Face to face with history

By Janna Silverstein

One of the things that strikes any visitor to Egypt is how the ancient and the modern exist cheek by jowl. When I visited in 1997, I witnessed a phenomenon I’ve experienced myself as the resident of a historic place, in my case, New York City: after a while the wonder of that history becomes simply a part of everyday life. Daily exposure means that it’s not especially wondrous after a while; it’s just a fact, like the historic church you pass by on your way to work (I’m thinking of Trinity Church in Manhattan) or the landscape-dominating volcano on the horizon (Mt. Rainier south of Seattle, where I live now).

When Aaron Rosenberg asked me if I might like to submit a story for the ReDeus universe, the first thing I thought of was that impression I had of Egypt. People go to their jobs as plumbers, grocers, bankers, and computer engineers, and they don’t think about the history that’s in the very air they breathe. I thought about how, ten years after 9/11, though people were marked by the trauma, life went on in New York City. People lived with the change, adjusted to it, and some adapted in resilient or even opportunistic ways. I decided that I wanted to write a more personal story about living in a world where deities had returned, inflicted trauma, but many lives went on only marginally touched by the event—until they couldn’t avoid it. I wanted to write about how one woman who didn’t believe in gods found herself with a husband who did, and how she got caught up in events that she couldn’t begin to understand. For Ellie and Kamal, the two protagonists in my story “In the House of Osiris,” it all hits at once, like a train hitting a wall.

Ancient Egypt and its rather astonishing pantheon has been an interest of mine since childhood. It’s a mythology that I know at least as well if not better than the Greek and Roman stories that most Western kids are exposed to through literature and history classes. Unlike those pantheons, ancient Egyptian mythology is filled with animal-headed gods who almost never intercede into common lives; they are remote, except at death, when no one can avoid one key encounter—entry into the afterlife. But the stories in the ReDeus universe are all about godly intervention into human life. I decided that I wanted to convey the strangeness of the Egyptian gods in the most intimate way possible, a close encounter that would change one character’s perspective irrevocably. The question then became, which god or gods might suit that purpose?

I decided that though he was primary in the Egyptian hierarchy in the New Kingdom period, Amun-Ra was too remote, too big to tackle. I decided instead to focus on the triangle of Osiris, Isis, and Set. The story of Osiris and Isis is one of love, death and resurrection; Isis is kind of a bad-ass, willing and determined to save her lover at any cost. Set is a god of chaos with violent tendencies. In my story, he’s the troublemaker. He’s not especially interested in consequences; I don’t think he knows the meaning of the word, so some of the history in the background of my story is rather open-ended. In a country that was successful in throwing off a strong man who governed with an iron fist for decades, throwing off powerful gods is a different story altogether. In a country where women still fight for their independence and equality, Isis the protector, the patron of maidens and mothers, would be a powerful symbol. The ancient story of Osiris’ murder and dismemberment at the hands of Set and his rescue by Isis becomes the pattern of Ellie and Kamal’s journey—with something of a modern twist about it.

Which brings me back to my original inspiration: this idea that living in a historic place becomes common with time and exposure. In the world of ReDeus, in Ellie and Kamal’s world, people can try to live as if history is just part of the scenery, unremarkable and unremarked. The trouble is that history will come and find you. And it will make you pay attention.

ReDeus: Beyond Borders will be available in print and digital formats in late May.

By Kelly Meding

One of the great things about attending conventions is creating friendships with other authors. I enjoy seeing familiar faces year after year and talking about our current projects. This past year at Shore Leave, Bob Greenberger was kind enough to trade books with me: one of my superhero novels for a copy of ReDeus: Divine Tales. Considering the authors packing those pages (and that I know a lot of them), I was eager to dive in and read, and I enjoyed my trip into this unique universe.

I was asked to contribute to Divine Tales, but was unable due to other commitments. So I was eager to jump on board when two more anthologies were announced. I love the idea of Beyond Borders. It’s an opportunity to explore how other countries and cultures outside the United States were dealing with the return of the gods.

My story, “Evidence of Things Not Seen,” centers around a Mennonite woman named Robin. She was a small child when the gods returned, and her entire town were forced to return to Germany to worship Odin and his Norse pantheon. Forced by way of homes being burned down and people killed as “examples.” One of those examples was Robin’s older brother, and she’s grown up with her faith in the One True God intact and thoughts of vengeance keeping her warm at night. She gets a chance to undermine Odin’s rule in the form of a mysterious man named Kit, who comes to her with an offer she cannot turn down.

In fleshing out this story, I knew I wanted to set the story in Germany, since a good chunk of my genetic background is German. This meant I could work with Norse mythology and play a little bit with Odin and his iron-rule over his “subjects.” He was one of the gods who demanded those of German and Scandinavian descent to return to Europe, and he didn’t care how they got there. This influx of immigrants into European countries presented me with another problem to explore in the story: where did governments put those extra people? And how did native residents feel about all of these new, foreign faces using up their resources?

