External links
- The Bitter End title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
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"The Bitter End" is a science fantasy short story by American writer Randall Garrett, featuring his alternate history detective Lord Darcy and magician Master Sean. It was first published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and has been included in the second edition of the collection Lord Darcy .
The Lord Darcy stories are set in an alternate world whose history supposedly diverged from our own during the reign of King Richard the Lionheart, in which King John never reigned. Most of Western Europe and the Americas are united in an Angevin Empire whose continental possessions were never lost by that king. In this world, a magic-based technology has developed in place of the science of our own world.
Master Sean O'Lochlainn, the Irish forensic sorcerer, visits Paris — in this history, a sleepy provincial city which ceased to be a capital many centuries ago — on a mission to collect evidence for an impending court case. While he takes a break in a hotel bar, a man in a booth is found to have mysteriously died. The police soon arrive, in the shape of bumbling but tenacious Sergeant Cougair Chasseur, for whom Sean casts a preservation spell over the deceased's body until a post mortem can be conducted. But Sean is flabbergasted to be named as a possible murder suspect by Chasseur, who distrusts magic and follows the theory of 'least likely suspect'.
Sean is eventually exonerated and able to investigate the circumstances of the death of the man, identified as a retired officer of the Imperial Legion, formerly stationed in Mechicoe (Mexico). He discovers that the deceased has been poisoned whilst drinking Popacotapetl, a very sweet liqueur made in Mechicoe, which has been laced with a bitter poison made from coyotl weed. However, he had been treated with a spell by a Healer, after which all drugs — including the one he is taking for malaria — taste sweet to him.
Eventually, the victim's wife, a much younger woman of Mechicain descent and who is conducting an illicit affair with a liqueur merchant, is unmasked.
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Strong Poison is a 1930 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fifth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and the first in which Harriet Vane appears.
Gordon Randall Phillip David Garrett was an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was a contributor to Astounding and other science fiction magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. He instructed Robert Silverberg in the techniques of selling large quantities of action-adventure science fiction, and collaborated with him on two novels about men from Earth disrupting a peaceful agrarian civilization on an alien planet.
Lord Darcy is a detective in a fantasy alternate history, created by Randall Garrett. The first stories were asserted to take place in the same year as they were published, but in a world with an alternate history that is different from the real world and that is governed by the rules of magic rather than the rules of physics. Despite the magical trappings, the Lord Darcy stories play fair as whodunnits; magic is never used to "cheat" a solution, and indeed, the mundane explanation is often obscured by the leap to assume a magical cause.
The Sword of Shannara is a 1977 epic fantasy novel by American writer Terry Brooks. It is the first book in a titular trilogy.
The Iron Dream is a metafictional 1972 alternate history novel by American author Norman Spinrad. The book has a nested narrative that tells a story within a story. On the surface, the novel presents a post-apocalyptic adventure tale entitled Lord of the Swastika, written by an alternate-history Adolf Hitler shortly before his death in 1953. In this timeline, Hitler emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1919 after the Great War, and used his modest artistic skills to become first a pulp–science fiction illustrator and later a successful writer, telling lurid, purple-prosed, pro-fascism stories under a thin science fiction veneer. The nested narrative is followed by a faux scholarly analysis by a fictional literary critic, Homer Whipple, which is said to have been written in 1959.
Too Many Magicians is a novel by Randall Garrett, an American science fiction author. One of several stories starring Lord Darcy, it was first serialized in Analog Science Fiction in 1966 and published in book form the same year by Doubleday. It was later gathered together with Murder and Magic (1979) and Lord Darcy Investigates (1981) into the omnibus collection Lord Darcy. The novel was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1967.
The Merlin Conspiracy is a children's fantasy novel by Diana Wynne Jones, published by HarperCollins in April 2003, simultaneously in Britain and America. It is a sequel to Deep Secret (1997).
The Great War: Breakthroughs is the third and final installment of the Great War trilogy in the Southern Victory series of alternate history novels by Harry Turtledove. It takes the Southern Victory Series to 1917.
Ten Little Wizards is a novel by Michael Kurland featuring Randall Garrett's alternate history detective Lord Darcy. It was first published in paperback by Ace Books in March 1988; a trade paperback edition and ebook edition were issued by the Borgo Press imprint of Wildside Press in 2011. An audio-book version was published by Audible Studios in April 2015. The book has been translated into Italian.
A Study in Sorcery is an alternate history novel by Michael Kurland featuring Randall Garrett's fictional detective character Lord Darcy. It was first published in paperback by Ace Books in 1989; a trade paperback edition was issued by the Borgo Press imprint of Wildside Press in May 2011, followed by an ebook edition from the same publisher in July of the same year, reissued in February 2019. An audio-book version was published by Audible Studios in February 2012.
"The Black Seal" is the sixth and final episode of The Black Adder, the first serial in the BBC Television Blackadder series. Set in late 15th-century England, the episode concludes the alternate history of the last years of the House of York with the final adventure of Prince Edmund, Duke of Edinburgh, son of the fictional King Richard IV. The story follows a conspiracy by Edmund to overthrow the King and seize the Throne of England for himself, assisted by a band of violent mercenaries.
A magician, also known as an archimage, mage, magus, magic-user, spellcaster, enchanter/enchantress, sorcerer/sorceress, warlock, witch, or wizard, is someone who uses or practices magic derived from supernatural, occult, or arcane sources. Magicians enjoy a rich history in mythology, legends, fiction, and folklore, and are common figures in works of fantasy, such as fantasy literature and role-playing games.
The King of Elfland's Daughter is a 1924 fantasy novel by Anglo-Irish writer Lord Dunsany. It is widely recognized as one of the most influential and acclaimed works in all of fantasy literature. Although the novel faded into relative obscurity following its initial release, it found new longevity and wider critical acclaim when a paperback edition was released in 1969 as the second volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.
Thomas Darcy, 1st Baron Darcy of Darcy or of Temple Hurst, was an English nobleman, the only son, and heir, of Sir William Darcy and his wife, Euphemia Langton, the daughter of Sir John Langton. Darcy was opposed to the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and for his role in the Pilgrimage of Grace was convicted of high treason for delivering up Pontefract Castle to the rebels. He was executed on Tower Hill 30 June 1537.
Murder and Magic is a collection of short stories by American writer Randall Garrett, featuring his alternate history detective Lord Darcy. It was first published in paperback in 1979 by Ace Books, and has been reprinted a number of times since. It was later gathered together with Too Many Magicians (1967) and Lord Darcy Investigates (1981) into the omnibus collection Lord Darcy.
Lord Darcy Investigates is a collection of short stories by Randall Garrett featuring his alternate history detective Lord Darcy. It was first published in paperback in 1981 by Ace Books, and has been reprinted a number of times since. It was later gathered together with Murder and Magic (1979) and Too Many Magicians into the omnibus collection Lord Darcy.
Lord Darcy is a 1983 omnibus collection of two previous fantasy collections and one fantasy novel by Randall Garrett featuring his alternate history detective Lord Darcy, published by Doubleday as a selection in its Science Fiction Book Club. The component books had originally been published in 1966, 1979 and 1981. The collection was reissued in 1999. A second edition, edited by Eric Flint, was published by Baen Books in 2002. The second edition reorganized the contents, added two stories not included in the original edition or its component volumes, and was edited slightly to remove duplicative material.
"The Eyes Have It" is a fantasy short story by Randall Garrett, the first to feature his alternate history detective Lord Darcy. It was first published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact in 1964 and included in the collection Murder and Magic in 1979.