2001: infinity plus

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SandRider
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2001: infinity plus

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http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/intkja.htm


Professionalism and Pageantry
An Interview with Kevin J Anderson
by Nick Gevers

INTRODUCTION

Kevin J Anderson, born in 1962, is one of contemporary American SF's most productive writers,
the author of numerous original novels as well as collaborations and media novelisations. Of his
independent works, the most notable are perhaps Resurrection, Inc. (1988), Climbing Olympus
(1994), and Blindfold (1995); together with Doug Beason, he has published such books as Lifeline
(1990), The Trinity Paradox (1991), Assemblers of Infinity (1993), Ill Wind (1995), Ignition (1996),
Virtual Destruction (1996), Fallout (1997), and Lethal Exposure (1998). Solo and with his wife,
Rebecca Moesta, he has written a large number of Star Wars ties; three X-Files novels carry his
name; and he is presently in the midst of a major effort to complete and elaborate on Frank
Herbert's Dune sequence in company with Brian Herbert -- House Atreides (1999) and House
Harkonnen (2000) commenced the Prelude to Dune trilogy, which finishes in late 2001 with House
Corrino.

But amidst all this larger-scale activity, Anderson has found time for quite a few short stories,
many of which are collected in the latest volume from Golden Gryphon Press, Dogged Persistence,
published in June 2001. Interviewing Kevin J Anderson by e-mail in May 2001, I discussed with
him various aspects of his very substantial oeuvre.

THE INTERVIEW



NG: You're the quintessential professional writer -- prolific, able to work in various genres, at
series, novel, or short story length, in collaboration or on your own. How early in life did you resolve
to become an author, and what shaped your particular ethic of professional writing? How long did it
take you to make the transition from first published story to fully paid professional output?


KJA: I was only five years old when I saw George Pal's film of War of the Worlds, which changed
my life. (Of course, at the age of five, a lot of things can easily change your life.) It literally ignited
my imagination, and the next day I was drawing pictures and recounting the tale to anyone who would
listen. Afterward, I became a voracious science fiction and fantasy fan of both movies and books, and
I knew I wanted to tell stories like that.

My parents were hard workers and instilled within me a work ethic as well as a practicality. I approached
the writing business with an utter devotion -- I really wanted to become a writer -- but also common
sense, knowing that it would be a long road with a very small chance of ever making a living with my
writing. So I studied eclectic subjects, got a full-time job out of college (as a technical writer for a large
research laboratory), and wrote my stories and novels in every moment of my spare time.

I collected an enormous number of rejection slips (over 800 at last count), enough to earn me a trophy,
"The Writer with No Future," at an authors' conference. But I never gave up, and all along I was getting
better, improving my craft and my abilities, and eventually I got good enough to qualify as a professional.
Thus, Dogged Persistence is not only the title of one of my popular short stories in the new collection,
but also sums up my approach to a writing career.





NG: Noting your versatility across genres -- something impressively exhibited in Dogged Persistence --
Dogged Persistence by Kevin J Andersonwould it nonetheless be accurate to say that you have a special
affinity for Hard SF? What has influenced you in this direction?


KJA: While Hard SF has been an important part of my reading and writing, I don't think I would place
that work on any special pedestal for me. I have degrees in physics and astronomy and spent over ten
years writing technical papers and presentations for a research laboratory, so I would have to say that
scientific accuracy (or at least "likelihood") is important to me. However, I also minored in Russian
History and I have a personal affinity for history and fantasy. I just worked for a year and a half on
Nemo, a novel that tells the fictional life story of Jules Verne's Captain Nemo, and you can see from
many of the stories in Dogged Persistence that I enjoy historical accuracy as much as scientific accuracy.

My favorite types of books are like Dune -- yes, they are set in a science fiction universe, but they also
have the color and scope of epic fantasy. I am not as much enamored with the equations as I am with
the "pageantry" -- I like to view my best novels as literary "widescreen CinemaScope" productions, such
as my Dune prequels with Brian Herbert, or my forthcoming multi-volume science fiction epic, The Saga
of Seven Suns.





NG: Your bibliography contains many examples of collaboration with other writers, notably Doug Beason,
Brian Herbert, and your wife Rebecca Moesta. What, for you, are the especial advantages of such literary
teamwork? And how, practically, do you divide and co-ordinate the labour?


