To my surprise, Mary told me Hoegbotton & Sons should publish it. She was quite adamant about it, and further instructed me not to delete or soften any references to her, regardless of how unflattering. She became very emotional on this point, and I had the impression she wished I had shown her the manuscript the day I had found it.
Obeying Mary’s wishes, I did not make many edits of substance in preparing Janice’s account for publication. I did, in some instances, smooth out the text—for example, fixing the grammatical errors in those sections written in exceptional haste. Likewise, I corrected all spelling errors. Where Janice had alternate versions of a page or scene—which occurred with some frequency—I chose the more polished of the two. I also untangled Janice’s handwritten corrections from Duncan’s comments, deciding that placing the latter in parentheses and removing parentheses from Janice’s text was the most elegant solution to a potentially wearisome problem. Where she spent too long on a subject, or lost focus completely, I did excise text, but the entirety of these deletions constitutes only five or six paragraphs in total. I may have erred too far on the side of preservation in this case—some of the discussion of Duncan’s theories strikes me as tedious—but better tedium than claims I was overzealous in my editing duties.
I also deleted Duncan’s final comment on Janice’s manuscript, which he wrote on the page following her last chapter. I did this not because I wanted to, but because I had to. The comment was illegible. I had several handwriting experts examine the sentence. None could come to any agreement as to how it might have read. The most coherent interpretation? “Confluence of light between towers and being there at the right time leapt forward.” I include the phrase here despite my best instincts to do otherwise. My sole addition to the text consisted of fleshing out one or two scenes where Janice’s descriptive powers deserted her, but only in cases where I had been privy to the same information.
A further complication concerned the fungal contamination of the pages, coupled with the haphazard way in which the pages had been stacked on the table at the Spore. On some pages, the words were barely legible, and many pages or sections were out of order, several lacking the page numbers that might have allowed me to easily sequence them. I erred on the side of chronological order—even though Janice did not always adhere to such an order—but it is possible I made a few errors in my sequencing.
Figure 2: A reproduction of a sample page from Janice Shriek’s manuscript. Despite Duncan’s admonishment about the unimportance of Janice’s description of a transformed Ambergris, I did not delete the text as he requested; nor did I delete anything in the manuscript that Duncan edited out. After careful consideration, I did, however, delete a half-dozen paragraph-length oddities that bore no discernible relation to the rest of the text, since I felt that these digressions would distract from the text more than they added to it. The careful reader will note that the page reproduced above contains one of these deleted segments.
Therefore, I have clearly made editorial decisions with regard to Janice’s manuscript which some may consider to be too invasive, no matter how slight. But what is not true, despite the rumors, is that An Afterword to the Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris represents an elaborate deception on my part. Not only is the manuscript genuine (see the reproduction of a sample page herein), but I had nothing to do with writing it. Nor is Hoegbotton & Sons only publishing it now due to the sharp upturn in sales of Duncan’s books.1
I have no doubt that the publication of this book will generate fierce discussion about the merits of Nativism, about the aims of the gray caps, and about the nature of the Shift that has increasingly disrupted life in Ambergris. Some will feel that Duncan is about to be vindicated in the most dramatic of ways.
In preparing the manuscript for publication, I have, for that very reason, experienced fresh doubts about making it available. We live in a very volatile time and I would not want this book to be a catalyst for extremism. Nor, I would hope, will readers jump to unsupportable conclusions having read it. I know that many people are clutching at whatever they can to make sense of the odd events that, on certain days, seem destined to overwhelm all of us. My sincere hope is that this book will not push anyone over the edge.
As to the current whereabouts of Duncan and Janice, I must fear the worst, although rumors,2 as rumors will, continue to flourish in the current atmosphere of paranoia and fear.
And yet, despite the strife and violence chronicled and presaged by this volume, the enduring image I have of Janice and Duncan is a peaceful one. It is, oddly enough, of Janice in that room in the Spore, calmly typing away—from the bar folks’ perspective, in a sliver of green light between the doorway and the corridor as once they saw Duncan, but farther and farther away, across green glass and green grass, and fading, fading as the light fails once more.
