Crisis on Infinite Comics: Interview with Marv Wolfman

Marv Wolfman is one of the living legends of American comics, with remarkable works such as TOMB OF DRACULA, NEW TEEN TITANS and the astounding CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, which was a revolution in the field.

Here with us he will talk a little about his works and his partners, the process of character development in TOMB OF DRACULA and his favorite books these days.


***


CLÁUDIO FIGUEIREDO & OCTAVIO ARAGÃO: Could you tell us some background about CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS? How the idea started? Any influence by some literary Science Fiction?

MARV WOLFMAN: Pretty much everything has been said on Crisis. There were several problems at DC at the time. Sales were bad (they're bad now but the entire industry sales are bad) and Marvel readers wouldn't be caught dead reading DC comics. I felt, as did many, that although DC fans understood the multiple Earths perfectly and without trouble, it was a problem to attract new readers and possibly a sign of DC problem for the Marvel zombies. By simplifying the DC universe I believed we could attract new readers, which we did. Crisis was one of the first DC Comics (Titans being the other) that Marvel readers check out.


CARLOS MARTINHO: The DC Universe seem to be going through a sort of New Silver-Ageing, with concepts that the CRISIS helped to erase coming back under new guises. How do you see it?

MW: I think there's a schizophrenic feel at DC. Some of the books are very 2003 and some read like they were done in 1970. I have no problem with bringing back old stuff, but it needs to be made new as opposed to referencing it as something old. We should not be looking back that much.


CM: What is the secret plot device hidden inside CRISIS that could bring Barry Allen, The Flash, back to life?

MW: For the answer check out my website under Q&A.


OA: What's you literary influences and what's your favorite work outside the comics industry?

MW: I like reading history books. Non fiction. In fiction I prefer mysteries and such to adventure books.


OA: You have worked with some of the finest artists in America, such as George Perez and Gene Colan, among others. Who was your favorite partner and why?

MW: Impossible to answer. George could not have done Dracula half as well as Gene and Gene could not have done Titans half as well as George. Every artist is unique. But as far as partnerships go, Gene generally followed my stories and did tremendous, brilliant work with my plots, whereas after the first two years or so,George and I tended to work out the stories together. I'd come in with a rough concept then we'd plot it out together which made for great stuff.


OA: Your TOMB OF DRACULA is a masterpiece in the history of American horror comics. What's the secret to recreate the classic characters and make them appealing for the contemporary audience?

MW: All I ever read was the original Dracula novel. I had never seen any of the movies, so I was not influenced by anyone other than Stoker. I think that helped. Plus, I was given the freedom to do the kinds of stories I wanted to write. Also, my thought was the book took place in the 1970s when I wrote it. To write it like it took place in the 1870s would have been wrong. Lastly, I thought of the book as a series of character studies, and if you are true to your characters, everything else will work out, assuming, of course, a basic level of talent.


Thank you very much, Mr Wolfman!


More info about Marv Wolfman.

Mais uma palhinha da HQ de Para Tudo se Acabar na Quarta-Feira

Ei, esse aí é quem estou pensando? :-)

Ficción Argentina: Entrevista con Eduardo J. Carletti

A ficção-científica produzida na América Latina é profícua desde o fim do século XIX. Infelizmente, em plena era de Mercosul e Internet, os autores de países como Brasil, Argentina, Cuba, Peru e Uruguai ainda se encontram presos dentro de suas próprias fronteiras.

As paredes, porém, podem começar a cair e eis aqui um primeiro esforço nesse sentido. Eduardo J. Carletti é, além de conhecedor da ficção produzida na América hispânica, editor do excelente site AXXÓN, que procura mostrar um panorama bastante detalhado da produção de FC latina sem deixar de lado a vertente anglo-saxã.

***

OCTAVIO ARAGÃO - El especialista John Clute, en la ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION, indica una tradición rica de la CF de Argentina que se remonta a los trabajos de Macedonio Fernandez (1874-1952), Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937), Roberto Arlt (1900-1942) y Leopoldo Lugones (1874-1938). ¿Cómo es la situación de la CF en Argentina por estos días y qué escritores se destacan?

EDUARDO J. CARLETTI - La CF en Argentina sufre los mismos problemas que en otros países de Latinoamérica: es una temática despreciada por los editores. Además, las revistas que se publicaron, aunque incluían principalmente autores anglosajones, no tuvieron continuidad, aparentemente por razones comerciales (no fueron negocio para las empresas sus volúmenes de venta). En Argentina no hay ninguna revista comercial y en papel en este momento.

Esto es así desde hace varios años atrás. No hay colecciones de libros; todos llegan desde España y al precios demasiado altos. Las editoriales rechazan todo texto de CF, fantasía o terror que se presenta, incluso ignoran los que son de literatura en general.



