Concept Sci-fi

Interview conducted by Gary Reynolds (September 2008)... 

Everybody does the long intro! In a single sentence, can you tell us how you got into writing?

Lawyering imprisoned me in airports longer than a bag of airline peanuts, with too little commercial fiction good enough to pass the time, so I started writing my own.

But the ubiquitous Starship Troopers comparisons prompt a detailed response about that one.

Orphanage deliberately rewrote Starship Troopers as a literary homage, so I’ve invited the comparisons myself, for better or for worse. Luckily, mostly for the better.

As a thirteen year old boy, I thought Starship Troopers was Truth, and powered body armor with a backpack of A-bomb rockets was so cool.  After 9/11, I thought Heinlein’s long-forgotten (by me) story of a young man coming of age in the infantry was again relevant.  But my intervening life experience, especially my stint as a "citizen soldier," left me at odds with aspects of the book.

First and foremost, Heinlein’s mudfoot infantryman learned to fight for duty, honor and freedom.  Heinlein was a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, who was discharged with tuberculosis after a few years of peacetime service.  Foot soldiers do believe, in reflective moments, that they fight for duty, honor, and freedom.  But the truth is that a soldier who crawls back into a burning tank to save his buddy isn't reciting the Declaration of Independence, or humming God Save the Queen.  GI heroes risk their lives not for flags or against tyrants, but for each other.  I think Heinlein would agree with Orphanage on that point.  But he chose to teach a different lesson in his book.

Second, Starship Troopers was too much a book that chose to teach a lesson.  Heinlein brilliantly broke the storytelling rule "show, don’t tell," and made us enjoy it.  In an action novel where one slow paragraph could wrinkle an editor or reader's nose, Starship Troopers filled twenty-one pages with classroom debates in History and Moral Philosophy. By comparison, the main alien enemy, the Bugs, appeared onstage for a total of only ten pages in the entire book. Orphanage is marginally longer on combat, but is deliberately shorter on lectures.

Third, Heinlein had a 'Fifties engineer's faith in technology.  His people might goof, but his technology always worked as smoothly as a slide rule.  Grit never jammed a too-complex Heinlein rifle.  No Heinlein Hummvee ever got blown up because it was underarmored.  No Heinlein spaceship was incinerated by a detached chunk of insulation.  Orphanage reflects the truth that soldiers too often go to war with fallible technology, improvise to survive, or die trying.

Fourth, Starship Troopers placed women and minorities in groundbreaking roles for its time.  But it aged imperfectly. Heinlein's women flew starships, but batted their eyes at grizzled drill instructors to wangle a pass, like Lucy Ricardo.  Orphanage's female characters are truer to contemporary sensibilities.

None of those nits make Starship Troopers less classic. But they drove me to retell the story.

Can you describe your writing process? How do you go about writing a novel, from initial idea through to final editing? Are you a planner or do you prefer to improvise?

Compared to most writers, who are planners, I’m a duct tape improviser.  I begin with an idea of where my story will end, and some idea of who will live it and how. But I don't know exactly what has to happen next.  If I know too much, writing it down becomes drudgery. For me, drudge writing yields dull product. If you don't believe me, try to read the memoranda and briefs I cranked out during my lawyer years.

For me, a novel begins when an idea pops into my head.  That idea may be a compelling scene, a dialogue bit, or the realization that a film would have sucked less if only...

Sometimes that idea careens around in my head as unavoidably as a runaway bus.  For hours, or days, I can’t make notes fast enough.  Among writers, that affliction is as common as a cold.  Heinlein's wife, Ginny, recalled that in 1949 she offhandedly mentioned to him the idea of a human orphan raised by aliens. Her idea so inflamed Heinlein that he wrote for hours, generating fourteen single-spaced pages of notes.

Typically, for me, that runaway bus of ideas overturns in a ditch before it becomes a complete novel. The ditch may be a supervening obligation, like another book that I owe my publisher. The ditch may be realizing that Chapter One isn't funny, after all.

Similarly, Heinlein’s runaway bus, his "man from Mars book" overturned often over the next thirteen years, while he wrote other books and repeatedly aborted that one.  In 1962, it was published as Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein’s most recognized work.

Many authors say that once their main idea is in place they just pound ahead until they complete a first draft, and rewrite only once they're finished.  Such never-look-back writing avoids time wasted on self-editing sections that eventually get cut.  I, however, reread and rewrite at least the previous day's work as I go.  It gets me back in the groove.  Also, for me perhaps more than others, there is no good writing, only good rewriting.  I still do a cover-to-cover hard-copy rewrite before I turn in, though.

What are you currently working on?

Job One is correcting structural flaws in the turned-in version of Jason Wander book 5, Orphan’s Triumph.  Jason and the Slug War have matured, and there are surprises to manage.  Orbit will publish Triumph both in the U.S. and U.K. in Spring, 2009.  Another active project is one of those overturned runaway buses.  It’s a future-set thriller, kind of dark urban fantasy without vampires, rather than military SF.  In Winter, 2007, the idea distracted me for a while from the fifth Jason Wander book.

What can we expect to see from you in the future? Will there be more of Jason Wander after Orphan's Triumph?

A third work in progress is another story set in the Jason Wander universe.  It has a military component. I think it's very cool, but to say more could be a spoiler.  The market will dictate what sees publication.

If you could offer one piece of advice to someone currently writing their first novel, what would it be?

Write well. That will make your stuff better than eighty percent of contemporary commercial fiction, and better than a surprising percentage of contemporary "serious," i.e. largely unread, fiction. How to write well? Learn and live by Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, and/or the more contemporary and conversational On Writing, by Stephen King.

Batman and I have never been seen together. Draw your own inferences.

Both the UK and US editions of the Jason Wander series are published by Orbit. You can find out more from Orbit here.  For further information on Robert, why not visit his website.