In 1983 Kathy and I attended a symposium on the care and curation of Native American sacred artifacts at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center sponsored by George Horsecapture. During the course of the event, Arapaho Elder, Bill Goggles, gave a presentation on old time Arapaho Medicine Elders. He talked about their ability to see the future, and their predictions about the world to come.

The question settled in my mind: what does prescience really mean? It upsets all of our notions of causality. We have built an entire science and technology based on those assumptions. If prescience exists, what does that say about the nature of God? Of the soul? If the universe is preordained, what is the purpose of free will? Does it exist? How could prescience work unless we are all automatons?

From those perplexing thoughts the Universe of Spider was spun. In it a technologically advanced space-faring culture comes into contact with a lost colony of savage prescient descendants of Native American and Hispanic rebels. The politics are dated since the first book was written in 1984, but the series continues to sell, and I still receive regular questions concerning the series from fans. And, for once, the anthropological rule of acculturation - that a technologically inferior culture will always be dominated by a technologically superior one - is turned on its head.

Note: About the typos in WARRIORS OF SPIDER. The 1988 page proofs were never slugged, meaning the novel was printed just as it came from the typesetters.

The Spider trilogy holds a special place in my heart. LONG RIDE HOME might have sold four days before the Spider books, but WARRIORS OF SPIDER was the first book out in August of 1988. Even after all these years, the Spider Prophet, Chester, still smiles in enigmatic beneficence in my mind.