The Night Shade Interview: LIGHTBREAKER’s Mark Teppo

Ross E. Lockhart | June 13th, 2009

This weekend, I had a chance to sit down and chat with the Bunny Magus himself, Night Shade author Mark Teppo, about his recently-released novel Lightbreaker, its forthcoming sequel Heartland, Urban Fantasy, Western Occultism, industrial music, and Mark’s appearance this coming Tuesday at San Francisco’s Borderlands Books. So here you go, the Night Shade Interview with Mark Teppo:

Q: LIGHTBREAKER is “Urban Fantasy,” but bears some notable differences from the werewolves, vampires, and “Dungeons and Dragons”-style magic typical to the subgenre. In particular, the magic of LIGHTBREAKER is grounded in Western Occultism, and protagonist Markham is a Rogue Magus. How much research did you have to do in order to get this aspect of LIGHTBREAKER to feel real?

A: Some will say I didn’t do enough research, and I’ll be in full agreement with them. But then, I always feel like I haven’t done enough research.

Research is a funny thing for me: I feel the need to do enough of it to be able to talk intelligently about some topic without appearing to be completely uninformed, but once you start, really, it can be very hard to stop (there are, looking at the results of quick search in my librarything.com catalog, more than thirty books on or by Aleister Crowley alone). At some point, it gets silly, and I have more books than I can ever hope to read during the time I have set aside to write the book; I must hope that I absorb their contents by virtue of having them nearby or something.

Then again, LIGHTBREAKER has been a work-in-progress for going on two decades now, and there’s quite a bit of the background material that is culled from the work I did back in college, studying the whole magico-religious side of things. Some of it is validating my college curriculum, but mostly it’s a subject that fascinates me endlessly, so it is a topic that I’m constantly seeking more knowledge about. Happily, I get to turn around and use all of that for texture.

Let’s put it this way: there’s an entire six-foot tall IKEA bookcase next to my desk that is filled with primary source magick books. Another one on the other side of the room is devoted to comparative religion, cultural anthropology, and all the stuff that would be classified as secondary source. A good deal of which I haven’t read all the way through, but it’s right there when I need an answer to something.

Q: Markham seems to share some literary DNA with early occult detectives like Algernon Blackwood’s Doctor Silence, Manly Wade Wellman’s John Thunstone and William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki. Did you have these character templates in mind when creating Markham?

Honestly? No. I should probably go refresh my memory of them though. LIGHTBREAKER—in its first iteration, a very, very long time ago—was much more of a vampire and werewolf sort of urban fantasy, but the market, as we know it today, didn’t exist then and we couldn’t get anyone interested in it. In that iteration, while there was some of the magick elements (the Chorus, for example, and some of the Crowley influence), it wasn’t nearly as strong as it is now, and when we came back to the book a few years ago and wanted to give it another go, I really wanted to do something that was tied more concretely to the Western Esoteric heritage, but clearly my own vision.

I tend to avoid like-minded characters and writers when I’m working through the first book of a series so as to imprint it with my own vision. I figure if I don’t know the details of what’s been done, it is much harder for me to unconsciously ape them. Later, when I’m more grounded in my own take on things, then I can reacquaint myself with the fellow occult detectives and add some riffs on the history there. But too early on, the homage—or the use of them as character templates—comes out too much like parody.

Q: Seattle and the surrounding Pacific Northwest area play an important role in LIGHTBREAKER, and there are a number of recognizable landmarks, including a certain bookstore down in Portland, Oregon. The sense of place in the book really sells the action. What sort of reaction have you had from readers in the Seattle area?

A: I’ve had a few people harass me about the use of Portland in its role as an urban city in proximity to Seattle. Mainly Portland residents. They all ask why I didn’t use Vancouver, and I tell them because when you say “Vancouver,” to a local, their immediate question is: “Which one?” (Vancouver, WA, or Vancouver, B.C.) The really silly thing is that this a regionalism, because the moment you go outside the Pacific Northwest and say, “Vancouver,” referencing a metropolitan area, everyone thinks of Vancouver, B.C.

When I was first drafting LIGHTBREAKER, I was living in Eugene, OR, and I would drive up for writing weekends in Seattle—passing through Portland every time. So, for me, Portland is the obvious choice for nearest big city other than Seattle. We still have family in Eugene, so the Portland pass-through happens once or twice a year, including the requisite stop at Powell’s.

