The Dreaming

Jack L. Chalker was an amazing writer who wrote dozens of novels, the most famous of which were the ten books in the Well World series. The Well World is a planet broken up into a large number of different hexes, each populated by a different species, and with differing technology levels–so that the original creators of the universe could try out species before seeding them out onto different planets, as you do.

If you end up on Well World, you get spat out in one of the hexes, permanently transformed into whatever species populates that hex, and you then have to learn to get on with things–which allows a huge scope for dealing with psychology and societies, not to mention some great adventure stories.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, they decided to do an anthology of Well World stories, each written by a different writer, and, amazingly, I was one of the people they asked! (It helped that the editor knew I was a huge Jack Chalker fan, and that another author dropped out :-).

We had to choose from a list of the known species that existed on the world — there are over 1,500 hexes on the planet, but Chalker only mentions the species for around 185 of them. Which one did I choose? A carnivorous plant-race named the Alestol.

I figured if you were a sentient plant with not much to do all day, you’d probably spend your time thinking about advanced mathematics. I mean, what else?

Aside from a–being asked to be in a collection and b–it being a collection based on a Jack Chalker world, it is super-exciting to be in a collection with S.P. Somtow! When he isn’t composing and conducting music, Somtow writes some of the most creative and disturbing fiction you’ll read. He was a friend of Jack Chalker, which is why he agreed to write his story. I’m very much looking forward to reading it!

It is also very cool to be in a collection with Catherine Asaro. She was our guest of honor at COSine in 2024.