KJA: Ideally, a collaboration brings together the best talents of two writers. If the resulting work
doesn't have a dimension or depth beyond what I could do alone, then there's no point in co-authoring
with someone. (A collaboration is at least as much work as a solo story or novel.)

Doug Beason has a military and deep scientific expertise that surpasses anything I know; my wife Rebecca
Moesta always brainstorms and edits my writing, but when we "officially" write together, the resulting
fiction has a broader character and emotional focus and a better understanding of young adult audiences
(we have won awards for our YA fiction). Brian Herbert, of course, brings with him a legitimacy and a deep
understanding of Frank Herbert's work, but also a religious and philosophical bent that the Dune books demand
(which isn't ordinarily my cup of tea).

With all my collaborations, it is definitely a 100/100 effort -- neither of us does half the work. It is always
a full effort. We brainstorm the stories we want to tell, write notes, then generate a detailed outline that
gets broken down into chapters. Co-authors should know each other's strengths and weaknesses, and
therefore we assign the individual chapters according to our best abilities. After we write our respective
portions of the novel, then we swap computer disks, take complete freedom to rewrite the other person's
drafts, and then swap the draft again. This process continues until we feel the book is in its best shape.
The Dune prequels, for instance, generally go through about ten complete drafts and polishes before we
are ready to consider them finished.





NG: Another sort of collaboration is working with literary tools others first devised, as in your media
tie-in novels and your Dune prequels. How greatly does such skilled literary impersonation contrast with
writing entirely originally, in your own distinct and distinctive manner?


KJA: This question has always perplexed me, but because it gets asked so often, I presume it is of great
interest to readers (and interviewers!). Yes, when I am writing within an "existing literary universe" --
such as Star Wars or Dune -- there are certain rules I must follow, but I don't see how that inordinately
squashes a writer's creativity. All fiction operates within a set of guidelines and accepted parameters, and
it's any decent writer's job to place his fiction within them.

For instance, in my historically-based fantasy stories, I have to follow the rules of reality. In "Scientific
Romance" I was 'constrained' by the events in H.G. Wells's life; in "Canals in the Sand," I had to follow the
historical details of Percival Lowell's activities; in "Final Performance" I had to shape my story according to
the events surrounding the burning of the Globe Theatre. That's just the way it is -- I don't see it as a
particular handicap. If I'm setting a story in the English countryside, I can't very well have a towering,
smoking volcano on the horizon, no matter how spectacular it might make the scene (unless I've explained
the reason). I don't see those facts as crippling constraints. I look at the "shared universe" books in the
same way.

All of this is a roundabout defense to say that I feel I can tell just as good a story in a Dune novel as in a
so-called "original" novel. One begins to develop and imagine the story within an accepted framework; I
take out my handy Star Wars rulebook and start writing as if it were my own story and characters. Granted,
some of the licensors can be a bit more difficult than others, but for the most part I have had extraordinary
freedom to tell the stories I wanted to tell.

I am currently editing the first volume in a "completely original" science fiction epic, The Saga of Seven
Suns, while simultaneously polishing the first volume in a new Dune prequel trilogy with Brian Herbert,
The Butlerian Jihad. I leave it to the readers of this interview to compare those two works and see if they
can discern any noticeable difference in quality.





NG: You've written or co-written many Star Wars novels. How did you first become involved in this
franchise, and how large did your part in it become?


KJA: I had published ten original novels -- most of which were "critically acclaimed" but had not become
wildly successful. However, my editors had gotten to know me as a writer who always delivered on time,
turned in a good manuscript, and was easy to work with. Completely without my knowledge, my Bantam
editor had submitted samples of my books to Lucasfilm, suggesting that I might be a good choice as a
person to write Star Wars novels. Lucasfilm liked my books, and I received a surprise offer to write three
sequels to the films.

Now, I had always been a huge fan of both Star Wars and Star Trek, and many other SF films and television
shows. Some snobbish writers look down their noses at such things, but I recognize that these gigantic
media successes are what has brought science fiction out of the pulp magazine ghetto and into the mainstream.
I loved the chance to write in this universe -- it was like borrowing the best toys to play with.

