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Sorry. I don't know anything about those temples, or sanitaria, or inscriptions. I've scarcely even heard of Asclepius. So I don't see how I could have been influenced. And it's not like my thematic obsessions don't have plenty of *other* sources.... <wry grin> (10/01/2008)

I don't doubt that the gradual shift in my (entirely personal) emphases when I'm writing is an effect of what I've learned in life: I've learned X, therefore I'm more inclined to strive for Y. But I'm much more conscious of trying to integrate the "lessons or morals" of my work into my life. For better or worse, I've always imagined what I am *not*. Later (sometimes much later) I try to benefit from the things that my imagination has tried to teach me. But I don't think that there's any way to learn--directly--from someone else's experience. We're all too different. I may (or may not) be able to "get it" when writer X describes his/her experience; but that doesn't make the implied lesson relevant to my own life or work. As I keep saying, relentlessly, we all have to figure it out for ourselves. That's life. Unearned knowledge isn't wisdom: it's merely dangerous. (10/01/2008)

I can't answer a message like this. It's a bit like asking, "Why haven't you stopped beating your wife?" There are so many underlying--and unwarrented--assumptions that no answer is possible. Just one example. Why do you think that I would consider giving up my own work for the sake of someone else's? Does that sound reasonable to you? But I'm posting this because I want to make a more general point. I wouldn't agree to work with someone else's characters, settings, themes, or stories, even if you held a gun to my head. That's what hacks are for. (Don't get me wrong. Being a hack can be a perfectly honorable profession. It simply isn't *my* profession.) Now, if you held a gun to the head of someone I love, I would naturally agree to anything. But I would be lying. Unashamedly. Stalling for time until I could take a whack at you. The very idea of trying to do someone else's work fills me with existential nausea. (10/03/2008)

Whenever someone asks me where to start, I always suggest picking up one of my short collections. And I usually add something like, "You can find out whether you like what I do without making it your life's work." Specifically? Perhaps "Unworthy of the Angel" and "The Killing Stroke," just to get an idea of my, well, for lack of a better term, my range. Of course, I understand wanting the more complete involvement and satisfaction of a novel. But that only works if you *like* the novel. Hence my decision to push shorter works. (10/03/2008)

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Queen Damia. Of course. How could I have forgotten? (Does the passing of more than 25 years count as an excuse?) (10/03/2008)

As far as I know, you don't need my permission to write me (real or otherwise) into a story--as long as the story is clearly a work of fiction (which yours obvious is). Otherwise any form of satire would be impossible. (In contrast, if what you write is demonstrably intended as a personal attack, even if you call it fiction, you have a problem.) And I never want to interfere with other people's creativity. So from my perspective, you have nothing to worry about. (10/03/2008)

(But don't *spoil* anything. <rueful smile>) I've said on any number of occasions that I want my characters to have "dignity": reasons, motivations, a story of their own, the power to make choices. But there are a couple of obstacles that I don't know how to avoid. First, it simply isn't possible--even in a story as large as "The Last Chronicles"--to give all of my characters *equal* dignity. In some cases, I have no choice except to rely on--for lack of a better term--inference to supply whatever dignity is available. The second obstacle is inherent to the *kind* of story I'm telling here (one that confronts archetypes explicitly). This kind of story encourages, even benefits from, the reliance upon some comparatively "pure" characters: characters defined by one or two (very) strong traits rather than by the full complexity of--again for lack of a better term--real people. Take the Giants, for example. I like to think that they have individual differences. But their individual differences are small compared to their similarities as, well, as Giants. They are all clearly recognizable as Giants even when their individual names, descriptions, and experiences have faded. In a different kind of novel, I would see this as a serious weakness. In "The Chronicles," I consider it a strength. It allows me to concentrate my themes in ways that aren't available in other forms of storytelling. (10/11/2008)

