Literary Precedents for The Witches of Karres

The Witches of Karres Literary Precedents

Stories of picaresque adventure have been popular since the ancient days when the Odyssey (c.1050-850 B.C.) of Homer was sung. Recent favorites include Rudyard Kipling's Kim, set in India in the days of the British Raj, and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn (1884), set in the antebellum South. The modern-day versions of these tall-tale epic journeys are often found in the realm of science fiction. Like the Great Trunk Road of British India, or the Mississippi River, the imagined future traffic arteries and trade routes of a yet unborn civilization offer great opportunity to portray the people who make a living servicing, regulating, or robbing the traveler. Like Kim Rishti or Huck Finn, Pausert and Goth operate on the side of right rather than the side of bureaucracy, which gains them the enmity of certain authorities but guarantees them the sympathy of the reader.