Markham’s house, in the original version of LIGHTBREAKER, was on Cherry, between Second and Third. It’s a white building. Still there, and I still think about it as his place when I go by, even though he’s completely itinerant in the released version of LIGHTBREAKER.

Ravensdale used to be a small town on the map, and I thought it was so far from downtown Seattle. Recently I realized I drove through it while taking the scenic route back to where I live. It’s now within commuting distance of Seattle, but it had always struck me as being out in the wilderness when I tried to find a suitable place for the first test of the theurgic mirror.

Q: You’re currently working on the next book in the Codex of Souls, HEARTLAND. What can fans of Markham expect in the next adventure (and beyond)?

A: The idea is to do two-book cycles. Each pair has a set-up and resolution that is contained enough that new readers can pick up all the odd numbered books and not feel like they’ve missed too much. They have, but they won’t be plunked in media res like they will be with HEARTLAND. And, when they go back and catch up, there will still be new things for them to discover.

HEARTLAND, as you can see from the teaser at the back of LIGHTBREAKER, takes Markham to Paris where he confronts the Watchers and addresses the issue with the death of the Hierarch. In ANGEL TONGUE and its unfortunately still-untitled sequel, he returns to the States and deals with the other fallout from the end of LIGHTBREAKER (and we do fun things with crop circles, the number stations, pre-civilization linguistics, and the floating head of Baphomet).

Books 5 and 6 will pick up threads left over from HEARTLAND, and take him to South America, Egypt, Nepal, and somewhere in the South Pacific where bad things will happen on an aircraft carrier. There will be monsters, probably. Books 7 and 8 will go back to some old history between when he left Paris (prior to LIGHTBREAKER) and the start of LIGHTBREAKER, and deal with the whole underground occult artifact smuggling side of things. I’ll probably have finished reading all the Crowley books by then, so I’ll get that out of my system. Then, Books 9 and 10 will address what happened in the final chapter of LIGHTBREAKER as well as tying up the remaining threads from HEARTLAND, Book 4, Book 6, and Book 8.

Theoretically. It’s a bit sketchy for the last few right now. Though, I know what the cover art is for Book 10 already. I just have to convince Chris McGrath to do it when the time comes. I think it perfectly sums up the series to that point, and I just need to move some pieces around a bit to make sure everyone is in the right place.

Q: You write to music, and in an interview with the podcast Writers and Their Soundtracks, you revealed your LIGHTBREAKER soundtrack. How’s the HEARTLAND soundtrack shaping up?

A: The anchor song is a Fields of the Nephilim song again: “She,” also from the Mourning Sun album. I was starting to think about the epigram for the book and, even though I knew “She” was the Fields reference I wanted to use, I hadn’t realized how perfect an early couplet of the lyrics were to the whole book. So, bonus!

The other song that’s definitely in place is “Hole To Feed,” off Depeche Mode’s latest record (Sounds of the Universe). Much like how Covenant’s “Greater Than The Sun” ended up summarizing how I felt about LIGHTBREAKER (which isn’t the same as the songs that were the thematic thrust of the book), “Hole To Feed” plays in my head right at that point where Markham and Marielle realize, in the aftermath of HEARTLAND, what’s left of their relationship.

Other than that, it’s mostly stuff I’ve been listening to a lot while I’ve been writing the book (Die Warzau, Gothminister, Garden of Delight, Rammstein, Laibach, Ulver and various side-projects, Lacuna Coil, Within Temptation, Therion). I haven’t had a chance to really sort through some atmospheric mood pieces yet.

Q: Markham also appears in “Wolves, In Darkness,” a serialized novella at codexofsouls.com. For readers who are on the fence about LIGHTBREAKER, is this a good introduction to the world of LIGHTBREAKER?

A: I wrote “Wolves, In Darkness” to try to do two things: one, introduce the back history between Antoine and Markham a bit, as it may seem a bit oblique in LIGHTBREAKER (neither of them really wants to talk about it). It doesn’t contain any spoilers for LIGHTBREAKER, really, but it’ll give you a better understanding of why those two are pissed at each other. And two, it is back story that introduces some of the major players in HEARTLAND.

I know. Cheating. Sucking you in as an intro to the world, and then making you come back again later before you read HEARTLAND. I won’t even go into the trick with the “teaser” in the back of LIGHTBREAKER.

Q: You’re reading at San Francisco’s Borderlands Books this coming Tuesday. What do you have in store for your audience?