I have produced more Star Wars novels, comics, anthologies, art books, young-adult novels than any other
writer. Obviously, I got along very well with Lucasfilm and they continued to offer me many new projects.
In many cases, I created all the history and backgrounds for them. Some of my comic series, Tales of the
Jedi, are set thousands of years before the films, and thus I have a great deal of freedom. In one of the
comics, the artist and I came up with an interesting "innovation" of a double-ended lightsaber, and George
Lucas liked it enough to feature it prominently in Episode 1.

All in all, my Star Wars projects were an immense amount of fun, very successful around the world, and
brought my name to the attention of a huge number of readers who might not otherwise have read the
fiction of Kevin J. Anderson.





NG: And there are your X-Files novels, one of which in fact incorporates "Dogged Persistence", the title
story of your new collection, not originally written with Mulder and Scully in mind. The atmosphere of The
X-Files is very different from that of Star Wars, one of grim contemporary paranoia instead of space-operatic
mysticism; how readily did you adjust to the state of mind of "Spooky" Mulder and Co.? Of course, you exhibit
a natural aptitude for dark fantasy in any case in several of your short stories...


KJA: Ironically, I received the X-Files assignment because Chris Carter (the creator of the show) had read
some of my Star Wars novels and thought that I had managed to capture exactly the right "look and feel" of
the universe. Now, I worked for the US government for many years in a research laboratory, I had a security
clearance, I had visited all sorts of classified facilities, and so I felt I could get a good handle on much of the
background necessary for the X-Files.

Also, though many readers think of me as primarily a science fiction writer, I have spent a lot of time writing
horror and dark fantasy, especially in short fiction. My first novel, Resurrection, Inc., was nominated for the
Bram Stoker Award (given by the Horror Writers Association), and I have done a lot of work with suspense and
mysteries. In fact, I'm not entirely comfortable with being crammed into a particular category -- I have used
some of my best suspense/thriller techniques in science fiction novels; I have used big science and "sense of
wonder" in my mysteries.

Yes, I know it sounds like a shameless plug, but we very carefully selected the stories in the Dogged Persistence
collection to represent the different types of writing I like to do, science fiction, dark fantasy, historical horror.





NG: A further big project, now coming to completion, is your trilogy of Dune novels, written with Frank
Herbert's son Brian; a shorter Dune tale, "A Whisper of Caladan Seas", appears in Dogged Persistence. Frank
Herbert was a quite idiosyncratic writer, and Dune is a complex philosophical masterpiece; how successful,
would you now say, has your posthumous collaboration with him been? (A tough question, perhaps...)


KJA: Nearing completion? Bite your tongue! Brian and I have uncovered over 3000 pages of Frank Herbert's
working notes as well as the complete outline for the climactic Dune novel he intended to write. The Prelude
to Dune trilogy -- House Atreides, House Harkonnen, and House Corrino -- is finished, with the final volume
to be published this fall, but Brian and I are currently at work on The Butlerian Jihad trilogy, which will go back
even further in time to establish the primary conflicts and settings in all the Dune novels.

Judging from the critical acclaim, awards, and fan reaction, our Dune novels have been extremely successful.
Frank Herbert is a tough act to follow, but Brian and I understand the weight of responsibility on our shoulders
and we have thrown our best efforts into these novels. Dune is my favorite SF novel of all time, and I have
always modeled my most ambitious works on Frank Herbert. We have not attempted to imitate his style, but
to write novels that "feel" like true Dune stories. I doubt any writer could ever surpass what Frank Herbert has
done, but we think our novels are about as close as anyone can come. (And, best of all, because our new
prequels have reawakened interest in Dune, Frank's original novels are gaining an entirely new audience and
are selling extraordinarily well.)





NG: Looking specifically at Dogged Persistence now, the inevitable question: short stories, as your
collaborator Neil Peart has apparently observed, are not lucrative, yet you write them regularly, and a
collection has resulted. What does the short story deliver that novels cannot?


KJA: Many writers cut their teeth on short fiction because the task of writing a 500-page novel manuscript
is just too daunting. I learned my profession -- both as a business and as an artist -- by writing story after
story after story. Since then, I feel I have come into my own as a novelist, which is truly the length I prefer to
write. However, sometimes I develop individual ideas, small concepts that fascinate me but do not bear the
longer length.