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When I write--and when I rewrite--I work in *books*. I mean in physical volumes, not in structural subdivisions. Although "Mordant's Need" is structured in four units (called "books"), I wrote and rewrote the story in two phases, "The Mirror of Her Dreams" and then "A Man Rides Through". The same is true of "The Chronicles". A majority of the volumes are subdivided; but I worked (and work) on them in the same "chunks" used for publication. All of "The Runes of the Earth" until it's done, then all of "Fatal Revenant" until it's done, then you get the idea. And no, no one proofreads the GI questions for speling erors. I proofread my answers as best I can, but of course I don't catch everthing. (10/11/2008)

I can think of several answers. In no particular order: 1) The other characters (Giants, Lord Mhoram, etc.) *do* want to hear stories. Covenant and Linden just don’t want to talk. 2) I don’t want to bore the reader by spending pages on things the reader already knows. 3) Since the outer world is considered a reflection or externalization of the inner--an idea to which I cling even though I’m clearly in the minority--the other characters don’t *need* to know stories about Covenant and Linden. 4) Since pretty much all (or at least a huge majority) of the crucial actions take place outside Covenant’s and Linden’s “normal” lives, why talk about those lives? These books are already long enough without even more distractions from the main events. (10/19/2008)

Well, of course there’s the whole “unnecessary for the story” answer. But in addition, consider the implications if I had done something else. For example: why *exactly* do you suppose we name the days of the week the way we do? Clearly different day names have different meanings; but the underlying organization of those names is not only religious but predominantly Christian. “On the seventh day He rested” and so on. So what “underlying organization” could I have devised for the people of the Land--without imposing either a centralized religion (on the Land’s history if not on the Land’s present) or a centralized government (again, an historical one if not a present one)? No, the whole idea quickly becomes a conceptual morass; and a morass of a kind which violates the spirit of what I was trying to create. Admittedly, naming moons, months, seasons, or years might not have been quite so messy. But why bother? Where’s the benefit to the story? (10/19/2008)

Good God! What dictionary are you using? That’s a *whole* lot more immortality than I ever expected to achieve. (10/19/2008)

OK, you got me. I am completely bumfuzzled by the sheer perseverance of this recurring question. Why in, well, Someone’s Holy Name (at the moment, I can’t think whom to invoke) do you care? Apparently a number of people do (although the GI as posted probably doesn’t reflect that fact). But I can’t imagine why. And since I can’t imagine why…. However, please feel free to speculate as much as you want. Broadly speaking, it seems that “warrior cultures” conform to one of two basic paradigms: 1) the women are warriors as well, indistinguishable in that regard from the men (although they may serve different functions in combat), or 2) the woman are rewards, and as such, their lives have very few features in common with the men. Anyone want to guess which paradigm the Haruchai are more likely to prefer? (10/19/2008)

If you’re going to include “lorewise creatures,” I suppose the (purely speculative) answer is probably yes. But the circumstances of the Council of Lords were never as simple as mere curiosity and diligence or even total dedication might suggest. Once the Lords finished cleaning up after their recent troubles (no easy task in their case, considering what happened to Revelwood), they doubtless resumed their studies. But much had been lost. And it only makes sense that each new Ward would be more difficult to discover than the one before it. And--well, who knows how far they got before the Raver’s subtle manipulations began to take effect? But once those manipulations kicked in, the whole situation changed. (After all, why would Lord Foul or any Raver *want* the Lords to regain more of Kevn’s Lore?) So maybe several Wards *were* found. And maybe the Clave contrived to distort them, or re-lose them outright. As far as I’m concerned, we’ll never know. My only real point is, sure, the Lords had plenty of time to go Ward-hunting--but LF (or the Ravers, if LF was still in his version of hibernation) also had plenty of time to think of ways to thwart them. (10/19/2008)

