By Michael A. Burstein

When Michael Jan Friedman asked me if I would contribute a story to Pangaea, I was delighted. I have never been part of a shared world anthology before, and this seemed like a good opportunity to try my hand at it. I’ve also been a big fan of Michael’s for many years now, very much enjoying his Star Trek tie-in novels, his comic stories, and his original work.

Michael sent me a copy of the Pangaea “bible,” which is the document that describes what the shared world is like. I read through it, searching for a hook that would tie into my own interests.

I was particularly intrigued by his description of a land called Wymerin and chose to set my story there:

“These people are like the Amish in that they remain as isolated as they can from the rest of the world, adhering to what outsiders think are antiquated values. They embrace technology only to the extent that they must in order to compete, seeing machines as a necessary evil.”

As I wrote my story, I found it a difficult process. Michael helped me by advising me that I could make up my own details about the Wymerin society and culture. He would edit my story accordingly to make sure it fit into his general view of the world. Thus was my creativity freed, and I was able to tell my story.

I remember that Peter David told about the time he wrote a line in a Hulk comic establishing that the hero Doc Samson was Jewish. His editor called him up and asked him if this had been established before. Peter replied that they were establishing it now. To which the editor said, “We can do that?”

I had forgotten that Michael would be there with his net to catch me if I fell too far out of his vision for Pangaea. Which he did. I’d like to thank him for that, and for bringing me to Pangaea in the first place.

I also want to thank two former students of mine, Betsy Cole and Deborah Sacks, whose support of Pangaea was rewarded by my naming the characters in “The World Together” for them.

Pangaea is now available in digital and print editions.

By Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore

It’s entirely possible that we did this all wrong.

When Mike Friedman first told us about the Pangaea concept, there were a myriad of things that could have grabbed our attention. Stories set within societies of humans that developed on a theoretical supercontinent never separated by geodynamic processes? Okay, we’re listening. Characters of humans descended from Neanderthal as well as Cro-Magnon ancestors who live contemporarily? Yep, still got us. Plot lines driven in a culture shaped by technology roughly equivalent to that on 1980s Earth?

Okay, we’re totally in.

Mike asked us to create our story as a link between his, which begins the anthology, and Peter David’s, which concludes it. Since the baton we needed to pass was a clue in a criminal investigation, we knew it had to be a buddy-cop story evoking our favorite such tales from the ’80s. Most especially, we took a new look at Alien Nation, the single-season TV series inspired by the feature film of the same name. The relationship between that show’s main characters, human police detective Matthew Sikes and his Tenctonese partner, George Francisco, provided more than a bit of inspiration for the “odd couple” pairing of our buddy cop characters. Our guys work together despite their disparate backgrounds, navigating the various culture clashes between Pangaea’s Sachi and Fojoa sects, and it’s this relationship that’s at the heart of our tale.

When it came time to tell our story, we might have deviated from the norm just a little bit. Rather than present our tale from a narrative perspective that spent time detailing the world of Aristaya for a reader from our world, we leapt right into a view through the eyes of Ames, a Sachi and veteran Homicide detec—er, Peacekeeper partnered with the only Fojoa Peacekeeper on the force. Ames’ views on his partner, his assignment and his world would read as his—not ours—with the goal of creating a story that might have been written by authors from Pangaea for readers from Pangaea, complete with the slang of the dark alleys of the district. We had fun telling our story; we hope you have fun reading it, too.

See you on the streets, pal.

Pangaea is now available in digital and print editions.