Walter Jon Williams on Implied Spaces

John Joseph Adams | July 1st 2008 at 4:38 am

In an interview we conducted with Walter Jon Williams, he said that his new book Implied Spaces begins with a single character and a simple situation, then expands the story through a series of revelations, each pulling the camera back farther until the subject matter becomes literally cosmic.

“On the surface, the story concerns Aristide, a wanderer, who discovers a plot that is a threat to human society, and who then takes action against it,” Williams said. “This action leads to a major, civilization-threatening war, and to further revelation, all with Aristide at the center of the conflict. There is also romance, poetry, martial arts, philosophy, and a talking cat.  A little something for everyone.”

Williams wanted to write a story that would allow him to set his lone hero against as vast a background as possible.  “A single world wouldn’t do, or even a single universe,” he said. “So the story is about what a single person can do when the multiverse is at stake.”

When we meet the protagonist, Aristide, he appears to be a philosopher-king with a magic sword and a talking cat. But is that all he is, or is he something more? “Aristide is a wanderer, a martial artist, a lover, a poet, and a philosopher-king (retired),” Williams said. “He’s also a scientist, since you can hardly be a philosopher-king in the modern world without a technological background.  He’s very old.  He’s at least half-wise.  He’s mysterious.  And he has a Past, a Past that is revealed bit by bit as a whole other set of revelations put the plot in motion.”

Writing Implied Spaces was a total joy. “Every so often I get to write a book that utilizes all of my arcane knowledge, and this was such a book,” Williams said. “Everything I’ve done in my life, from scuba to martial arts to reading Spinoza and/or Jack Vance, was preparation for the book.  If it was anything less than that, I’d be cheating the reader.”

When asked to talk about the process of worldbuilding for the novel, Williams said the book is about worldbuilding. “If you could create any world, what would it be?” he said. “How would you live, and what would you do?  And what could be a threat to someone who could actually make a world?”

When it came to the actual writing of the book, Williams did what any sensible SF writer does, which is to create the story he wanted and then to find technological props to hold up the scenery. “In this instance, the props were made of quantum foam and negative-mass matter, which allowed me to talk to actual physicists about their most far-reaching theories,” he said. “As a result, the science in this book totally kicks ass.”

Read a free excerpt of Implied Spaces:
PDF – HTML – Rich Text Format – MobiPocket

Read the complete text of Williams’s Nebula Award-winning “The Green Leopard Plague”:
PDF – HTML – Rich Text Format – MobiPocket

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