White Crow series

The White Crow series is a series of stories by Mary Gentle following the adventures of Valentine and Baltazar Casaubon.

(Series also sometimes described as the Casaubon series, or the Rat Lords):

• Two novellas in Scholars and Soldiers (1989)
• Rats and Gargoyles (1990)
• The Architecture of Desire (1991) (same universe as Rats and Gargoyles)
• Left To His Own Devices (1994 novel in Left To His Own Devices collection)
• "Black Motley" (story in Left To His Own Devices collection)
• White Crow (2003 collection)

In discussing the series in June, 2000,

Mary Gentle noted they were particularly inspired by Joanna Russ' Alyx stories, in which the character inhabits both science fiction and fantasy worlds.

Nick Gevers: The "White Crow" novels and novellas range remarkably freely in time and space: the characters are consistent, but their environment is fluid in the same manner as the locales of Michael Moorcock's Multiverse. Why are Valentine and Casaubon so temporally peripatetic?

Mary Gentle: Probably because I spent a lot of my teenage years reading Mike Moorcock.

To tell you the truth, I'm always rather sceptical of that type of writing experience described as "the characters ran away with me". Unfortunately for me, that was exactly what happened with the Valentine and Casaubon books -- they walked in, they took over, they pushed me around! (I can only conclude that my subconscious mind was working overtime...) And not only did they push me around as regards their behaviour, they were also very dogmatic about where they happened to be.

I usually begin the actual writing of something when I have a pretty good idea of the starting conditions, and the first line appears out of thin air. With the novellas and Rats and Gargoyles, I got pictures -- Valentine stepping off a steam train into a Renaissance world; a crowd in a cathedral square hanging a pig from a gallows. I wrote that down, with no remote idea what would come after -- and the next scene would arrive -- and I'd write it down, hoping for more -- and the next would come.... Like building a bridge out over a canyon, with no idea that there actually was another side.

So when there was a picture in my head of Valentine in what looked very like the English Civil War (but plainly wasn't), and in late 1980s London, I didn't argue with her...

And although Moorcock was an undoubted influence, the closer one -- or the one I thought of at the time of writing -- was Joanna Russ, and her "Alyx" stories: three of which are Leiberesque fantasy (with some science fantasy included), and then there's the novel, which is plain SF. And she doesn't apologise, and she doesn't explain. And if she could do it, I thought: why not me?

Mental note to self: the basic equipment for being a writer includes an ego the size of Bolivia... (grin)