A: I’ll probably read “How I Came To Magick,” which is Markham’s manifesto and is intended as an introduction to the world-view and an explanation for why I opted to not go the usual route with vampires and werewolves and what-not. Sharp-eared listeners will probably catch the fact that the voice of Markham in it is a post-LIGHTBREAKER Markham, so calling it an “introduction” is sort of a lie.

There are a lot of those: a sort of lie. The working title of Book 3 was THE BOOK OF LIES for a long time, and if it wasn’t for the fact that it runs counter to the titling schema we’ve fallen into, I’d be real tempted to use it for Book 4.

Q: Finally, since Night Shade Books is running a sale right now, what are some other Night Shade titles you’d recommend readers order along with LIGHTBREAKER and their HEARTLAND preorders?

A: Any of Liz Williams’ Detective Inspector Chen books they don’t have, of course. Richard Kadrey’s BUTCHER BIRD. Walter Jon Williams’ IMPLIED SPACES. I’m looking forward to Tim Lebbon’s BAR NONE, Jay Lake’s MADNESS OF FLOWERS, and Seamus Cooper’s THE MALL OF CTHULHU myself.

Mark Teppo is the author of Lightbreaker and Heartland (forthcoming). He will be appearing at San Francisco’s Borderlands Books (866 Valencia Street) on Tuesday, June 16 at 7pm. You can learn more about Mark at Mark Teppo (dot) com.

3 Comments | Posted in Editorials, lightbreaker

Gahan Wilson’s Introduction to Clark Ashton Smith, Volume 4

Ross E. Lockhart | March 24th, 2009

Introduction to Clark Ashton Smith, Volume 4: The Maze of the Enchanter
By Gahan Wilson

Clark Ashton Smith’s works have always stirred me to the bones. His writings are both meticulously rendered and totally unabashed, his writings can be outrageously grotesque or exquisitely delicate or both simultaneously and without any clashing whatsoever. They are really and truly wonderful.

It took a lot of luck and considerable effort for me to track them down and delight in them, but once I finally came across the first I knew he was the real thing.

I was, frankly, an odd little kid who was always lured by the fantastic and the bizarre. I remember the thing I loved the most about the yearly visit of Barnum and Bailey’s big circus to Chicago was the freak show and I would drag my father to its tent even though I knew he hated it.

Of course I also loved the acrobats and the band and the lion tamers, but they all had chosen to become what they now were whereas the grotesquely huge or absurdly tiny or horribly distorted or otherwise drastically different people of the freak show were born that way and had somehow managed not only to accept their condition fully and without reservation, they had the guts to stand on a platform before throngs of regular sized, regular looking folk and make it work for them.

I started my search for this kind of strangeness in art with the Sunday strips, mostly Dick Tracy with his ugly villains, but soon expanded the hunt by quietly plucking magazines of DC Comics from the magazine racks of the Evanshire Drugstore in Evanston, Illinois and reading them for free with my small, bare elbows resting on the cool marble counter of the soda fountain while—on the really good days—I spooned and sucked away whole chocolate sodas as, with equal enthusiasm and greed, I read about the early doings of Superman and Batman and their multitudes of spectacular fiends and loved every crowded panel.

After that I wandered further afield to the tiny little newsstand lurking beneath the elevated train’s Main Street Station in order to collect and soak up science fiction pulp magazines with their shamelessly gaudy covers featuring green and tentacled alien monsters which were all inexplicably but universally attracted to voluptuous Earth girls who had lots of curly hair and looks of horror on their faces.

I won’t pretend I didn’t enjoy all of this but it turned out to be merely a gentle introduction to the glorious day when I worked up the nerve to go to a large and legendary newsstand a whole bus ride further away which was said to carry all kinds of usually unavailable magazines and my eyes widened and my mouth fell open and joy flooded my heart when I spotted and began to thumb through my very first issue of Weird Tales Magazine, a publication unashamedly and even proudly devoted to being creepy, and my life was never quite the same again.

Weird Tales was, for a good part of Clark Ashton Smith’s life, his major source of income. It’s very true the relationship between Smith and the magazine was ever tricky and uneven and that its eccentric and autocratic editor, Farnsworth Wright, was guilty of highhandedly insisting on many alterations and eliminations which were hurtful to both the works and their creators (do note that the producers of this series of Smith’s manuscripts have worked scholarly wonders to correct as many of these ill-advised “corrections” as possible) but without that same editor’s initial OKs on Smith’s stories the great bulk of the tales in these marvelous Night Shade collections would never have been written. Life is complicated.

