "He stole Barker's dream," etc. Look, Phil Barker got
published by DAW, two EPT novels, I believe. They did not do very well.
Whatever tiny elements I inherited through the game, took nothing away from his
opportunity for an audience to find his work. Apparently, not many people were
that interested in his fiction. He had a very loyal, very supportive game
community that loved his stuff and they stuck with him quite a long while, but
EPT never challenged D&D either.
Joel Rosenberg, God rest him, knew the situation intimately, living in
Minneapolis, where Phil lived, and knowing him through the SF/F community. His
take was simply that Barker felt a sense of injury. What he apparently didn't
know or didn't care to know was that before Magician was published, Steve
Abrams explained the genesis of the Petal Throne to me, lent me the manual, and
I went though a VERY early draft of Magician and took out everything that was
remotely EPT and that's when I started melding my
Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Aztec/Zulu culture--I believe EPT was based on
Indian/Dravidian culture, not Asian. I kept the bugs because I liked them, but
I went for a hive-mind thranx, not whatever it was EPT had, and the one thing
that probably set this whole thing off was I didn't change the name Tsurani,
which was just me doing a funny spelling of the Serani tribe of Africa; I went
for the Ts because of Senator Paul Tsongis just because I thought it looked
cool.
Anyway, Phil is dead, and Joel is dead, and anyone who has any sense of what
influence is all about in the world of writing knows that what came from EPT
through the game into my work is trivial. 30 novels over 30 years did not
result from any labor but my own.
Best, R.E.F.
On Mar 27, 2013 7:07 PM, "Anestis Kozakis" <[email protected]> wrote:
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.phtml
and 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
