Shadowmarch - Before The Book

Before The Book

Shadowmarch has had a long history before appearing in print. Originally, Tad Williams conceived Shadowmarch as an idea for a fantasy movie and later a fantasy TV series, which might have been described as "Hill Street Blues meets Babylon 5 meets Lord of the Rings". When both of these options fell through, Shadowmarch was reborn as an online serial. Released between June 2001 and August 2002 in bi-weekly episodes, it was an ambitious exploration of what online publishing done right might mean. Despite a vibrant (and at present still thriving) community gathering around this project, a lack of subscribers willing to pay the one-time $14.99 fee necessary to read chapters beyond the five initial free ones meant that after the first year, the online project halted, with the completed first novel (and subsequent volumes) returning to orthodox publishing. The book contains additional chapters not found in the original online version, while the rest of the original material was substantially revised and edited for book publication (notably being rewritten completely to past tense, since the online project used present tense to "give it a sense of immediacy").