One very important, if somewhat odd, requirement about creating really good fantasy is that it must be solidly based on reality and though Clark Ashton Smith was about as romantic as a romantic could get and very gentle with his fellow humans, he was also an astute and occasionally merciless viewer of life and his species and their many failings and his stories and his stories are very often wise teachings as well as entertainments.

I suggest, if you are a Smith beginner, it might be a good idea to start your reading of this book with its title tale—“The Maze of the Enchanter”—as I believe it is a particularly good example of the bizarre startlements, subtly unveiled richnesses and the deeply ironic humor of a great, eccentric artist in top form who is enjoying himself enormously.

At the end of this unabashedly affectionate salute to a man to whom I owe so much I would like to leave you with a story about Clark Ashton Smith which I deeply treasure. I don’t know where I read it, doubtless in something printed by Arkham House, one of Smith’s most true blue supporters, possibly in the little magazine good old August Derleth put out for some years toward the end.

A group of Smith’s fans had written the author to ask if he would be kind enough to let them visit him while traveling in the West and he not only wrote a note saying he’d be delighted to do so, he drew them a little map showing them how to make their way to his secluded cabin.

They were driving in their car, close to their goal, when they came to a fork in the narrow road which was not indicated on the map and they stopped and were puzzling what they should do next when one of them rose in his seat and pointed out the figure of a man climbing down the mountain slope to their left. They peered at him and saw that he was carrying a sign set on a small post. The sign was shaped like an arrow and it pointed at the man’s back and it had CLARK ASHTON SMITH written on it in big bold letters. Of course Smith was on his way to stick it into the ground at the intersection.

I don’t know about you but this story warmed my heart when I first read it, and it still does now that I write it out.

Introduction © 2009 by Gahan Wilson. Reproduced by kind permission of the author.
As published in Clark Ashton Smith, Volume 4: The Maze of the Enchanter
This edition of The Maze of the Enchanter © 2009 by Night Shade Books

4 Comments | Posted in Editorials

Nominate Night Shade Books For Prestigious Awards! (Hugo Awards Edition)

John Joseph Adams | January 24th, 2009

The 2009 Hugo Awards nomination ballot is now online. Deadline for nominating online is February 28 (paper ballots must be received by February 28).

In order to nominate for this year’s award, you have to have either been an attending or supporting member of last year’s Worldcon (Denvention), or you have to register as an attending or supporting member of this year’s Worldcon (Anticipation) by January 31.

If you just want to nominate, choose an adult supporting membership ($55 Canadian, about $44 US dollars). Otherwise, buy an attending membership. If you’re not sure if you want to attend, you can buy a supporting membership now, so that you can nominate, and then upgrade your membership later to a full attending membership if you decide to go to the convention.

Already registered? Go and nominate your favorite Night Shade titles!

Here’s a list of our works that are eligible in the various categories.

Novels

Shadow of the Scorpion by Neal Asher

Incandescence by Greg Egan

After the Downfall by Harry Turtledove

Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams

Novelette

“Judgment Passed” by Jerry Oltion (Wastelands)

“How the Day Runs Down” by John Langan (The Living Dead)

“I Begin As I Mean to Go On” by Kage Baker (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“Elegy for Gabrielle, Patron Saint of Healers, Whores and Righteous” Thieves by Kelly Barnhill (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“Beyond the Sea Gate of the Scholar-Pirates of Sarsköe” by Garth Nix (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“Araminta, or the Wreck of the Amphidrake” by Naomi Novik (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“Pump Six” by Paolo Bacigalupi (Pump Six and Other Stories)

“The Hero” by Karl Schroeder (Eclipse 2)

“The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm” by Daryl Gregory (Eclipse 2)

“Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” by David Moles (Eclipse 2)

“The Rabbi’s Hobby” by Peter S. Beagle (Eclipse 2)

“Skin Deep” by Richard Parks (Eclipse 2)

“Ex-Cathedra” by Tony Daniel (Eclipse 2)

“Fury” by Alastair Reynolds (Eclipse 2)

“Your Blood” by Leslie Claire Walker – 10,000 (Electric Velocipede 14)