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I probably shouldn’t answer questions like these. They reveal too much about me. But I’ve been sitting in this aiport so long I’ve forgotten where it is, and my judgment is impaired, so what the he*l. If I were the kind of person who felt flattered by “earnest eagerness,” my mother probably would have drowned me while I was still a puppy. No, whenever someone asks me about my “progress”, my reflexive reaction is, Well, there’s anOTHer reader I’m disappointing. <sigh> I think I covered “posting chapters” earlier in the GI. I don’t have the legal right to make my work public without my publishers’ permission: after all, I did sign a contract with them--and I did so of my own free will. But I can’t reasonably ask my publishers for permission if they haven’t even seen (never mind approved, in the editorial sense) the material in question. So the next “first chapter” is still a long ways away. Or it’s a hard rain gonna fall. Or something like that. (10/19/2008)

I've been wrestling with this question for some time, mainly trying to figure out why I find such questions disturbing (in other words, trying to understand myself). Unfortunately, I can't claim that I've made any real progress. However, a few points are pretty obvious (if not actually *clear* <sigh>). It bothers me not at all that "The Chronicles" contain Creation Myths which appear to contradict each other--or which literally do contradict each other. Creation Myths reflect the people who tell those tales: the tales may or may not reflect any external "reality". In my own thinking, I don't grant the Elohim any more "authority" than anyone else. Their Creation Myth, like their understanding of the world in general, is no more true (or false) than anyone else's. Any Creation *must* contain the means of its own destruction. This seems so obvious to me that I hardly know how to explain it. Life would be impossible without death. My stories would have no power to engage people unless those stories also had the power to alienate people. And it seems inherently impossible for the finite to describe the infinite (hence the way religions always fall back on anthropomorphism, even though anthropomorphism falsifies what it tries to describe). Well, *all* the Creation Myths in "The Chronicles" are anthropomorphic. On some level, therefore, they are all false. And...and...none of this is relevant to my intentions in telling the story. ("I only invent what I need.") On the subjects that appear to confuse you, I haven't tried to provide more coherent information because I have no use for such information in my story. ** Hmm. ** OK, that last sentence may be somewhat misleading. Let me try again. In my view, *meaning* is created internally by each individual in each specific life: any attempt at *meaning* which relies on some kind of external superstructure (God, Satan, the Creator, the Worm, whatever) for its substance misses the point (I mean the point of my story). That, among several other reasons, is why the Creator has effectively vanished from "The Last Chronicles": I'm trying to tighten my thematic focus and keep it where it belongs. So when you ask me a question like, "Did the Creator actually create the Earth or just provide the circumstances for its creation?" my reflexive reaction is, WHA---? You've stepped so far outside the story I'm trying to tell that we are no longer speaking the same narrative language. (10/22/2008)

"What we have here is a failure to communicate." World-building requires small inventions as well as large, minor details and powers as well as major. If Earthpower is really the essence of the Land, then it must express itself in lesser ways as well as greater. But *unimportant*? Break out the cardiac paddles. I think I'm having an infarction. If you asked me to name just one thing that makes the Land worth writing about, I would probably pick the Wraiths. If you asked me to name just one thing from the Land that I would like to actually see in person, I would probably pick the Wraiths. *Unimportant*? I'm afraid you'll have to ask someone else. I can't get there from here. (10/22/2008)

What does anyone look at when their attention is absent from their circumstances? Thoughts? Memories? An idea suggested by something seen or heard? I suspect that every human being alive occasionally looks like he or she isn't paying attention. In Elena's case, I don't know because the story isn't written from her point of view. But it probably wouldn't be unreasonable to guess that she's thinking about what she intends to do with the Power of Command--or what she wants from Covenant. Or why. (10/22/2008)

I would rather be dead. In fact, just thinking about what following Favre's example would entail might kill me. <rueful smile> (10/23/2008)

