The Anderson Tapes

Science fiction Author Kevin J Anderson talks to Stephen Hunt about his Dune prequel novels, the Saga of Seven Suns, and why we've come a long way from bug-eyed monsters slavering over scantily clad women on the garish covers of old magazines.

When and why did you begin writing? When did you first consider yourself a writer

I first knew I wanted to create fiction when I was five years old...before I even knew how to write! I remember watching the film of War of the Worlds on TV and was so blown away that I took a notepad the next day and drew pictures of scenes from the film, spread them out on the floor, and told the story out loud.

Kevin J Anderson

When I was eight years old, I wrote my first "novel" (three pages long on pink scrap paper) on the typewriter in my father's den—The Injection, a story about a mad scientist who invents a formula that can bring anything to life, and when his colleagues scoff, he proceeds to

bring a bunch of wax museum monsters and dinosaur skeletons to life so they can go on the rampage.

Probably better than most movies you see nowadays! At the age of ten, I had saved up enough money from mowing lawns and doing odd jobs that I could either buy my own bicycle or my own typewriter. I chose the typewriter, naturally -- and I've been writing ever since.

I submitted his first short story to a magazine when I was a freshman in high school, and managed to collect 80 rejection slips for various manuscripts before I actually had a story accepted two years later (for a magazine that paid only in copies).

When I was a high school senior, I sold my first story for actual money (a whopping $12.50), but I never slowed down. I sold my first novel, RESURRECTION, INC., by the time I turned 25.

How has becoming a published author impacted your lifestyle?

Being a writer IS my lifestyle. Everything in my life revolves around it, writing, researching, reading, traveling, doing the business, doing the publicity.

I work at home with my wife (who's also a bestselling author), and we have three employees to help out with the mail, the travel, the photocopying, answering phones, transcribing my tapes. It's a whole cottage industry here. No glamorous scenes of lonely writer sitting in a cabin waiting for the muse to appear to him!

How do you see the future of science fiction literature in the 21st century?

A lot of what would have been considered "science fiction" a few decades ago will gradually be morphed into mainstream fiction. Sure, there will still be the outright space operas, but science fiction has become such a part of overall entertainment (like mysteries) that everybody reads it without the stigma of having it be a "ghetto genre".

Videogames, which have an even larger audience than films, are very heavily slanted to SF or Fantasy; it's not a fringe genre for them. The people who go see Star Wars or Lord of the Rings in the theaters aren't just the geeky fans who used to be the primary audience for pulp SF. We've come a long way from bug-eyed monsters slavering over scantily clad women on the garish covers of old magazines.

Do you tend to read the work of many other SF/F authors?

You have to, to keep up with the field. It's like a doctor who has to keep reading the medical journals. However, a lot of SF/F writers don't read anything BUT the genre and thus they keep recycling. Just how many leftovers can you make with the Thanksgiving turkey?

I make a special effort to read historicals, thrillers, mainstream, nonfiction, humor, and I take those ingredients and input them into my own stories. I also try to read the "outside" mega-bestsellers to see what the attraction is. THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL, THE LOVELY BONES, THE CORRECTIONS.

My favorite novel of all time is LONESOME DOVE by Larry McMurtry, and #2 is THE GODFATHER by Mario Puzo (and #3 is DUNE, so you SF fans can heave a sigh of relief).

You've done quite a few collaborations with other authors; what kind of working methods do you adopt to co-author a novel?

Let me use the DUNE books as an example, since those are the most recent. With all of Frank Herbert’s notes, Brian Herbert and I have a basic framework of major events, which is like having a flashlight in a big, dark room.

We talk a lot on the phone and, at least once before starting each book, we meet together for a very intense brainstorming session. Because we are collaborating, Brian and I need to know in detail how the chapters are arranged and what happens in all of them.

After we have the complete book plotted, the two of us choose chapters—usually, we will each take particular storylines for consistency—and after we split them up evenly, we each write the drafts of our parts.

Brian and I divide the work equally. When we’re done with our chapters, we swap computer disks and then rework the other person’s prose. So far, all five of our DUNE prequels has gone through eight or more drafts. The result is a novel that blends our styles, our strengths, our skills, better than anything either of us could have written individually.

I have used a similar process for my novels with Rebecca Moesta and Doug Beason.

What's your favourite SF/F movies and TV?

