Uncle Paulīs Cain Introduction Page |
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By Paul CummingsIntroduction I started writing the Cain series of stories in September 1999. Cain was a character that had been kicking around in my head for sometime. The idea of an ordinary man performing extra ordinary feats was one that I wanted to explore. Cain is also a substantially older character (32) than any I have written about previously, where the main character has always been early to mid twenties. This may be a sign of my maturing as a writer, but don’t bet on it. My strengths have always been the action and comedy side of what I write with much to be found wanting in the actual quality of my writing. The first thing I need to explain is the name Cain. Cain’s family name is Hampshire, but for reasons of mystery, I wanted him to use another name. As the Hampshire family formed in my mind and ended up as a Dukedom, it became obvious to me that Cain would have to use another name to progress within the SAS. I liked the sound of Cain and I liked the idea of people linking it to the biblical Cain, who slew his brother Able. Cain it was. False names and identities only work reliably if they are close to the original, so Benjamin Matthew St John Hampshire became Benjamin Matthew Cain. Obviously St John had to go. Again, I picked Benjamin for the sound of it and for its meaning and biblical references. Matthew was picked as it was again a name I liked and was again a biblical name. The Hampshire name was only chosen after a lot of research and thought. It was very nearly Cambridge. I wanted somewhere that was not actually a Dukedom, nor was the place allowed to have a Marquess. I have deliberately only used details of the SAS freely available on the Internet and have introduced deliberate errors in details not freely available. The reason for this is partly to make my stories flow easier and allow for the extraordinary career of Ben Cain. A secondary, but in my view very important, reason would be that it is irresponsible for anyone to publish details about how any government department, especially a military special forces one, works. This is one of the main reasons I have kept the SAS based in Stirling Lines rather than moving it to its new home. All weapons handling is based on my own experience and that of other respected contributors, although that is probably the first time that anyone has called Taffy respectable. I have relied heavily on others for information on modern weapons as my experiences are now over ten years ago. The martial arts background is partly based on my own training, but taken to a much higher plane, and partly based on information gleaned acknowledged experts in the field. You know who you are! All fight scenes are choreographed and practised to make them as realistic as possible. Nothing is included that I do not believe would work in real life. The mental powers Cain has need some extra explanation. They are, to the very best of my knowledge, all possible, however likely you may think (and I know some of you disbelieve them). I can demonstrate some of them myself – for example, I can increase or decrease my heart rate whilst at rest, raise my body temperature by two degrees centigrade (sad bugger that I am, this used to be a party trick of mine) and even drain people of energy (so long as they don’t know how to stop it). The other powers Cain uses, are all basic extensions of these and so I believe they could be possible, even if I can not do them myself. Once I started fleshing out Cain’s family. The Hampshire side had to be a dukedom, as the highest rank of the peerage. Giving the current duke such age also gave me the option of exploring his memories if I wanted (to date, I haven’t, but this is mainly due to my lack of writing skill). On his maternal side, Cain’s family is Japanese. The Yamamoto family are an old warrior / trader dynasty. This gave me the access to funds and martial arts I needed to progress the story in the future.
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