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Doyle, Ashbless, Darrow, Benner and Coleridge, all introduced!

In the course of proving himself an expert Doyle gives us sheets of exposition very neatly. Despite his limited backstory he worms his way into our affections well, probably because he is so uncertain and suspicious of Darrow and the process that he stands for the reader's own doubts about the theory presented.

Coleridge exerts a powerful compulsion on lots of authors who stick him in all over the place, from Pier Anthony to Dirk Gently, but here we do get some solid facts about him as well as the lurid made up bits that will follow later on, and this solidity lets Powers weave in the invented Ashbless realistically enough that I suspect many people look him up to check if he is real or not. I did, did you?

I looked him up, too. I like the story behind how Powers and James Blaylock created him in college and then used him in their various works. It kind of feels like being let in on an inside joke.

I looked up Ashbless straight away. I almost wish he was real. I was very impressed with the exposition. Very deftly handled. It almost reminded me of the long "Ark of the Covenant" scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Exposition can be positively enlivening if it's done well -- painful if it is done poorly, as is usually the case.

I may be the odd one out, but I had a hard time connecting to the characters in the first couple chapters...made slogging through a little like work. Happily, that has resolved now I'm about 3/4 done with the book. That was a nice trick leading the reader by the nose through the implausibilities and out the other side via the main character, though.

I never really wondered about Ashbless...never occurred to me whether to wonder if he was or was not real...I guess I am out of practice in thinking about these things when reading!

I am really fascinated by the fake Ashbless community online. It seems to have died out, but there is a trail that is still interesting.

Ashbless was used to create an epigraph in Powers' book Last Call. Check out the quote in my trivia question here. Curiously, it's anachronistic, since it references planes and blue-jeans.

Richard, check out the author page for William Ashbless here at GoodReads. You'll find it very interesting (and amusing). When you're done there, link over to Amazon's description of On Pirates by Ashbless.

LOL -- if you look at the librarian edit page for that, I'm the one the created it a few hours ago. Well, copied it from Wikipedia, actually.

Worldcat actually had cover images, so I've added those to his two books. But the books are too pricey for me to buy on a whim, and aren't in many libraries (one for the cookbook -- Cleveland Public Library, and two for the Pirate book -- Flint Public Library and Eastern New Mexico University).

That's funny. I didn't realize that you had put it there. Can non-librarians look at the librarian edit page?

I should look up S. Morgenstern now.

Hmm, no, the link to the librarian change log is on the "edit" page for authors and books, so I guess not.

And Morgenstern never got author's credit on an actual ISBN'd book, so... nope. I wouldn't be surprised if GR eventually removes Ashbless, but they still haven't figured out a decent way of re-directing pseudonyms.