George R.R. Martin - Rogues

Rogues is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright 2014 by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois
Introduction copyright 2014 by George R. R. Martin
Individual story copyrights appear on

All rights reserved.

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L IBRARY OF C ONGRESS C ATALOGING-IN -P UBLICATION D ATA

Rogues / edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-345-53726-3
eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-7960-7
1. Short stories, American. 2. American fiction21st century. 3. Rogues and vagabondsFiction. I. Martin, George R. R., editor of compilation. II. Dozois, Gardner R., editor of compilation.
PS648.S5R64 2014
813.0108352dc23 2014010317

www.bantamdell.com

Jacket design: Beverly Leung
Jacket illustration: Oleg Zhevelev/Shutterstock (celtic ornament)

v3.1

though sometimes we live to regret it.

Scoundrels, con men, and scalawags. Neer-do-wells, thieves, cheats, and rascals. Bad boys and bad girls. Swindlers, seducers, deceivers, flimflam men, imposters, frauds, fakes, liars, cads, tricksters they go by many names, and they turn up in stories of all sorts, in every genre under the sun, in myth and legend and, oh, everywhere in history as well. They are the children of Loki, the brothers of Coyote. Sometimes they are heroes. Sometimes they are villains. More often they are something in between, grey characters and grey has long been my favorite color. It is so much more interesting than black or white.

I guess I have always been partial to rogues. When I was a boy in the fifties, it sometimes seemed that half of prime-time television was sitcoms, and the other half was Westerns. My father loved Westerns, so growing up, I saw them all, an unending parade of strong-jawed sheriffs and frontier marshals, each more heroic than the last. Marshal Dillon was a rock, Wyatt Earp was brave, courageous, and bold (it said so right in the theme song), and the Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers were heroic, noble, upstanding, the most perfect role models any lad could want but none of them ever seemed quite real to me. My favorite Western heroes were the two who broke the mold: Paladin, who dressed in black (like a villain) when on the trail and like some sissified dandy when in San Francisco, kept company (ahem) with a different pretty woman every week, and hired out his services for money (heroes did not care about money); and the Maverick brothers (especially Bret), charming scoundrels who preferred the gamblers attire of black suit, string tie, and fancy waistcoat to the traditional marshals garb of vest and badge and white hat, and were more likely to be found at a poker table than in a gunfight.

And, you know, when viewed today, Maverick and Have GunWill Travel hold up much better than the more traditional Westerns of their time. You can argue that they had better writing, better acting, and better directors than most of the other horse operas in the stable, and you would not be wrong but I think the rogue factor has something to do with it as well.

But its not just fans of old television Westerns who appreciate a good rogue. Truth is, this is a character archetype that cuts across all mediums and genres.

Clint Eastwood became a star by playing characters like Rowdy Yates, Dirty Harry, and the Man With No Name, rogues all. If instead he had been cast as Goody Yates, By-the-Book Billy, and the Man with Two Forms of Identification, no one would ever have heard of him. Now, its true, when I was in college I knew a girl who preferred Ashley Wilkes, so noble and self-sacrificing, to that cad Rhett Butler, gambler, blockade-runner but I think shes the only one. Every other woman Ive ever met would take Rhett over Ashley in a hot minute, and lets not even talk about Frank Kennedy and Charles Wilkes. Harrison Ford comes across rather roguishly in every part he plays, but of course it all started with Han Solo and Indiana Jones. Is there anyone who truly prefers Luke Skywalker to Han Solo? Sure, Han is only in it for the money, he makes that plain right from the start which makes it all the more thrilling when he returns at the end of Star Wars to put that rocket up Darth Vaders butt. (Oh, and he DOES shoot first, no matter how George Lucas retcons that first movie.) And Indy Indy is the very definition of rogue. Pulling out his gun to shoot that swordsman wasnt fair at all but my, didnt we love him for it?

But its not just television and film where rogues rule. Look at the books.

Consider epic fantasy.

Now, fantasy often gets characterized as a genre in which absolute good battles absolute evil, and certainly that sort of thing is plentiful, especially in the hands of the legions of Tolkien imitators with their endless dark lords, evil minions, and square-jawed heroes. But there is an older subgenre of fantasy that absolutely teems with rogues, called sword and sorcery. Conan of Cimmeria is sometimes characterized as a hero, but let us not forget, he was also a thief, a reaver, a pirate, a mercenary, and ultimately a usurper who installed himself on a stolen throne and slept with every attractive woman he met along the way. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are even more roguish, albeit somewhat less successful. It is unlikely either one will end up a king. And then we have Jack Vances thoroughly amoral (and thoroughly delightful) Cugel the Clever, whose scheming never quite seems to produce the desired results, but still

Historical fiction has its share of dashing, devious, untrustworthy scalawags as well. The Three Musketeers certainly had their roguish qualities. (You cannot really buckle a swash without some.) Rhett Butler was as big a rogue in the novel as he was in the film. Michael Chabon gave us two splendid new rogues in Amram and Zelikman, the stars of his historical novella Gentlemen of the Road