So, while I was making sure of the name of one of our cover artists (Sam Kennedy, in the instance), I came across the introduction we wrote for the 30th Anniversary Edition of Agent of Change. Steve and I often referred (ironically; ours was a household and a partnership based on word-play) to the “scholars who would inevitably study our work.”
With this intro, we decided to play, and envision what such a scholarly report on our work might look like.
Have fun.
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Introduction to the
Anniversary Edition of
Agent of Change
It’s an honor to have been asked to write the introduction to the thirtieth anniversary edition of Lee and Miller’s timeless science fiction novel Agent of Change.
Our acquaintanceship spans decades; in fact Lee and Miller is our closest colleague in the field. It is tempting to say that we know the author as ourselves, though that would be deceptive.
Or at least misleading.
Lee and Miller began writing in 1980. The first work published under the author’s byline, in 1983, was a short story, “The Naming of Kinzel: The Innocent.” The second, also published in 1983, was another short story, set in the same fantasy universe, “The Naming of Kinzel: The Foolish.”
In February 1988, space opera classic Agent of Change was published, Lee and Miller’s first novel.
The author’s career after the publication of this first novel was erratic, occasionally terrifying, and sometimes short of food. Doubtless, the whole adventure would make compelling reading for those with a taste for tales of desperate derring-do, but that must wait for another opportunity.
Our topic today is the novel, Agent of Change.
It was a strange novel for its time; perhaps for any time. In form, it is indisputably space opera, that most exuberant of science fictional sub-genres. It is an action-adventure novel with overtones of the spy fiction of its day, the dialogue written in an often witty style with purposeful touches of melodrama. One famed editor called the work “John le Carré in space” as it was making the rounds of publishers. The human characters are warmly drawn, and deadly in context; the alien race charming and whimsical, not merely comic relief; and the plot is downright quirky.
The world-building is notable: Multi-cultural. Gender equal. Textured.
The heroes of the piece, Val Con yos’Phelium and Miri Robertson, are a study in contrasts. Val Con is Liaden, human, though not “Earth human;” the child of a wealthy clan seated on a wealthy world that has long dominated trade. Liaden society is privileged and proud; dismissive of “lesser” peoples and their cultures. The native tongue is chorded, tonal; sweet on the ear but difficult for non-natives to learn.
Val Con himself is educated, cultured, refined; fastidious, reminiscent at times of upper ton characters drawn by Georgette Heyer, the doyen of Regency Romance, whose influence can be seen more fully in later Lee and Miller work.
Hewing to the traditions of the science fiction genre, harking back to the vintage space opera of Andre Norton, and James H. Schmitz, Val Con is an assassin; a spy. . .
. . .and an agent of change.
Co-hero Miri Robertson, late of the Gyrfalks Mercenary Unit, is Val Con’s apparent opposite. She escapes the ghetto world of her birth by joining a mercenary unit as an apprentice soldier. By the time she and Val Con meet, in a firefight, true to the story’s space opera roots, she is a master sergeant, lethal, humorous; a hard-edged realist; a true friend. . .
. . .and an agent of change.
Miri is worthy of some further attention, as a character and as a marker of Lee and Miller’s intent in creating their universe.
In the 1980s female soldiers were not precisely thick on the ground – in real life or in fiction. And yet here is Miri Robertson: efficient, unflappable; a thorough professional, and a fully realized character.
This is one of the hallmarks of Lee and Miller’s work: We see male and female (and later, alien and AI) characters in a variety of roles: soldiers, caretakers, pilots, card sharps, security guards, mechanics, bartenders, scholars, planetary administrators – heroes, villains, and ordinary citizens, going about their lives.
Lee and Miller made yet another radical storytelling decision, which reverberates throughout Agent of Change, and the works that follow: This notion that, though people are competent, no one thrives in isolation. Through the narrative, the author makes the argument that people, all people, need people; they need comfort, assistance, companionship. Love.
As much as it is, very firmly, space opera, Agent of Change is also a discussion of what it is to be human, and to be a full partner in a relationship.
By turns, and sometimes simultaneously, Agent of Change is gripping, moving, and funny; a novel which has not only endured for more than thirty years, but which provided the launch pad for more than twenty novels and dozens of short stories, all set in what is now dignified as the Liaden Universe®, Lee and Miller’s lifework – which is still growing.
We hope you enjoy reading Agent of Change.
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
Cat Farm and Confusion Factory
April 2018
About the authors
Steve Miller’s first professional sale was “Charioteer,” to Ted White’s Amazing Stories, in 1976.
“A Matter of Ceremony,” was Sharon Lee’s first professional sale – to Amazing Stories in 1979.
Steve and Sharon were each pursuing careers as writers when they met, in the late 1970s, realized that the sum of them was greater than the parts, and decided to pursue a partnership.
Some time after consolidating their books, music, typewriters, and cats into one central location, they accidentally collaborated on a short story, “The Naming of Kinzel: The Innocent.”
And so a third writer – Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, or, as they became known, “Lee and Miller” – was born.