I grew up on Star Trek and lived and breathed every episode, every movie (though I must confess that by VOYAGER and ENTERPRISE and now NEMESIS it's starting to feel rehashed to me...maybe it's me, or maybe they really are running out of ideas.)

I never seem to get tired of watching my "old standby" classic films, BLADE RUNNER, ALIENS, WRATH OF KHAN, TERMINATOR 2. Recently, I am enjoying Smallville and Stargate SG-1. Oh yeah, and a terrific but underrated film is GATTACA.

Do you use an agent?

Absolutely. I spend a lot of time on the business end of being a writer, and Rebecca spends most of her time on it, but an agent expedites all of the bigger things that I can't do for myself. However, a lot of new writers get so fixated on obtaining an agent that they never finish the book. Don't put the cart before the horse. Become a good writer yourself, do all that work, and THEN worry about the agent part.

How long did you spend in rejection letter hell before you were first published?

An eternity! I described a lot of this already above, but I have garnered over 800 rejection slips, and I even have a trophy, "The Writer with No Future," because I could produce more rejection slips by weight than any other writer at a big conference. Eventually, I got accepted, though!

Where, when, and how do you write?

Being a writer is a different sort of job than most regular occupations. I don’t punch a time clock and start work at a certain time, then go home and relax at the end of the day. In fact, with all of the aspects of writing—researching, brainstorming and plotting, writing, editing, proofreading, and publicity/promotion—being an author is practically a 24/7 type of job.

On a typical day, I get up fairly early, exercise, drink coffee, read e-mail, and answer fan letters. I write notes and review research for current novel-in-progress, then go out on a hike and dictate a chapter (usually about 10 pages).

When I get back into the office, the phone is usually ringing. In between calls, I do research for a novel in progress, do proofreading, editing on the computer (usually all straight through lunch). Sometimes in the afternoon I go out on a walk and dictate another chapter.

Even in the evenings, while watching TV, it’s usually videotapes of genre TV shows to keep up to date, or anything of special interest. In the evenings, sometimes I do book signings, web chats, or interviews to promote various books. Answer fan mail, do filing, sign books. Late at night before bed I might snatch half an hour to read another novel, maybe even something for fun this time!

Other activities include travel to research books (Morocco for the DUNE books, Central America for X-Files Ruins, Kennedy Space Center for Ignition, Ecuador and Andes Mountains for Ai! Pedrito!) I also appear at numerous science fiction conventions or public events.

For the actual WRITING, I find it very inspirational to be outside, in the forest, in the desert, in the mountains, while I am writing. After years of practice, I’ve taught myself to dictate my original prose into a microcassette recorder, just like an old fashioned verbal storyteller.

I have written many of my STAR WARS adventures while hiking in Death Valley (where part of the original movie was filmed). I have been snowed in up in the mountains and crunched through pristine drifts while I dictated a chapter that was set on a polar ice cap.

Many writers are curious as to how I can do this, but I don’t see any fundamental difference between thinking up a sentence then moving my fingers to type the letters on a keyboard, or just speaking the words out loud. I can now do my writing while out in beautiful Colorado scenery—it’s the best of both worlds.

Of course, some of my books were dictated under circumstances that might seem like adventures themselves: lightning storms or hailstorms in the Rocky Mountains, encounters with bears or rattlesnakes, getting lost in the Death Valley desert. But, since my heroes always make it to the end of the story, I found ways to manage for myself.

What are you reading now?

Currently in various stages of active reading (or listening for Books on Tape) are INFINITY BEACH by Jack McDevitt (he's a terrific hard SF writer), THE NAKED GOD by Peter F. Hamilton (the last volume of his huge, epic SF saga), WHEN YOU RIDE ALONE, YOU RIDE WITH BIN-LADEN by Bill Maher (one of my favorite political commentators and humorists), and THE BLIND ASSASSIN by Margaret Atwood (for my "literary" dose).

Did you come up through the writing short-stories route, or did you get published in novel-form first?

Lots and lots of short stories, mostly published in the small press magazines. I've had well over a hundred stories published, though I've never been recognized as a short story writer. My natural length is novels and I really started to grow and build my readership once I began working on books.

However, the short stories gave me lots of practice, and all those small press publications taught me the ropes—you never see how clunky your prose is until you actually publish it!

How would you quickly summarise the new Dune prequals for someone who hasn’t read any of the novels yet?