There is, in a manner of speaking, less to this than meets the eye--for the simple reason that your understanding of what the word "thetic" can mean is more sophisticated than mine. I'm unacquainted with Husserl's thinking (although I recognize the rhetorical style <grin>), so I wasn't thinking in his terms when I used the word. (A word, by the way, which does occur elsewhere in "The Chronicles".) If I recall correctly (by no means a sure thing--and I'm on the road, so I can't check my sources), my dictionary defines "thetic" (adj.) as "deliberate or intentional," with the added connotation that the intention is inherent or fundamental to the noun being modified. So a phrase like "thetic fire" implies both choice (and after all, choice does define reality--on one level or another) and--for lack of a better word--aptness. Linden's use of Earthpower is both deliberate (she has a purpose, duh, as if you didn't know) and appropriate (her purpose suits the nature of the power she's wielding). Now. It isn't difficult to get from there to where Husserl is. But Husserl's elaboration of the concept isn't necessary in order to understand what I'm trying to say (and imply). And an overdose of Husserl could be misleading--at least in regard to my intentions. For example. Sure, you could say that when Linden uses Earthpower in Berek's camp she's "positing existence." But if you then went on to say that when she's NOT using Earthpower she's NOT "positing existence"--well, the ramifications would almost immediately become too messy to contemplate. In that (admittedly extreme) case, my use of the word "thetic" would lose its "thetic" quality. Meanwhile, back on less abstruse footing.... No one who "witnessed the salvific rampage of the Fire-Lions" *without health-sense* would have any way of knowing whether or not the rampage was "thetic". Are the Fire-Lions sentient? Do they act by choice ("positing existence"), or are they responding instinctively/reflexively/autonomically to someone else's choices? People with health-sense might be able to discern the presence or absence of choice: Berek's people, at that time in their history, could not. By contrast, anyone who even glanced at Linden would see that she was acting deliberately. (10/23/2008)

I'm tempted to say, "No, Covenant used a Mac." An oblique reference to an extended quotation from Douglas Adams much earlier in the GI. The real answer is probably more along the lines of, "How would *I* know? It isn't in the text." But I suspect (pure speculation) that the answer is no. Covenant doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who falls in love at first sight. And Linden--well, I doubt that Linden even knows what love *is* when her story begins. (10/23/2008)

I'm posting this as a matter of general interest. Personally, I didn't know there was (or is) such a thing as "progressive thrash metal". <rueful smile> (10/23/2008)

I'm sorry if the word "hack" gave any offense. I guess some (many?) people see a negative connotation I don't. Maybe I have too many friends who proudly call themselves hacks. Or maybe I'm just too aware that during many periods in human history all the best art was produced by hacks. The idea that artists who work to someone else's specifications for pay are somehow inferior is a comparatively modern notion. Regardless of connotation, however, shared world anthologies are a special case. Typically the writers who participate share in the *creation* as well as the use of their specific imagined world. That hardly fits the definition of "hack" as I understand the word. (10/25/2008)

Thank you. 1) I didn’t actually imagine that Com-Mine Station was orbitting at all--although it could be, I suppose. I was thinking more along the lines of a debris field that had not yet been captured by a gravity well. Certainly the emphasis on internal spin to generate g suggests a certain distance from any other significant source of gravity. 2) Huh? The whole point here is that the supplies were *stolen*. So if Angus and Bright Beauty are securely docked at Com-Mine the whole time, under effectively constant surveillance, when/how did Angus commit the crime of which he is accused? Nick had to stage the crime SOMEwhere to account for the simple *existence* of stolen supplies. (After all, if Com-Mine has no reason to think a crime has been committed, Security has no reason to search Bright Beauty.) How could he have staged that crime--on Com-Mine--in such a way that suspicion would naturally point to Angus? No, as far as I can see, the only way to convince Com-Mine that a non-existent crime has been committed is to stage the “crime” somewhere beyond the range of station surveillance. 3) It’s a bit embarrassing to admit that the idea of the Amnion came later. Remember that some years passed between the original drafts of “The Real Story” and my realization that the novella implied a much larger story. While I was first writing “The Real Story,” I naturally assumed that piracy is pretty much meaningless if there’s no market for stolen goods. But I didn’t think beyond that point until later. (10/27/2008)

