Starshield
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A series of Galactic Fantasy Novels Written by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis. Largely intriguing due to usage of a phenomenon called "quantum weather", which posits that the physical laws of the universe are not, in fact, universal. There exist a multitude of different regions with loosely fixed borders where the physical laws are in fact completely different. This is discovered when Earth's first extra-solar exploration mission crosses a border and find themselves in a region where magic not only exists but is the equivalent to our region's physics.
The series were written around Tracy Hickman's idea of creating a roleplaying game and world accessed through the Internet. However, the companies asked to create the games never delivered. As the probability of the game ever seeing the light of the day neared zero, additional problems with the publisher surfaced. Initial sales of the series did not meet the publisher's expectations, the publisher occasioned additional confusion by changing the title and requesting additional rewrites of the first book between the hard cover and mass market paperback release, and then demanded that the contract be renegotiated by the second book. Before the third book could be written, the publisher unilaterally informed the authors that the contract was being cancelled -- although the contract has never been officially terminated and remains in legal limbo.[1]
Some have speculated that the writers wrote themselves into a dead end, as the book two ends into a promise to explain all the mysteries revealed before. However, the authors maintain that they always intended to finish the series and do know the ending of the third book. When this third book will be written remains the most often asked question of the authors. They maintain that they continue to search for a means of publishing the final book despite the legal tangle of the contract.[2]
The series consists of two novels:
- Starshield: Sentinels aka Mantle of Kendis Dai (1996)
- Nightsword (1998)
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