That's a tough one, since the books are so complex...so I'll take a different approach. DUNE is to science fiction what the LORD OF THE RINGS is to fantasy. It's the single best work of world-building, politics, characters, and sense of wonder the genre has to offer.

Our first three prequels tell the story of the generation before the events in DUNE, building up to the grand conflicts there. Our recent novel, THE BUTLERIAN JIHAD, goes back even farther -- some ten thousand years -- to show the seminal events that established the major things in the DUNE universe. As a STAR WARS equivalent, it would be like telling the story of how the first Jedi Knights came to be.

We now have three "entry points" into the DUNE universe for new readers: they can either start with the original novel DUNE (of course), or they can read HOUSE ATREIDES, the first of the immediate prequels, or they can go all the way back to the beginning and read THE BUTLERIAN JIHAD. If we did our job right, they will want to keep reading the other volumes.

If The Saga of Seven Suns was going to be made into a film, who would be your dream producers/actors for the role?

I would be so satisfied if it was going to be filmed, I would try not to be a roadblock, whatever the producer/director's vision might be. When I imagine the characters, they are new people in my head and I don't put actors' faces to them. This series, which starts with HIDDEN EMPIRE, is so huge and epic, I don't know how anybody could do it as a film...but I'd be happy to see them try!

However, I have written a Seven Suns graphic novel, VEILED ALLIANCES, for Wildstorm. Working with the comic artists Igor Kordey and Rob Teranishi, we have developed the visual appearance of that universe and it looks spectacular. You can see a dozen sample pages on our www.wordfire.com website.

Do you ever attend SF-cons, and what has your experience with them been?

Rebecca and I do a lot of conventions, sometimes as many as a dozen a year, from large gatherings like DragonCon and Worldcon to smaller local conventions. We like to be accessible to the fans, to sign their books and talk to them, and it has overall been a very positive experience for us. But it's also exhausting and takes time away from writing. This coming year, I have a lot of very heavy deadlines, and we'll probably draw back from a lot of appearances just so we can catch our breath.

How did you get into writing comics for Dark Horse?

I've always been a big comics fan, so it wasn't such a stretch for me. I came in through the STAR WARS door, after having written my Jedi Academy trilogy. A writer friend of mine had gotten a job at Dark Horse and asked me to write the introduction to Tom Veitch's DARK EMPIRE collection; Tom and I got to be good friends and we found a way to tie his new "Tales of the Jedi" comic series into my Jedi Academy trilogy, so we wrote the "Dark Lords of the Sith" together, which let me earn my chops as a comic scripter.

Since then, I have done many other comics, including most recently the Star Trek graphic novel THE GORN CRISIS for Wildstorm, a Seven Suns graphic novel for Wildstorm (which comes out next spring), and I'm doing a six-issue Justice Society of America story for DC Comics.

With your experience with franchises such as Star Wars, X-Files etc; have you found writing inside someone else's universe requires a different set of skills?

Obviously, when they’re not your toys to play with, you have to get permission and approval for everything you do. Therefore, you have more hoops to jump through, more speed bumps along the way, more compromises to make.

You might have to rewrite a scene because it contradicts some toymaker’s plans for an action-figure down the road! I once had to delete a full storyline in an X-FILES novel because it looked too similar to an episode of the show (that wasn’t even in production before I had started my ms.!).

When you write your own novels, you can do what you like, make your own decisions. On the other hand, you are starting from a dead-stop and you have to lure the readers to your book somehow. If I write STAR WARS, for example, the readers are already predisposed to like it.

As a science fiction fan, I had always loved to make up my own TREK stories even as a kid -- getting the opportunity to do it professionally was a real delight.

My favorite compromise is the DUNE novels -- Brian Herbert and I are basing them on the original and popular DUNE books, but he and I make all the choices and decisions, without an army of lawyers to screen everything for approval. I am writing in my favorite already-existing fictional universe, and telling the best stories I can come up with.

What are your hobbies?

"Hobbies" assumes I have time to do anything but work on the writing. I love watching movies, pleasure reading (when I get the chance), hiking and walking, as well as gourmet cooking. Of course, I never take the time to sit still and do nothing—I tend to multi-process.

While cooking, I will be listening to a book-on-tape and maybe catching up on paperwork, filling out forms, any little busy work that needs to be done. All in all, I think I'd rather be out mountain climbing!

