by Michael Tierney

In 1977 I was circulating my novel Wild Stars Rising across the desks of various book editors and decided to publish some of my work independently (this was a different novel from Wild Stars 4: Wild Star Rising published by Cirsova in 2019, the 1977 Wild Stars Rising novel takes place later in the future history of the Wild Stars).

The Multiversal Scribe would never have happened had I not been working in the Wichita, Kansas printing industry at the time.

The company I was working for didn't do this type of work, so I contracted with another printer.
Typsetting was a laborious effort in this time -- and projects came back from the typesetters
on long strips that had to be cut and glued into place on the page.

Learning that the printer I'd paid a deposit was on the verge of bankruptcy, I cut and pasted the entire 32-page magazine in one night. When I handed it back to them the next day, they were stunned.

Sure enough, this was the last job that company printed.

Even with my all-night assembly, it wouldn't have happened had I not been working with the president of the local Printer's Union.
The bankrupt printer looked upset to learn upon delivery that I was moving away from Wichita.
Never did recover the original art for the covers.

The Multiversal Scribe was released in a 250-copy numbered and initialed edition, and a 750-copy regular edition.
It features 22 illustrations and five different stories in five different genres, along with a different kind of editorial:

Around the turn of the Nineteenth Century into the Twentieth, a colloquy was a popular form of fiction where a young man asks advice from an old wise man.
The form is still with us today in cartoons of aged wise men sitting in caves on mountain tops.
I took the rules of a colloquy and reversed them in The Cities of Man.
The story doesn't actually end with the words.
It ends with the picture to the right.

Whence Has Passed the Hero? is a fantasy short story about a king
faced with rebellion over his perceived mistreatment of a hero.
But things are not as they seem.

People told me that I'd lost my mind in the social science story titled Indeed.
It tells of a future with 24-hour television --
remember, this was 1977 when all the TV stations closed down every night from midnight until 6AM.
Even more unreal to readers was the concept of reality television.
The story focuses on one reality channel that ran all day long, so that part hasn't come true . . . yet!

After I'd moved to Arkansas and began managing the Fast Print division of International Graphics, I produced the Across the Distance Portfolio: The Multiversal Scribe -- Volume Two. I was able to do all the camera work myself, and supervised every stage of the production. It was great having all the tools of a print shop at my disposal.

This portfolio is a collection of six linen paper art prints, half by artist Bruce Conklin, and the other half by myself.
Each print is tied to a story from some point in the history of the Wild Stars,
and is individually signed and numbered.
Each portfolio contains all matching numbers.

One plate by Bruce Conklin shows the first appearance of Phaedra.
Another plate that I did shows the first appearance of Eagal Ir Radin,
who waited 40 years to make his second appearnce in Wild Stars 6: Orphan of the Shadowy Moons.
The plate shows an earlier working title for this story, written the same year this portfolio was released.

I did not include the indicia for the 1985 Wild Stars Portfolio, but included it in the numbering.
The sampling shown below includes the first and only appearances of Akara's mother.

Wild Stars History 1980s New Millennium Production Notes Vol. 1 Preview Wild Stars 3 Preview Publishing History

1970s 1990s 20teens Mary Tierney Paintings Wild Stars 2 Preview Wild Stars 4 Preview

All images and text © 1984-2018 Michael Tierney.