For nearly thirty years, writer Matthew Hughes has been telling stories set in The Archonate series. So many, in fact, that, as he says in the following email interview, the new ones “have no real relation to The Archonate series.”
Which is where we find the latest, A God In Hiding (paperback, Kindle), a follow-up to his 2019 novel, A God In Chains.
I’d like to start with some background. First, what is The Archonate series about, and what kind of a world are these stories set in?
The Archonate is a catch-all term for my space opera stories and novels set on a very-far-future Old Earth, a rather forgotten and fusty little place that is part of the civilization of the Ten Thousand Worlds extending along the arm of the galaxy down to the Beyond. It’s modeled on Grandmaster Jack Vance’s Gaean Reach stories. At first, the novels were set on Old Earth but gradually I expanded settings to other worlds.
Next, what is the Raffalon subseries about, what is the Baldemar subseries about, and when do they take place in relation to the rest of the Archonate series?
They have no real relation to The Archonate series. The setting is my extrapolation of Vance’s Dying Earth, a time after science has dwindled and magic has come back into power. Raffalon is a skilled by unlucky thief in that world of wizards and walled cities. Baldemar is a street-smart kid who grows up to become a henchman to a vainglorious and not-all-that-skilled wizard.
Which brings us to A God In Hiding. What is Hiding about, and when does it take place in relation to the other books?
A God In Hiding takes place in my version of the Dying Earth, a millennia after the time of The Archonate.
It’s about an ambitious riverboat captain named Lieve Reder who is tasked by her employer to recover certain items, which turn out to be sentient powerful tools of the demiurge who created the world then abandoned it — tools that have become godlike and have their own agendas.
It’s a kind of sequel to an earlier book, A God In Chains, in which Reder was a minor character.
Where did you get the idea for A God In Hiding? What inspired it?
I am having a good time exploring and expanding on the Dying Earth.
In practical terms, I noticed that A God In Chains was my best reviewed novel on Amazon and thought it would be a good idea to respond to that level of readership interest.
A God In Hiding, like the other books in the Archonate series, sounds like it’s an epic fantasy novel…
Not epic. None of my characters are heroic. They tend to be minor players in other characters’ grand schemes. Henchmen, in other words. I come to this naturally because I spent most of my adult years as a kind of henchman: a speechwriter and consultant to political leaders and CEOs of large corporations.
I’m also a son of the working poor, so I have some experience of being at the bottom of the social heap.
Are there any writers, or specific stories, that had a big influence on A God In Hiding but not on anything else you’ve written?
Vance is my major influence in sci-fi and fantasy. In crime stories, Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake are my big influencers.
What about non-literary influences; was A God In Hiding influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games?
No.
Now, as you mentioned, A God In Hiding is connected to A God In Chains. But it’s also a stand-alone novel. Does that mean people can read it on its own, or do they need to have read some previous novel to truly understand it?
All of my books can be read as stand-alones. It wouldn’t hurt to read A God In Chains first, but it’s not necessary. If you read the Raffalon or Baldemar stories, or the novel The Ghost-Wrangler, you’ll get a good sense of the setting and how magic affects the development of the characters and plots. [But] you can pretty much start anywhere in my sci-fi or fantasy stories. Each is one big forest, with lots of paths into it.
Earlier you said A God In Hiding wasn’t influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But do you think the Archonate series could work as a series of movies, or a TV show, or a game?
I think these stories are all too complex to make a single movie, but they would work as a series. Probably not The Archonate stories, because there is less interest in old-style space opera than in fantasy.
So, if someone did want to adapt The Archonate series into some movies or a TV show, who would you want them to cast as the main characters?
No opinion. Most of the actors I’m familiar with are old or dead.
And what if they wanted to make a game based on these books; what kind of game do you think would work best?
Don’t know enough to have an informed opinion. But the rules of magic I use are extrapolated from Jack Vance’s ideas, which were the basis for the magic system in Dungeons And Dragons. So I’m sure a talented game designer could adapt them. And the fact that my characters are low-level people operating in a world of larger, dangerous powers, offers some potting opportunities.
So, is there anything else people need to know about A God In Hiding?
Only that there is always an undercurrent of humor, often ironic, in my stories. Some grim things happen, but the tone is fairly light.
Finally, if someone enjoys A God In Hiding, and they’ve already read every other book in the Archonate series, which of your non-Archonate novels would you suggest they read next?
My crime stories are pretty good. I’ve won an award. Ghost Dreams is about a commercial burglar who gets involved with the ghost of a woman who was railroaded into an insane asylum by a powerful family back in the 1940s.
And I did an urban fantasy trilogy, To Hell And Back, about a high-functioning autistic actuary who accidentally causes Hell to go on strike and emerges from the brouhaha as what he’s always wanted to be: a costumed crimefighter with a weasel-headed demon for a sidekick. The demon’s last assignment was Al Capone.