What advice would you give to budding SF writers?

Write. Keep writing. Then write some more. And learn every step of the way.

Are you from the 'writing tightly against a full outline school' or the 'make it up as you go along' school?

I write many original novels, as well as books based in an existing universe (Star Wars, X-Files, or Dune, for instance). Sometimes I receive a few parameters; Lucasfilm might ask me to write a Star Wars trilogy, but they don’t tell me WHAT to write. I have to come up with the idea, write the outline, and submit it for approval.

For the Dune books, Brian Herbert and I are looking at Frank Herbert’s notes and seeing the outline of the grand history he created; from there, we decide which part of the tale we want to tell next. In my original novels, such as THE SAGA OF SEVEN SUNS epic, I work on developing the story however I feel it’s best told.

In all cases, though, I plot clearly ahead of time. I write a detailed chapter-by-chapter outline, and then just get to work. I prefer to write my first drafts by dictating into a tape recorder while I am out hiking. I speak the story aloud, rather than type it into a keyboard.

My assistant then transcribes the tapes and I spend a lot of time at the computer editing the prose.

How much do you base your characters against people you actually know?

All characters are based on PEOPLE, of course, but I almost never consciously try to model one character after one person I know. The SEVEN SUNS series has seemingly hundreds of characters...I don't think I have that many friends! I try to understand how different personalities act and react in certain situations, and use that as a springboard for developing new characters.

What's it been like working with Frank Herbert's estate for the new Dune novels?

DUNE has always been my all-time favorite SF novel, and I read and enjoyed all five sequels. In the last two books, Frank Herbert was obviously building toward a magnificent climactic conflict . . . but he died before he could complete the story.

Since it had been over a decade since Frank's death and no further books were forthcoming, I wrote up a letter introducing myself to Brian Herbert and asked if Frank had left behind any notes or outlines.

I strongly felt -- as a DUNE fan -- that the story should be completed. I had nothing to lose, and some pretty decent credentials of my own. When we talked, Brian and I hit it off right away. Brian himself had been considering the possibility of writing a prequel story, and we decided to collaborate on it.

We worked very hard to develop a very detailed 140-page outline for a trilogy, which we delivered to our agents. Our first three books, HOUSE ATREIDES, HOUSE HARKONNEN, HOUSE CORRINO, were all international bestsellers, critical successes, and hits with the fans.

We even won a handful of awards on them. Then we stepped back another ten thousand years for our new trilogy, which started with THE BUTLERIAN JIHAD. that book sold even better and got more favorable reaction than the previous ones, so we must be moving in the right direction.

Brian and I really put everything we've got into this and we try to improve with each volume. Right now, we are on the eighth draft of THE MACHINE CRUSADE, and about ready to start plotting the third volume, THE BATTLE OF CORRIN, which we'll write in the coming year.

When it comes to your drafts, how much do you tend to re-write?

Each of my novels usually goes through at least five drafts. I feel that I need to keep pushing, keep getting better, keep perfecting with every novel I do -- which, unfortunately means more effort on the tail end as well. The pressure from the DUNE novels is enormous, and Brian and I take those (800-page monsters!) through as many as 11-13 drafts before we're satisfied with it.

The original writing of the first draft usually comes out in a burst of frantic activity, no more than two months to get it down on paper, and then we spend a year rewriting and polishing.

Of all your books, what's been your best selling work?

JEDI SEARCH has sold the most overall, and keeps selling. I think it's in something like it's 40th printing by now. DUNE: HOUSE ATREIDES is catching up fast, though.

What kinds of manuscript changes have been made to your published works?

I don't have any particularly shocking horror stories. A few ham-handed copy editors, a few ridiculous changes demanded by a licensor. Mostly, though, a good editor can help crystallize weak points in a story that I haven't seen for myself. It's almost always a positive experience (even if it is a lot of work).

How did you get invloved with the Star Wars novel franchise?

By 1993 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.

Of the feedback you have heard people come back on about your novels, what's your favourites?

Oh, the pats on the back are always nice, it helps you to know that you are connecting with some readers. On the other hand, some of the fans -- especially the ones who are (ahem) a bit TOO involved in Star Wars or Dune -- go overboard. Rebecca and I wrote 14 volumes of the YOUNG JEDI KNIGHTS series.

There was one guy on a fan discussion board who absolutely hated the first volume, then he read the second volume and absolutely hated that one ... all the way through to the fourteenth volume.