Also, short stories can reach a wider audience in various publications. I see them as a way to draw attention
to my novel writing, to interest new readers in my work (always assuming, of course, that the stories are
GOOD!). Some of my stories have sparked additional ideas and expansions, which eventually developed into
full-fledged novels ("Human, Martian -- One, Two, Three" became my novel Climbing Olympus, "Dogged
Persistence" became Antibodies).

Finally, short stories are fun. I enjoy doing one or two in between large novels as a way to clear my creative
palate, so to speak. Even though they don't pay as well as books, I still write many stories. Since when have
you ever heard of an eccentric writer making particularly valid business decisions anyway?





NG: Many of your short stories focus on time travel, but time travel on a modest scale, for purposes of
moral enlightenment, individual salvation, or (in the two "Alternitech" pieces), the sly acquisition of
intellectual property from other time lines. Is this the best use for time travel -- as a form, basically, of
memory retrieval, rather than as a means to grand discovery and large-scale self-aggrandizing alteration
of the past?


KJA: This is an example of what I was talking about in the previous answer. I find that science fiction is
rich in innovative ideas about time travel, but in a realistic and dramatic sense, the majority of those ideas
(I hesitate to say "gimmicks") simply can't bear the weight of a novel-length treatment. Ray Bradbury's "A Sound
of Thunder" is probably the perfect time travel story ... but how could it be anything other than a short tale?

Nevertheless, the ideas are fascinating to me and I like to pursue them. What if a religious group could go back
in time a single day, for example, and use their knowledge to stop disasters from happening? (That's "Entropy
Ranch.") What if you could go to a parallel universe nearly identical to our own and search for subtle but
commercially viable differences, say if a famous rock star had never been killed in a plane crash ("Music Played
on the Strings of Time") or if an accidental medical test had found an otherwise undiscovered cure for a fatal
disease ("Tide Pools")? As a writer, I prefer the smaller scale and personal stories about subtle time travel,
rather than giant epics (though H.G. Wells told quite a fine time-travel story at novel length, as I recall...).





NG: You've commented on your interest in history, and, indeed, many of the stories in Dogged Persistence
are set in the past; they feature such historical figures as H. G. Wells, Charles Dickens, and Vlad Tepes...


KJA: I have always loved history, and fantasy, but sadly there is little market for "historical fiction."
Nevertheless, I very much enjoy throwing recognizable and interesting figures from history into a story.
Wells himself has always been a huge influence on me, and Dickens is a spiritual brother (a popular tale-spinner).
And Vlad Tepes is much more interesting to me than all the watered-down Dracula stories. A great many of
my published short stories could not fit into the Dogged Persistence collection, but I chose many of my
historical fantasies, because I love them so much.

I have just sold a novel-length "fantastic historical," Nemo -- the fictional life story of Jules Verne's famous
Captain Nemo, which will be published next January. In the story, Nemo and Verne are childhood friends, both
in love with the same young woman, but while Verne stays home in France and pursues a quiet writing career,
Nemo goes off to swashbuckling adventures. He encounters pirates and dinosaurs, is shipwrecked on a
mysterious island, discovers a passage to the center of the Earth, takes a balloon across darkest Africa.
Tragic experiences in the Crimean War leave him the prisoner of an evil caliph who commands him to build
the Nautilus to prey upon merchant ships venturing through the newly completed Suez Canal. It's a wonderful
adventure story laced with history and fantasy.

The publisher has also bought a second, unwritten "fantastic historical" novel -- who knows, it just might
feature H. G. Wells in some fashion.





NG: "Canals in the Sand" is the story of how Percival Lowell encounters H. G. Wells's Martians; and in
fact you edited a full anthology of similar pieces, War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches. How did the idea
arise, and how critically and commercially successful was this SF anthology based on an SF story ("Night of
the Cooters" by Howard Waldrop) based on an early SF novel?


KJA: Actually, adding the Howard Waldrop story was a (rather obvious) afterthought when I was putting
the anthology together. While hiking in the redwoods of California, for no reason I can ascertain, I was
literally "thunderstruck" with an anthology idea, to do short stories about Wells's Martian invasion, as written
by other famous people of the day (such as Jules Verne, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain,
Jack London, etc.)