“Child of Scorn” by Corey Brown  – 8,000 (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“Destroyer of Worlds” by Claude Lalumière  – 7,600 (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“Strains of the Lost Oktober” by Darren Speegle  – 7,700 (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“The Sidewalk Factory: A Municipal Romance” by Robert Freeman Wexler (Psychological Methods to Sell Must Be Destroyed)

Short Story

“Avast, Abaft!” by Howard Waldrop (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“Boojum” by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“The Nymph’s Child” by Carrie Vaughn (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“Castor on Troubled Waters” by Rhys Hughes (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“Captain Blackheart Wentworth” by Rachel Swirsky (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“Voyage of the Iguana” by Steve Aylett (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“The Whale Below” by Jaime Blaschke (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“We Sleep on a Thousand Waves” by Brendan Connell (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“Cold Day in Hell” by Paul Batteiger (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“68˚06′N, 31˚40′W” by Conrad Williams (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“Pirate Solutions” by Katie Howenstine (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“Skillet and Saber” by Justin Howe (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“Ironface” by Michael Moorcock (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“Pirates of the Suara Sea” by Eric Flint and David Freer (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

“Michael Laurits is: Drowning” by Paul Cornell (Eclipse 2)

“Night of the Firstlings” by Margo Lanagan (Eclipse 2)

“Elevator” by Nancy Kress (Eclipse 2)

“Exhalation” by Ted Chiang (Eclipse 2)

“The Seventh Expression of the Robot General” by Jeffrey Ford (Eclipse 2)

“Truth Window: A Tale of the Bedlam Rose” by Terry Dowling (Eclipse 2)

“Invisible Empire of Ascending Light” by Ken Scholes (Eclipse 2)

“Hermit Crabs” by Elissa Malcohn (Electric Velocipede 14)

“Perfect Tense” by Lisa Mantchev (Electric Velocipede 14)

“The Last Tiger” by Tracie McBride (Electric Velocipede 14)

“Recipe for Survival” by Sandra McDonald (Electric Velocipede 14)

“Stepsister” by Melissa Mead (Electric Velocipede 14)

“Sashenka Redux” by Jennifer Pelland (Electric Velocipede 14)

“No Bubblewrap for Little Guys” by Sara Saab (Electric Velocipede 14)

“Them” by Michelle Scott (Electric Velocipede 14)

“The Artificial Sunlight of Memory” by D. E. Wasden (Electric Velocipede 14)

“#1” by Leslie What (Electric Velocipede 14)

“Bull” by Sharon E. Woods (Electric Velocipede 14)

“Waiting at the Window” by Erzebet YellowBoy (Electric Velocipede 14)

“Trades” by Olivia V. Ambrogio (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“A Plague of Banjos” by Jayme Lynn Blaschke (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“Sallie’s Price” by Terry Bramlett (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“Unreal Estate” by Sheila Crosby (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“The Dragon’s Tears” by Aliette De Bodard (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“Detours” by Catherine Dybiec Holm (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“Season of the Long Now” by Robert J. Howe (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“Two Coins” by Alex Dally MacFarlane (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“Partita for continuo” by Michael Neal Morris (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“The Tree Reader” by Timothy Mulcahy (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“The Oldest Man on Earth” by Patrick O’Leary (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“The Floating Order” by Erin Pringle (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“A Doom of My Own” by Alistair Rennie (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“Now You See her” by J.C. Runolfson (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“Sitting Round the Stewpot” by Patricia Russo (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“Timesink” by William Shunn (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“The Devil Wears Combat Boots” by Leslie Claire Walker (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

“Notes on the Dissection of an Imaginary Beetle” by Jonathan Wood (Electric Velocipede 15/16)

Editor, Short-Form

Jonathan Strahan (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Vol. 2, Eclipse 2)

John Joseph Adams (Wastelands, The Living Dead)

Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

John Klima (Electric Velocipede)

Editor, Long-Form

Jeremy Lassen

Professional Artist

Bob Eggelton (Shadow of the Scorpion)

David Palumbo (After the Downfall, The Living Dead)

Donato Giancola (Eclipse 2)

Scott Altmann (Fast Ships, Black Sails)

Dan dos Santos (Implied Spaces)

John Berkey (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Vol. 2, The Dragon Never Sleeps)

Claudia Noble (Pump Six and Other Stories)

Daniel Kvasznicza (Wastelands)

Fanzine

Electric Velocipede

1 Comment | Posted in Editorials

Locus Looks at Eclipse Two

John Joseph Adams | November 28th, 2008

In the December Locus, Gardner Dozois reviews Eclipse Two: “The bulk of the stuff in the book is good solid no foolin’ core science fiction,” then goes on to cite his favorites as Stephen Baxter’s “Turing’s Apples,’” Alastair Reynolds’ “Fury,” and Karl Schroeder’s “The Hero.”