Why did he keep reading? Obviously, just so he could flame me. My single favorite comment of this ilk came in a letter: "I haven't read any of your books, but my friend hates them and he knows what he's talking about. So take it from me -- YOU SUCK!" How can you read that without laughing?

On the other hand, we have also gotten many very heart-warming comments from people who had never liked reading until they started my books. At one book signing a mother brought her young son up to me just so he could shake my hand; the kid was dyslexic and had severe learning disorders and the teachers had given up ever teaching him how to read...but one day he picked up JEDI SEARCH and decided he wanted to read it, so he taught himself, letter by letter and word by word, and read through the whole book.

His mother said he's now a voracious reader. Way cool, if you ask me. We got a letter from another 14-year-old student who was a drug addict, an alcoholic, and flunking out of school; his mother had grounded him in his room, and he had nothing to read but one of our YOUNG JEDI KNIGHTS books.

When he read it, something clicked in him -- that these kids had to work hard and apply themselves if they wanted to become Jedi Knights. He literally made up his mind to turn his life around and sent us his next report card, with the highest marks across the board. (It kinda makes up for those surly comments!)

What amount of research do you do for your books?

Does the science part of the fiction come easy to you? I'm currently working on a space opera novel, and I have to admit - crossing from the sword and sorcery genre - reprogramming fibroblasts to express T-cell functions using cell extracts doesn't come easy.

You've got to get the details right, and sometimes that means a lot of research. For CAPTAIN NEMO and MR. WELLS & THE MARTIANS, I was buried in historical/biographical research. For the DUNE books, I have to know a lot about ecology, geography, weather, etc. (as well as knowing the original novels backwards and forward).

My university training is in physics/astronomy and history. I have a good framework of a lot of basic studies, but I always need to dig for specifics in a novel. You never know when one detail or another might come in handy or relevant.

I also like to travel and see now places or things. My hands-on research has taken me to the top of Mount Whitney and the bottom of the Grand Canyon, inside the Cheyenne Mountain NORAD complex, into the Andes Mountains and the Amazon River, inside a Minuteman III missile silo and its underground control bunker, onto the deck of the aircraft carrier Nimitz, to Maya and Inca temple ruins in South and Central America, inside NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral, onto the floor of the Pacific Stock Exchange, inside a plutonium plant at Los Alamos, and behind the scenes at FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC.

How long does it take you to write a novel?

As long as necessary. Some, like my X-Files novel RUINS (which won several awards) were done in four weeks flat; others, like my equally critically acclaimed HOPSCOTCH (which comes out in paperback in May) took me nearly five years.

Some projects have a higher priority in the production schedule—for instance, at the moment I've had to drop everything to do the novelization for THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, which needs to be done quickly so that it can be typeset and released into the bookstores before the film comes out next fall; others require a lot of deep research, such as my novel CAPTAIN NEMO, which took me three years to write.

How much of your working day do you devote to writing these days? Too much! I'd rather spend a little more time out hiking or reading. Maybe after I finish these deadlines...

Have you ever thought of trying your hand in other genres - crime, history, thrillers etc?

I've already done a couple of thrillers (IGNITION, AFTERIMAGE, ILL WIND), and mysteries (VIRTUAL DESTRUCTION, FALLOUT, LETHAL EXPOSURE) -- though those were marketed as science fiction. History forms the foundation of CAPTAIN NEMO, THE TRINITY PARADOX, and MR. WELLS & THE MARTIANS, though all of those have fantastic elements as well. I like the mix.

What are you working on at the moment?

The four books actively on the front burner are: DUNE: THE MACHINE CRUSADE, editing the final draft of the second volume of the new trilogy. THE SAGA OF SEVEN SUNS #3, about halfway through writing the first draft of this book. MR WELLS & THE MARTIANS, draft written and now being revised. THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, film novelization, based on Alan Moore's wonderful graphic novel. Draft is finished and needs another couple of edits.

On the bookshelves in the near future are the paperback of CAPTAIN NEMO, SEVEN SUNS #2: A FOREST OF STARS, the SEVEN SUNS graphic novel from Wildstorm/DC, the paperback of my SF novel HOPSCOTCH. Plus a lot of other smaller projects, but I don't want to overwhelm the readers!

We keep a full update running on our web page www.wordfire.com and dunenovels.com.

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