As the editor of an anthology, naturally, you get first pick of which story you want to write. I had always been
intrigued by Percival Lowell's fascination with Martian canals and had read a throw-away line in a historical
book that Lowell wanted to dig giant trenches across the Sahara, fill them with oil, and ignite huge geometric
symbols that would be visible to Martians. That idea sounded so incredible that I had to make it the foundation
for a short story.

As to whether the anthology was successful or not -- one of the stories won the Hugo Award, another one was
nominated for a Nebula, one received an Alternate History award, several were selected for Best of the Year
anthologies and many were reprinted in SF magazines. I think that's worth a pat on the back.





NG: Your story "Prisoner of War" is a sequel to Harlan Ellison's Outer Limits teleplay, "Soldier", and appeared
in an Outer Limits anthology you edited last year. Why a prose follow-up to a teleplay, and might your story
itself be filmed at some point?


KJA: As for a "prose follow-up to a teleplay" -- I think the distinction is irrelevant. I am concerned with the
story and the characters and the universe. Harlan Ellison's war-torn scenario and his tragic futuristic soldier
are very real in my mind, and inspired me to create another story in that milieu. The format in which it was
originally written matters not a whit!

I don't think the new incarnation of The Outer Limits is interested in doing sequels to their classic episodes ...
and thanks to the various lawyers and companies and licensors involved over the past four decades, I suppose
the whole question would be just too difficult to resolve
!




NG: Your forthcoming writing schedule sounds quite packed. More Dune, some steampunk, grand space opera...

KJA: I always keep a full plate of intriguing projects. I am one of those authors who would rather be writing
than doing most anything else, and so I never relax and ponder what to do next. As I mentioned above, I am
doing three Butlerian Jihad Dune prequels with Brian Herbert, and I am writing at least three big SF epics in a
new continuing series, The Saga of Seven Suns -- just finished up the first ms., at 750 pages -- and my Nemo
novel will be out in January, after which I will begin working on another "fantastic historical."

And who knows, in my copious free time, I may write a few more short stories,
maybe enough for another collection ...




...
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Re: 2001: infinity plus

Post by SandRider »

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/dogged.htm

Dogged Persistence
by Kevin J Anderson
(Golden Gryphon Press, $25.95, 303 pages, hardcover; published June 2001.)



In this volume, Kevin J. Anderson demonstrates at short lengths the consummate professionalism that has made him one of SF's most commercially successful novelists. As in Kristine Kathryn Rusch's recent retrospective from Golden Gryphon, Stories for an Enchanted Afternoon (Rusch and Anderson are good friends, and have contributed Introductions to each other's collections), the emphasis in Dogged Persistence is on stories clearly and competently set forth, stories without artifice or flamboyant elaboration. A connoisseur of style may well be disappointed; but plain telling has virtues of its own, and a writer with Anderson's carefully honed understanding of the formulas that make popular fiction work can compensate readily enough for any mundane ordinariness of diction, any linear flatness of technique. With dogged professional persistence, these stories act their roles well enough, provoking, entertaining, and chilling the reader (always the first factor in Anderson's consideration) very competently indeed.

The pieces in Dogged Persistence, only one of which approaches novella length, fall into three broad categories: Hard SF with a decidedly sinister edge; contemplative tales of time travel; and (in surprising numbers) carefully evocative historical fantasies.

As might be expected from the author of several X-Files novels, Anderson invests his Hard SF with a certain air of the supernatural, a suspicion, perhaps, that the archetypal menace of black magic has carried over to technology. Thus, "Fondest of Memories" may concern cloning and the extension of life through time dilation, but it is more basically about necromancy (the resurrection of a lost wife) and the reaching of a dead hand across the decades. "Reflections in a Magnetic Mirror", co-written with Doug Beason, involves experiments with nuclear fusion and the possibility of intelligent forms of plasma; but its subtext is of the blasphemous creation of life, a sin to be expiated. "Dogged Persistence", which in fact grew into an X-Files novel, has pitchfork-wielding peasants backed by the Inquisition (or what amount to such) hunting down the bearers of the secret of nanotechnology. "Dune: A Whisper of Caladan Seas", co-authored by Brian Herbert, is both the story of far-future soldiers imprisoned behind a rockfall and a mystical rendition of the merciful power of jongleurs' tales; its echo, "Prisoner of War", a melancholy sequel to a screenplay by Harlan Ellison, places superhumanly enhanced conscripts in a sort of Paradise, and the hollowness of Heaven and the implacability of Hell are the deep notes sounded. Only "Human, Martian--One, Two, Three" has some of the traditional cheerful practicality of Hard SF, and even there the shadow of Victor Frankenstein is not far off...