In the same issue, Gary K. Wolfe, meanwhile, cites Ted Chiang’s “Exhalation” and Peter S. Beagle’s “The Rabbi’s Hobby” as his favorites.

No Comments | Posted in Eclipse 2

Greg Egan on Incandescence

John Joseph Adams | August 25th, 2008

Tell us a bit about Incandescence. What’s it about?

A million years from now, the galaxy is divided between the vast, cooperative meta-civilisation known as the Amalgam, and the silent occupiers of the galactic core known as the Aloof. The Aloof have long rejected all attempts by the Amalgam to enter their territory, but have permitted travellers to take a perilous ride as unencrypted data in their communications network, providing a short-cut across the galaxy’s central bulge. When Rakesh encounters a traveller, Lahl, who claims she was woken by the Aloof on such a journey and shown a meteor full of traces of DNA, he accepts her challenge to try to find the uncharted world deep in the Aloof’s territory from which the meteor originated.

Who are the main characters?

One of the protagonists, Rakesh, is a distant descendant of humans. He’s lived for a thousand years in his home system, but now he’s decided to become a traveller.  His problem is that he can’t decide where he wants to go; because the emotional cost of being separated from your family and community for thousands of years is so high, it seems too frivolous simply to go sight-seeing, so he’s spent the last century hanging around at a node in the interstellar transport network waiting to hear about a truly worthwhile destination.

The other protagonist, Roi, is an alien living inside a world called the Splinter.  Her culture knows very little about its own history, and she is initially content to spend her time in a communal work team tending the food crops.  But then she meets a male called Zak who is trying to understand why things have different weights in different parts of the Splinter, and her curiosity begins to grow.

What’s the genesis of the novel–what was the inspiration for it, or what prompted you to write it?

I was interested in writing about an alien culture that arrived at the laws of physics by a very different route than the one we took. In our culture, our understanding of gravity was completely dependent on astronomical observations, particularly the motion of the moon and the planets. I thought it would make an interesting challenge to write about a culture that had no easy way to make those kinds of observations, and so had to work things out another way.

Most authors say all their stories are personal.  If that’s true for you, in what way was this book personal to you?

The only sense in which it was personal is that I’m just as fascinated by general relativity as Zak and Roi, and I’m always looking for new ways to think about what it means.

What kind of research did you have to do for the novel?

I spent about six months in all studying the equations in general relativity that describe the exotic situation that the Splinter is in.  Then the real challenge was finding ways in which a culture with technology no more sophisticated than humans possessed in the Middle Ages could come to understand what we think of as one of the pinnacles of modern science.  It turns out that general relativity really does have some very simple and accessible ideas at its core, and — at least in an environment like the Splinter — you really can unravel its secrets with very primitive technology.

What are you working on now?

My next book is a comedy about the geopolitics of virtual reality, set in the very near future.

* * * * * 

For more information about Greg Egan and to read excerpts of Incandescence, visit our Greg Egan mini-site.

2 Comments | Posted in Editorials

Walter Jon Williams on Implied Spaces

John Joseph Adams | July 1st, 2008

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

3 Comments | Posted in Editorials

A View From Corona #20 — John Berkey, a Remembrance

Jeremy Lassen | May 5th, 2008

“The solitary, steep hill called Corona Heights was black as pitch and very silent, like the heart of the unknown. It looked steadily downward and northeast away at the nervous, bright lights of Downtown San Francisco as if it were a great predatory beast of night surveying its territory in patient search of prey.”

- Fritz Leiber, Our Lady Of Darkness

One of the many pleasures I take from my duties at Night Shade is working with the artists who do our covers. I’ve worked with first time illustrators and industry masters who’s work I’ve been seeing and admiring for years. I’m not an artists, and I’ve never been to art school, but I’ve been forced to play at being at art director — Necessity is the mother of all bitches… More often then not, being the art director is an absolute joy. Sometimes, given my limited budgets, It can be quite embarrassing. I once received a response to a cover query that was positively vitriolic. It made clear to me in no uncertain terms that low offers like mine were part of the problem in the industry. That I was at once insulting him, and destroying the industry with low ball offers that make it impossible for working illustrators to make a living. I was part of the problem, and I should be ashamed of myself!!!

