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The Hunt |
For best results, read this electronic book on a 1024 x 768 resolution screen...
...using the Netscape browser, set your Options/General Preferences/Fonts/Proportional Font to a serif 14 point like Times New Roman...
...using the MS Explorer browser, set your Tools/Internet Options/Fonts to a serif font like Times New Roman; set your View | Text to "Larger"...
Make sure to have a refresh rate of 70Hz or faster to avoid eye fatigue.
The navigation bar at the top of each page allows you to quickly navigate between parts of the novel. At the bottom of each page is another navigation bar for reaching the previous and next sections of the novel.
Phase 1 - Illyrion and Talith - Where we first learn of the Mover and something of its intent.
Phase 2 - Illyrion and Tlnou - Where the Mover nearly destroys a world that is barely saved by the actions of a new alliance.
Phase 3 - Norton and Prometheus - A final battle that is not warfare.
Review by Rebecca Riall (The Outer Rim), 1998 (Warning: avoid reading this until you have finished the novel - there are major giveaways of plot and theme in this section).
Behind the Scenes of The Hunt - The intent, structure, and development of The Hunt (Warning: avoid reading this until you have finished the novel - there are major giveaways of plot and theme in this section).
Early Illustrations for The Hunt - In addition to the two illustrations in the text, these original images, dating from the late 1980s, offer some guide to the appearance of major characters. Have a look at this before you start reading.
Content, images, and layout - Registered copyright © 1999 by Mark Cashman
I created everything in this electronic book, over a period of almost a quarter century. I stayed up late, I lived with the characters, fought with them, listened to them. I imagined their environments, their appearance, their societies, and their technologies.
Now, for the first time, I can offer this labor of love to you in trade. My work for your work. My time for yours.
Modern technology means you can make a copy of these years of labor in the blink of an eye and give it to someone for free.
Please... don't.
Please don't copy this work.
You're just doing what's right.
The first draft of The Hunt was written in longhand when I was 13. It was fifteen pages, and ended in tragedy for Talbot and Stone. But I was never really satisfied with that ending, sure it was a weakness in my skill rather than something compelled by the story, and when I was older, I returned to it and resolved the conflict what I believed to be a better way. But the story of the Mover and its source was still waiting to be fully told - and years later, it would be. The elaboration of that complex road of discovery took years, even pulling in characters and places from another novel in progress (2001) (Source) like a vortex feeding on every possible act of creation. I knew the goal, and the ending, but I never quite knew how I was going to get there, and there were many nights when I walked away, surprised at what I had just seen - as if I were reading it, or living it, and not writing it.
Surprisingly, much of the first part of the novel survived the transformations, and the words you see there are largely the same as those written by a young boy sitting on redwood furniture under his parents' car port, so many years ago. I guess he knew a few things then, too.
My style is to show you a story, not tell you one. The meaning of the story is summed by the events and the actions of the characters, not by anything the narrator will tell you. So watch, listen, remember, and, above all - imagine!