Anderson is clearly aware, then, of the spiritual and psychological freight of scientific innovation, and in his hands time travel becomes something of a venture inwards, a method to comprehend what one has been and therefore make oneself anew. Forget Temporal Adventuring; the past is a mirror of a quite intimate sort. Two interrelated stories, "Music Played on the Strings of Time" and "Tide Pools", explore the potential of stepping sideways in time, finding versions of the present that may have some small but marketable advantage denied one's own time-line. In both cases, this cynical exploitation of cognate universes has a profounder counterpart in self-discovery. "Entropy Ranch" quite amusingly sets Christian do-gooders up as the undoers of Acts of God, but satire on them is moderated by their feat of both saving and Saving the protagonist, who may become Somebody at last. "Much at Stake" (here an overlap with historical fantasy develops) deftly brings together Bela Lugosi, the most famous screen Dracula, and his perfectly factual counterpart, the mediaeval Wallachian warlord Vlad Tepes, he of the sanguinary mass-impalement proceedings; the fictional and the actual, the perceived and the observed, interact profitably for all concerned. Time travel is truly about memory and its integration, an acute point to make.

When Anderson handles history, he is alert both to its tragedy (lessons never learnt, as in his Hard SF) and to its status as something achieved, a fabric harmoniously woven (the desired state of his time-travellers). Russian social engineers, trying to reform the countryside by converting it into a landscape of penal colonies, find that the bludgeon changes nothing in "New Recruits", but the lesson is never assimilated for long; and "Canals in the Sand", a fantasy of how Percival Lowell might indeed have greeted Martians (H. G. Wells's variety, unfortunately) in the Sahara has a ghoulish air. So, for that matter does one contemporary fantasy story, "Drumbeats" (a collaboration with the rock drummer Neal Peart), which suggests (a little unwisely, perhaps) that the evil found in Africa is timeless; and the malicious exhalations of the stage have a similarly immortal quality in the Shakespearean period piece "Final Performance". But there's a genuine redemptive glow to "Much at Stake", to the Dickensian supernatural tale "The Ghost of Christmas Always", and even to the possibly illusory love of landbound women for the princes of the ocean in "Sea Dreams" (co-authored by Anderson's wife Rebecca Moesta); and the monstrosity of the Martians is the figurative inspiration of the non-science fictional H. G. Wells of "Scientific Romance", a corrective to the implied horror of "Canals in the Sand". In the end, the best summary of the thematic balance of Anderson's fantasy, and of his wider work, can be discerned in "The Old Man and the Cherry Tree", a vista at once of the feudal cruelty and of the serene transcendence inherent in the Japan of the Shogunate; annihilating death and liberating meaning stand side by side.

Dogged Persistence has an impressive integrity of its own, a certain plain power. It is a quite satisfactory counterpart to Stories to an Enchanted Afternoon, manifesting a not dissimilar candour and humanity.

(Order from: Golden Gryphon Press, 3002 Perkins Road, Urbana, IL 61802, USA, or visit http://www.goldengryphon.com)

Review by Nick Gevers.
More of Nick's reviews are online at Parsec.


more:
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfictio ... kjanderson
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Re: 2001: infinity plus

Post by Omphalos »

I was browsing in University Books in Seattle not too long ago, and I heard one guy say to the other, while standing over that book, "Kevin J. Anderson, huh? Well, at least we know this book is crap."
Something is about to happen, Hal. Something wonderful!

-James C. Harwood, Science Fiction Writer, Straight (March 5, 1956 - May 25, 2010)



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Re: 2001: infinity plus

Post by Sev »

D Pope just posted a link to this interview at Jacurutu - this bit jumped out at me:
Keith the Hack wrote:All of this is a roundabout defense to say that I feel I can tell just as good a story in a Dune novel as in a so-called "original" novel. One begins to develop and imagine the story within an accepted framework; I take out my handy Star Wars rulebook and start writing as if it were my own story and characters.
Er, Keith - Dune isn't Star Wars :doh:
"It was early 1974 before I made any attempt to read Dune. After forty pages I gave up. I couldn't get into the book. It seemed convoluted, opaque and full of strange language." - Brian "Bobo" Herbert
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Re: 2001: infinity plus

Post by SandChigger »

What better proof that he just doesn't get it? :roll:
"Chancho...sometimes when you are a man...you wear stretchy pants...in your room...alone."