Existen bastantes autores de CF, de diversos niveles. Tres veces autores argentinos ganaron el premio de novela de la UPC (Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya), que se considera el más importante en la temática de CF y Fantasía en habla hispana. Dos veces el ganador fue Carlos Gardini, que es, sin duda, el autor más importante de Argentina en la temática de CF. La siguiente vez fue Alejandro Alonso, un autor joven que comenzó publicando en Axxón (y aún aparece ahí) y que ha progresado enormemente en los últimos tiempos. Tenemos una autora muy importante, Angélica Gorodischer, que en la actualidad no sigue escribiendo CF, aunque de vez en cuando aparece algún elemento fantástico en sus trabajos. Otros autores de buen nivel y continuidad en la producción son José Altamirano y Sergio Gaut vel Hatman.


OA - Los libros de Jorge Luis Borges y Bioy Casares son muy conocidos en Brasil. ¿Ellos son influentes en la CF Argentina de la actualidad? ¿O los británicos son más que ellos?

EJC - La influencia es diferente. Los anglosajones nos influencian en las ideas y temáticas, mientras que los autores argentinos como Borges o Bioy Casares son un ejemplo de estilo y buena escritura. Sin duda, todo escritor que los haya leído desea lograr la sofisticación, pureza, simplicidad y calidad de texto de Borges o Bioy Casares.


OA - ¿La publicacción AXXON es la única opción de CF Argentina en la Web? ¿Y hay alguna otra publicacción fuera de la red?

EJC - Hay otros sitios de Argentina dedicados a la CF y Fantasía, aunque especializados más en el cine y los cómics (Quintadimension) y a la crítica literaria (Cuasar). Se pueden encontrar otros sitios más pequeños, menos visitados. No hay publicaciones en el mercado de impresión en papel, ni revistas ni libros, ni hay espacios dedicados a la CF dentro de publicaciones o colecciones de otra temática o periódicos, ni hay programas de TV que dediquen espacio a estos temas. A veces se hacen películas (cine) de CF en Argentina, con resultados bastante buenos.


OA - ¿Hay una pulp fiction Argentina? ¿O sus historias son más influenciadas por una CF más erudita?

EJC - Hubo una revista llamada Más Allá que se publicó mensualmente durante cuatro años en Argentina que tenía todas las características de los pulps, más que nada en lo físico, en su estética externa. Pero publicaba una selección de relatos, es decir, que se publicaba lo mejor de lo que había aparecido en los Estados Unidos en una decena o más de revistas. Por esta razón tenía muy buen nivel de calidad en los textos. Luego de eso la influencia fue la colección de libros Minotauro, a través de la cual se conocieron en Argentina las mejores novelas y colecciones de cuentos del mercado anglosajón.

A continuación se contó con Nueva Dimensión, una revista lujosa de origen español, que duró varios años y llegó irregularmente a Argentina. También contenía selecciones de cuentos y novelas cortas de Estados Unidos, Inglaterra y de algunos países más, incluyendo de autores argentinos. Luego se publicaron aquí la revista El Péndulo --de extraordinaria calidad gráfica y literaria-- y la revista Minotauro, muy similar (eran dirigidas por la misma persona).

Estas influencias son las que generaron la producción literaria local, que en general tiende a un lenguaje pulido, situaciones más sofisticadas e historias complejas en lo humano. Pocas veces se ve CF puramente de entretenimiento o acción. De hecho, ningún editor se dedicaría a este tipo de material, y desconozco si sería bien recibido por el público.

OA - ¿Y en relación a la CF de otros países de América Latina, cuáles tienen una tradicción digna de relevancia?

EJC - No puedo opinar sobre Brasil, que pertenece obviamente a América Latina, no por falta de interés sino por la barrera del idioma. Otros países de buen nivel de calidad y cantidad de producción son Cuba y México. Incluso diría que Cuba más que México. En los demás países se produce material, pero en menor cantidad y con textos menos mencionables.

Un abrazo,
Edu =:-))
Eduardo J. Carletti
ecarletti@axxon.com.ar

Science at Heart: Interview with Robert J. Sawyer

The science-fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer was not published in Portuguese yet. Also, Clute & Nicholls Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is of no avail to learn more about this fine author. His entry is fairly small. For the bible was published in 1993, while Sawyer’s first novel and his only mention in it, Golden Fleece (told from the standpoint of a AI named JASON, who run a giant starship) was published in 1990. From 1992 on, this 43-year old Canadian author published fourteen novels and one collection of sf stories, Iterations.

The QUINTAGLIO ASCENSION trilogy was Sawyer’s first great success. Its first novel, Far-Seer (1992) was followed by Fossil Hunter (1993) and Foreigner (1994). The Quintaglio are intelligent biped dinosauroids who live in the habitable moon of a gas giant and have reached humanlike levels of civilization. Those three absorbing novels show the crucial scientific discoveries of the Quintaglio and of how those discoveries change their worldview, from a religious culture to a more science-oriented one. The author display considerable knowledge on the scientific method and history of science in those novels.

