Foreword
A few years back a new author by the name of Larry Correia started writing with Baen. I heard about him quickly. Many of my readers were talking nonstop about his Monster Hunter International series. I sort of ignored it. I used to be a compulsive reader. These days, for various reasons, I don’t read much. I don’t want to steal good lines, which I’ve done accidentally from time to time. I find most reading less interesting than I did before becoming a full-time author. Very few people (some of the top Baen writers excepted) write well enough to keep me engaged. I can think of and write stories better than ninety percent of the published stuff out there. The last point being that the part of me that used to need to be filled with “story” is these days mostly filled with my “story.” It’s what I do. Just say I read a lot more nonfiction than fiction these days.
But I was in one of those moods and someone suggested, again, Monster Hunter International. Larry had kindly given me a book as a freebie so I picked it up, went “Huh, let’s hope it’s any good…”
And put it down the next day and went and found the other four. And binge-read for a week. (They’re thick books compared to this one.) And really enjoyed myself. And liked the universe. What’s not to like about big guns fighting big monsters with lots of big booms?
As the main character says in a later book: “Who doesn’t carry a light antitank weapon in their trunk?” That’s the kind of character I think we can all get our heads around.
And as is my wont, as long-term readers know, my brain went far afield. What was it like back in the eighties for Monster Hunters? What were the similarities? What were the differences? Lot less tech for one thing…Hmmm…And then I crawled into a hole of caffeine, sleep deprivation and nicotine and…
At a certain point, I had to write it. As with earlier “new” universes, it was an imperative need. I had other things I should write. This was screaming at me: “WRITE ME! WRITE ME!”
I had no idea if Larry or my publisher, Toni Weisskopf, would approve. Generally Toni will publish my grocery list. I make Baen a fair shekel on my weakest series. (Which, by the way, is probably the competing Special Circumstances series.) Would they be okay with it?
Toni loved the universe and was ecstatic to hear I wanted to write in it. More money! (Ka-ching!) More good stories! (Toni’s both a professional businesswoman with a bottom line to make and a long-term fan of SF/F. She likes both.)
Larry used to be an accountant. This was making money for almost no work. And he had read my stuff and trusted I’d write it well. His only gripe was that I churned out two books in less than a month (what part of “WRITE ME! WRITE ME!” was unclear?) and now he had to make sure they were both compatible to the universe. If I kept up at this rate, which I won’t, he’d be doing nothing but editing for the rest of his life! And he had miniatures to paint!
Hope you enjoy.
—John Ringo
This was all kind of a surprise to me, but when a really successful writer comes along and says, “I’d love to write something set in your world. I’ve already written a couple books of a spin-off series; want to publish them?” You say yes.
It is tough to let somebody else play in your sandbox, but I checked it out. Happily, Grunge was a good book, and I had a lot of fun reading it. But there was still a whole lot of world-building John didn’t know about, and couldn’t have known, because I’d not revealed it anywhere yet (and as the regular MH fans have seen, I plan this stuff out far in advance). While reading the original manuscript, I inserted about two hundred comments about how the Monster Hunter universe worked, what had really happened in the past, what bits of lore would or would not fit, technical bits, and that sort of thing. He said, “why don’t you just change all that?” And that’s when this project turned into a collaboration.
I’m a writer, not an editor (seriously, much respect to editors, that’s a tough job) and it took me longer to edit this than it took John to write it, so his idea of “almost no work” differs a little from mine. But I tried hard to change as little as possible to keep everything in line with the rest of the MHI universe and still remain true to John’s original story in his original voice. Though there were a few bits that…well, I’ll just say, my kids read these books, John. Those scenes can live on as apocrypha.
I hope you guys like it.
—Larry Correia