Thanks for the 1248 info, because you reminded me of something!
But first, you, Mr. West, may be my favorite person of the month for
loving H&I. As you know, that is the most reviled of my reviled TNE
efforts, but I still maintain there's something to it. I'm glad to have
found a kindred spirit. That was another one of those projects where I got
an MS full of....NOTHING, and had to write the whole thing by myself at
high speed and great expense to my sanity. Since they say, "write what you
know," I based it on my on-going divorce. Of the things about TNE that I
miss the most, I would say that being able to complete the H&I story is the
one that hurts the worst, as there is all sorts of weirdness in there that
I just had to leave hanging and never finish, because I never got to write
the "Into the Belly of the Beast" epic adventure. Boo-hoo. That's why Loren
got me involved in the GT H&I book, but that turned into a disaster,
proving to me that I could not keep a foot in Traveller and still do right
by the US Army. I didn't let the Army down, but I let Loren down. I loved
subverting the Hiver mythology, and had a million ideas of places to take
that, including the epic adventure. Strangely, it was relatively easy to
subvert the Hiver mythology, because if you just looked at the existing
material as an editor, it was simply dishonest, tautological, pap. So
putting the conspiracy spin on it almost wrote itself. And I say this with
all sincerity, of the things I learned about Marc in my limited contact
with him, the thing that he loved the most about Traveller was the way that
in-game "facts" could be turned around and interpreted 180 degrees out, but
it was still "true," because it was what the characters inside the game
believed. He loved that, the stuff about major/minor races, etc., and loved
to talk about how it's all been in there all along. So in many cases where
I think people think I was betraying Marc, I was actually being faithful to
his true spirit of showing that the Traveller world was full of surprises.
But what do I know, I'm just a traitor.
Also, did you notice that H&I is the prettiest TNE ever put out? It was
the only one submitted to the printer 100% electronically, which I know
because I did all the paste-up, being also a de facto art
director/typesetter