THE END
Books by Jeff VanderMeer
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to my wife Ann, my first reader, who has provided invaluable comments on and support for this novel over so many years. My most sincere and heartfelt thanks and gratitude to Liz Gorinsky, my editor at Tor, who has worked so hard to make this novel as perfect as possible with her general, specific, and structural edits. This novel would be a pale shadow of its current self without her efforts. Special thanks to my other beloved Shriek editors Peter Lavery (U.K.) and Hannes Riffel (Germany), as well as the indomitable Jim Minz.
Thanks to everyone who read all or part of this book in manuscript form and offered their comments, including Matt Cheney, Clare Dudman, Richard Hutchinson, Jason Lundberg, Mark Roberts, Eric Schaller, Jonathan Stephens, Anne Sydenham, Anna Tambour, Jeffrey Thomas, Juliet Ulman, Robert Wexler, Elizabeth VanderMeer, Neil Williamson, Tamar Yellin, and Zoran Zivkovic. Thanks to everyone at ISD who was generally supportive or specifically helpful with regard to this novel, including Gwen Hooper, Diana Jones-Ellis, Paul Larsen, Missy Lynch, Tom Lynch, Meredith McDonough, Kimberley Mitchell, Leigh Moore, Richard Peterson, Leisa Pichard, and Scott Stratton. Thanks to Jonathan Edwards and Mark Roberts for wonderful forgeries. Special thanks to my agent, Howard Morhaim, for his guidance, advice, patience, and friendship; to Danny Baror of Baror International; and to Claire Weaver, for her tireless efforts.
Finally, huge thanks to all of the people at Tor whose meticulous attention to this book I very much appreciate, including copyeditor Robert Legault, proofreader John Yohalem, designers Peter Lutjen and Nicole de las Heras, production editor Meryl Gross, publicist Leslie Henkel, and other behind-the-scenes contributors in the sales and marketing, art, and production departments.
Music Acknowledgments
Over the seven years during which I wrote Shriek, I listened to music—an unofficial soundtrack that helped me stay focused and on task through the most difficult parts. Much of the soundtrack I listened to is listed below.
Afghan Whigs—Gentlemen—Mary and Duncan’s relationship
The Cure—Mixed Up—transitions
Dead Can Dance—Aion—general
In Flames—Soundtrack to Your Escape—war scenes
James—entire catalog—general
Murder City Devils—entire catalog—war scenes and general
Muse—entire catalog—opera scene
The National—entire catalog—Mary and Duncan’s relationship
Nick Cave—The Boatman’s Call—the sadder parts of Mary and Duncan’s re
lationship
Nick Cave—Henry’s Dream—war scenes
Pleasure Forever—Compilation—Janice’s dissolute parties and Festival night
Radiohead—OK Computer—general
Scott Walker—Tilt—Duncan’s underground adventures
Songs: Ohia—Magnolia Electric Co.—general
South—With the Tides—general
Spoon—entire catalog, including Gimme Fiction—war scenes and general
Thursday—War All the Time—war reporter scenes
Tindersticks—Tindersticks—general
Scott Walker—Tilt—Duncan’s underground adventures
Special thanks to The Church, whose music I listened to throughout the writing of Shriek—so much of it that I hear it in my head when rereading the novel.
—Tallahassee, Florida, May 1998–August 2005
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
SHRIEK: AN AFTERWORD
Copyright © 2006 by JEFF VANDERMEER
Hoegbotton logo © 2002 Eric Schaller
Appendix Photographs © 2006 Jonathan Edwards
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by Liz Gorinsky
Machine diagram rendering by Jim Kapp
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
VanderMeer, Jeff.
Shriek: an afterword / Jeff VanderMeer.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”
ISBN: 978-0-7653-1465-9
1. Title.
PS3572.A4284S57 2006
813'.54—dc22
2005034500
1 Some on my editorial staff have suggested that we should include an unexpurgated version of Duncan’s Early History of Ambergris as an appendix to this edition. However, I cannot acquire that text, as I returned my only copy to Janice and do not know what she did with it. Moreover, an edition that combined Janice’s manuscript with the complete Early History would put even Hoegbotton’s hardbound edition of its seventy-five Southern Island travel pamphlets to shame for sheer size and verbiage.
2 No evidence exists to support supposed “Duncan Sightings” at Zamilon and Alfar, for example.
Jeff VanderMeer, Shriek: An Afterword
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