Background Information on "Revolt of the Scalawagons"
Like "The Gheewizard's Revenge,", this story is largely an attempt to reconcile John R. Neill's Oz books with the rest of the series. Neill introduced cars called "Scalawagons" in a book called, strangely enough, The Scalawagons of Oz. That book suggests that everyone in Oz would be getting one, but this idea is not one on which later authors picked up, and with good reason. I do not believe I am alone in disliking the idea of widespread use of cars in Oz. Since the Scalawagons are at least partially sentient, however, several people objected to my original idea of the Wizard "unmaking" them, so I did some editing so that the Scalawagons leave Oz, but still survive. I also tried to give a little more personality to the Scalawagons, which were basically just automata controlled by the all-too-typical villain Grozler in my original draft. How well this worked is up to the reader to decide. I like this story, but I am sure it can use even more editing than it has already received. Incidentally, it has been some time since I last read Scalawagons (my least favorite of the main forty Oz books), and I am not entirely sure that my description of the Scalawagon factory is entirely consistent with Neill's. This is a minor detail, but subject to change after I get another chance to read Neill's book.
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