I thanked this artist for his quick response (He responded to my email query in less then 12 hours) and went about my day. Because what can I say? I know that while his response may have been bit overblown, there was a core truth to it… that artists are terribly underpaid. I didn’t disagree, but in this one case, and in too many others cases, there isn’t a lot I can do about it. I don’t have a German conglomerate backing me… I don’t have a cash-cow-title from a mega-author that pays for the rest of the year’s production schedule. What I do publish often has very tight margins, and I have real limitations as to what I can offer. I’m not trying to be cheap. I’m just trying to stay in business. But my tight margins are not a working illustrators problem. They need to make a living, and I don’t begrudge them when they can’t work for what I can pay.

A similar embarrassing moment happened when I approached John Berkey to do the cover for the Hammer’s Slammers omnibus series. John didn’t really do email, but I was able to get him on the phone, and I pitched him the project. John had a very sweet high pitched voice, with a slight crack in it. And he didn’t have a Minnesota accent per say, but as I grew up in Minnesota, the lilt and cadence of his voice seemed very familiar, and reassuring. He asked a couple questions about what I wanted, and when I told him what I could pay, he said to me in the kindest voice possible “Well, it should be more then that, shouldn’t it?” This response… the complete opposite of the above vitriolic response, was far more painful then the angry email. I’ve let down and insulted this very nice, grandfatherly figure who’s work is some of the most influential in the field.

I instantly agreed with him. I stammered out something to the effect of: “It IS to low, Mr. Berkey, and I do apologize for that. But this project is a relatively niche item (A hardcover omnibus of a series that is still in print in mass market paperback) and I just don’t have any more room in my budget. It’s the best I can do for this title.” He considered this briefly, and agreed to work on the project. He didn’t lord it over me, or rub my nose in it by telling me how much of a favor he was doing for me. He just did it. He was doing me a favor by agreeing to work on the Slammers projects, but he was a perfect gentleman about it. He turned in a cover on a very short deadline, and perfectly matched the visual models that I had provided. Working with him on the second Slammers cover was an even more rewarding experience, as we had a better time frame, and the nature of the first piece gave me the idea for the look and fell of the series — I knew exactly what I wanted, and John turned in a beautiful rendering of a scene from the book.

I got to work with John again, when we reprinted Glen Cook’s Passage at Arms. The original cover was a John Berkey painting, and I felt it would still work, with a new design, and John agreed to let us re-use it. Given the uniqueness of John’s work, I felt that his style was a great way to “brand” the Glen Cook science fiction novels we were publishing. There was an unpublished Berkey piece in Spectrum that just screamed “Space Opera” and John agreed to let us use it for Cook’s The Dragon Never Sleeps.

He also give me a selection of other pieces to choose from for The Years’ Best Fantasy Vol. 2. During his time, I started asking John about the Slammers Volume Three cover, and he very gamely agreed to another tight deadly. But as this deadline approached, I called his home and learned that he had suffered a fall and wouldn’t be able to finish the work. I assured his wife that this was no problem, and wished him a speedy recovery. His wife told me that the last few paintings he did caused him a great deal of physical pain to do, and that he just wouldn’t be up to doing any more, no matter how things went. John’s inability to continue painting, either commercially, or for his own pleasure was awful to contemplate, and the flurry of materials that John sent me in the preceding year took on a whole new layer of meaning.

I was sad about this turn of events, but felt very lucky to have had a chance to work with one of the most influential SF artists of all times. The fact that he was warm and friendly, and a wonderfully sweet man was an added bonus. Though I shouldn’t have been surprised by his death last week, the news did catch me off guard, and filled me with a great melancholy. The genre has lost one of its truly wonderful and unique imaginations. Though he lived a relatively long life, I can hear the words he spoke to me when we he first agreed to work on a Night Shade cover: “It should be more, shouldn’t it?” It absolutely should, John. It should. Death is always too soon.

It is my great blessing that I was able to work with him, and it is my duty to bear witness, and remember him. The cover of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Two features a previously unpublished work by John. Though the book is already printed and bound, and you won’t find it anywhere in the book, I’d like to dedicate the volume to John and his work. He was truly a giant who walked the earth – A giant who’s work casts a long shadow over the science fiction genre, and a giant-hearted man who will be missed.

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