"Politics is never simple, like the sand chigger of Arrakis, one is rarely truly free of its bite."

Arrakeen is an unawakened ghola.
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Re: 2001: infinity plus

Post by SandRider »

I'm looking for a word or phrase that would describe this kind of
unintentional, moronic irony ....

I just spent most of the night it the basement, reading Pinky & the Brian
interviews; every coupla sentences one or both say something that either
flatly contradicts everything Frank believed in, or is so .... oblivious
to the truth of the work they have actually produced ....
BH: I spent a year after Kevin and I started working together doing a concordance of all six Dune books. So we have an encyclopedic reference. We know what page number Duke Leto's eyes are described on. I have 50 or 60 pages single spaced just on the Bene Gesserit sisterhood. We know all the details. So it really is a Dune book because we really put a lot of work into it before we wrote one word.

Dad used to say, "Get your science right when you're building a world." Well, we had to get our facts right to write in the Dune universe. But dad would say he didn't want to receive a letter that began, "Dear Jerk."

January Magazine // 2000
The Sons of Dune : an Interview with Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
by Linda Richards
viewtopic.php?f=621&t=1253

there's one I can't find right now, cause I'm kinda toasted, but Keith
poo-poos the idea of "other writers" doing Dune stories, because they've
got Brian's concordance and Dune is so complex and vast and the less
experienced would have trouble keeping facts straight and end up publishing
contradictions ...
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Re: 2001: infinity plus

Post by Sev »

SandRider wrote:there's one I can't find right now, cause I'm kinda toasted, but Keith
poo-poos the idea of "other writers" doing Dune stories, because they've
got Brian's concordance and Dune is so complex and vast and the less
experienced would have trouble keeping facts straight and end up publishing
contradictions ...
That's in the FED2K interview.
"It was early 1974 before I made any attempt to read Dune. After forty pages I gave up. I couldn't get into the book. It seemed convoluted, opaque and full of strange language." - Brian "Bobo" Herbert
merkin muffley
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Re: 2001: infinity plus

Post by merkin muffley »

BH: I have 50 or 60 pages single spaced just on the Bene Gesserit sisterhood.
WHOA, SINGLE-SPACED!?!?!? :o

I bet that's a fascinating document, full of piercing insight. :roll:

And I just noticed this from Sev's signature:
It was early 1974 before I made any attempt to read Dune. After forty pages I gave up. I couldn't get into the book. It seemed convoluted, opaque and full of strange language.
Clearly not genetically predisposed to writing these books, then.
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Re: 2001: infinity plus

Post by SandChigger »

SandRider wrote:there's one I can't find right now, cause I'm kinda toasted, but Keith
poo-poos the idea of "other writers" doing Dune stories, because they've
got Brian's concordance and Dune is so complex and vast and the less
experienced would have trouble keeping facts straight and end up publishing
contradictions ...
Sev wrote:That's in the FED2K interview.
It's also in that interview from last year's WoD tour that I quoted on the fanfic contest details page:

Interview: Brian Herbert: The Chronicler Heir of Dune, by R.J. Carter, The Trades, Published: August 15, 2009:

http://www.the-trades.com/article.php?id=11291
"Chancho...sometimes when you are a man...you wear stretchy pants...in your room...alone."

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Arrakeen is an unawakened ghola.
TheDukester
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Re: 2001: infinity plus

Post by TheDukester »

SandRider wrote:... Keith
poo-poos the idea of "other writers" doing Dune stories, because they've
got Brian's concordance and Dune is so complex and vast and the less
experienced would have trouble keeping facts straight and end up publishing
contradictions ...
The comical part: that pretty much makes Keith irrelevant. It's Brian's concordance; in theory, he could team up with any other author to produce a McDune book.

Anderjacket would appear to be "surplus to requirements," as our UK friends say.
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