I’m also an urban fantasy writer, so I couldn’t write Robin without infusing a little bit of magic into her life. I won’t spoil it too much, but I did a lot of research into the Norn for this story…

Happy reading!

ReDeus: Beyond Borders will be available in print and digital formats in late May.

By William Leisner

The Fourth of July, 2026, marks America’s Sestercentennial — the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States. By the time this date rolls around, though, nearly fourteen years have passed since The Return. In a world ruled by the gods, and in which millions of Americans have left the U.S. to worship those ancient deities in their ancestral lands, Independence Day has lost much of its significance. But, while you can take the people out of America, you can’t take America out of the people.

When Bob Greenberger and Aaron Rosenberg announced that the second ReDeus story collection would take on an international focus, I knew I wanted to do a story about American expatriates abroad. In my ReDeus: Divine Tales story “The Year Without a Santa Claus,” I made passing reference to the troubles being caused in other parts of the world due to the sudden shift in global populations triggered by The Return. I knew there was a rich vein of stories to mine in the conflict between those who had relocated — not entirely of their own free will — to a strange foreign land, and the native-born populace.

As I worked on fleshing out this basic idea, I took partial inspiration from the work I had done several years ago for my Star Trek: The Next Generation novel Losing the Peace. In that book, the Federation is faced with a major crisis when millions of citizens are dislocated following a mass offensive by the Borg, and for that story, I had researched the issues faced by real world refugees. It occurred to me that for people such as these, who had been forced to flee their countries due to political and/or ethnic persecution, a divine invitation to return to their homes would have a much greater impact than for those whose families had come to America willingly.

Before long, I had my story: Christine Vang is a typical all-American girl, born and raised in Suburbia, U.S.A., and the granddaughter of Hmong refugees who had been driven from Laos following the Communist takeover of that country in 1975. In 2012, her grandfather brings the family “home” to a place which, to Christine, could not be more foreign. The new immigrants are funneled into a small section of the capital city of Vientiane, and although the government that persecuted their people is now gone, there’s still little love lost between these Americans and their former antagonists.

And it all comes to a head on “Sestercentennial Day.”

ReDeus: Beyond Borders will be available in print and digital in late May.

By Scott Pearson

My ReDeus character, Étienne Joubert, a Templar knight returned to life in the twenty-first century, came to me even before I was invited to participate in the ReDeus anthologies. I had imagined a fourteenth-century knight who wakes up in the modern world, and I made some notes about him, but beyond that I had no idea why he was back or what would happen to him in the present day. When the Crazy 8 guys told me about the ReDeus concept, I thought, “Aha! This explains everything.”

The first anthology had a very tight schedule, so I didn’t think I had the time to write a story that dealt with how Joubert adjusted to his new circumstances. Instead, “The Tale of the Nouveau Templar” took up his story in Manhattan several years after his return, after he’s settled in, learned English, and adjusted to the bizarre modern world of gods everywhere.

When I was invited to contribute to ReDeus: Beyond Borders, however, I had a bit more time, so I decided to go back to Joubert’s origin story. After all, it had been established in the first published story that he’d returned to life in Rome, and the second anthology, as its title indicates, would feature international settings. The tricky thing was that Joubert had had reason to talk a little about his return to life in “The Tale of the Nouveau Templar,” so in going back to his return I had to keep in mind that a lot of people would be reading his origin story after hearing about it briefly in the first story published. I was faced with the challenge of making the story work whether it was read in internal chronological order or in external publishing order.

The first thing I decided was that Joubert didn’t have a reason for telling the bishop in “The Tale of the Nouveau Templar” a completely accurate story. He was telling a bit of what happened to him to make a point, so he would feel free to condense and gloss a bit. So I felt I could expand and embellish upon the synopsis in the first story to keep the readers guessing a bit. I was able to “discover” some rather large twists.

It was fun to set a story in Rome, but it required a bit of research, just as it had to set the previous story in New York. I’ve never actually been to New York, so interweb stuff like Google Street View had been helpful that first time around. I have spent time in Rome, about a week or so—about three decades ago. Again, lots of internet research led me down specific streets, sometimes into areas I could remember being myself. And fans of the classic film Roman Holiday, starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, will notice a particular scene. I couldn’t resist working in a location from the movie as a backdrop to a scene between Joubert and one of his interpreters, who also happens to be a woman he finds attractive, in a nervous, vow-of-chastity kind of way.

“A Medieval Knight in Vatican City,” therefore, is the whole, true story of Joubert’s return to life, a story of miracles and tragedies. I’m glad I got the chance to tell it.

ReDeus: Beyond Borders will be available in print and digital formats in late May.