[question and comments edited to save space] Considering that all of my characters are--in some abstruse sense--me, I suppose I cannot truly be objective about them. Or do anything other than love them. Certainly I give them my loyalty; I look at the world through their eyes; I think the way they do. And yet…. I’m still the distant “puppet-master” who created all these characters. I decide their personalities as well as their destinies. In some respects, there is no one who can be as objective about my characters as I am. So when I say that I am “so in love with Linden,” I do *not* mean that I’m blind to her flaws. I do *not* mean that I accept her reasoning simply because it’s hers. I do *not* mean that I consider her admirable in all her dealings. No. What I mean (or think I mean) is that I understand her deeply, I share her doubts about herself (they resemble mine) as well as her commitments (they also resemble mine), and I feel tremendous respect for the courage and toughness which enable her to hang in there against odds which would assuredly defeat me. What I mean (or think I mean) is that I wish I could *be* her. Or maybe what I mean is that Linden still needs me in a way that I find, well, endearing. OK, OK, I admit it: I’m not sure *what* I mean. <sigh> What does ANYone mean when they say they’re in love? And, just by the way, have I ever written about a character with whom I was *not* in love, however briefly? (Yes, of course I have. What kind of fool question is that?) btw, a trivia question for GI experts: can you tell when I'm answering questions in airports, or on airplanes? <sigh> (10/27/2008)

To my cost, I have no real knowledge of geology. Just a few smatterings of personal research. I’m like that, I suppose. I often become interested in subjects solely because they pertain to what I happen to be writing at the moment. When I start writing something else, I become interested in other things. But do I “impose realistic geological constraints” on my “descriptions of the Land?” That’s a different kind of question. As I’ve said, I don’t know enough about geology to impose “realistic” constraints. On the other hand, I do try hard to impose “reasonable” constraints. Part of my, well, philosophy of world-building is that within the general framework of my imaginative constructs I need to be as rational, practical, logical, and even mundane as I possibly can. (Not to mention consistent, about which I’ve already commented at length.) Hence my smatterings of personal research. I don’t really want or need to know everything a real geologist knows; but I would like to know enough to be *reasonable* in my creative efforts. (10/27/2008)

Please. We're talking about the movie biz, remember? This means two things (in the context of your message). 1) What does "a valid argument" have to do with anything? Hollywood rejected the "Covenant" proposal because of the ring. Of course, questions were asked. Is the rape the real stumbling block? Is leprosy? No, Hollywood replied. Over and over again. Who cares about things like that? Not us. We only care that the proposal is an *obvious* LOTR rip-off because of the ring. 2) Whether or not I've ever considered an idea like the one you suggest could hardly be less relevant. I've said it over and over again, and I'll keep saying it until someone believes me: I have absolutely no control over anything that does or doesn't happen in Hollywood. No one listens to me. No one cares what I think. This isn't personal. In Hollywood, money talks: everything else walks. So unless I have a few hundred million dollars to invest.... H*ll, I don't even have the power to say NO to a movie deal. Of any kind. My publisher holds the film rights: I don't. If you really want to see a "Covenant" film, talk to someone who has enough money to make things happen in the movie biz. (10/29/2008)

Well, there are the obvious antecedents. "Alice in Wonderland." "The Wizard of Oz." "The Chronicles of Narnia." Some Kurt Vonnegut Jr (I think). If my memory hasn't failed me, E. R. R. Eddison's "The Worm Ouroboros". A fair number of Tim Powers books ("The Anubis Gates" is one candidate). By some standards, King's "The Dark Tower" saga fits your description. And I'm sure there are others. Perhaps lots of others. I just haven't read them--or I can't remember them at the moment. (10/29/2008)