Sawyer insisted on dinosaurs (albeit not intelligent ones) in his next book, End of an Era (1994), an innovative time travel dinosaur novel cum aliens, cum alternative timelines and an Earth’s second moon.

In order to prove to himself he was not just a “dinosaur guy” kind of sf author, he wrote The Terminal Experiment (1995), a novel about the scientific proof of the existence of the human soul; but also a novel about marriage and relationships. This was the first of several novels where Sawyer proposes very serious metaphysical questions in witty and enjoying ways. The Terminal Experiment was included in the prestigious Easton Press series MASTERPIECES OF SCIENCE FICTION.

In Starplex (1996), a hard science fiction novel full of mind-bending ideas, Sawyer proposes artificial wormholes that open the Milky-Way to humanity. Then he wrote Illegal Alien (1997), his own crime-procedural-cum-alien-suspect novel.

Speaking of metaphysical questions, in his novel Flashforward (1999), the author uses a science experiment that accidentally launches the conscience of everyone on Earth to the future — people are "flashed forward" 21 years, experiencing several minutes of the future — to discuss the existence of free will. Also, in his excellent and controversial Calculating God (2000), an alien being arrives in Earth and says “Take me to your paleontologist!” In this novel, Sawyer discusses the very existence of God by contraposing the points of view of believing alien Hollus and atheistic human paleontologist Thomas Jericho. These two characters spend most of the novel debating whether God exists or not, in a very perceptive way, and were always trying to convince each other.

Sawyer’s most recent success is THE NEANDERTHAL PARALLAX trilogy [Hominids (2002); Humans (2003) and Hybrids (2003)]. In spite of being hard science fiction proper, these novels can be read also as alternative history (or, more correctly, alternative natural history), as they propose a point of divergence circa 40,000 BCE: the debatable quantum event that ignited self-consciousness inside Neanderthal brain, instead of in the human one. Thus these three novels can be found in Uchronia (www.uchronia.net), the alternative history world site. Hominids deservedly won the 2003 Hugo for best novel. Barast (civilized alternative Neanderthal) physicist Ponder Bobbit suffers an accident in a quantum computer and “falls” inside our timeline. In this first novel, Bobbit had to prove he is a bona fide Neanderthal, while in his own alternative timeline his partner Adikor Huld is accused of having murdered Bobbit. Sawyer created a Neanderthal world and timeline from scratch. He was extremely successful in proposing a very alien, albeit humanlike advanced society which is entirely atheistic (until the first contact with humans, Neanderthals lacked the very concept of God); ecologically correct, almost crime-free, and sexually unorthodox, to say the least. Sawyer proposes a very clever and original kind of marriage in the Neanderthal’s world society, implying both heterosexual and homoerotic unions in different times of the month. In Humans, Bobbit and human geneticist Mary Vaughan consumate their passion and love. Also, the Neanderthal physicist and ambassador begins to question his beloved’s religious beliefs. Hybrids shows the official sanction of Bobbit & Vaughan relationship and the problems of conjugal adaptation of a human female in a Neanderthal world, where a woman is supposed to be with his male partner only four days a month.


—oOo—


GERSON LODI-RIBEIRO – First you wrote QUINTAGLIO ASCENSION, a trilogy about intelligent saurians making scientific discoveries in their alien world. Then, you wrote End of an Era, a very original time travel dinosaur novel, and meanwhile you also wrote the short story "Just Like Old Times", about a serial killer who is sentenced to live his last hours inside the skull of a tyrannosaur. As you said in your Locus interview, there was a time, circa 1994, when you were in danger of becoming a sf writer specialized in dinosaurs. Even so, being a dinosaur lover myself, I must ask: is there any chance of another novel or short story on dinosaurs? Or, do you feel you had already exhausted this sf theme?

ROBERT J. SAWYER – I still dearly love dinosaurs, and I'm sure I'll go back to writing more about them. My US publisher, Tor, is about to reissue the Quintaglio Ascension novels -- Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter, and Foreigner. If these do well in their new editions, I'll probably right more Quintaglio books; if not, I'll find some other way to explore dinosaurs through science fiction.

I'm very fortunate to have a couple of friends who are among the world's leading dinosaur experts: Phil Currie of Canada's Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology and Mike Brett-Surman of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. They both help keep me up-to-date on the latest discoveries, and I'm sure I'll find new stories to tell about dinosaurs as time goes by.


GERSON LODI-RIBEIRO & OCTAVIO ARAGÃO – Flashforward is about the existence of free will, while in other novels you discuss the existence of the human soul (The Terminal Experiment) and of God Himself (Calculating God). Even in your recent story published in the January/February 2004 issue of ANALOG, SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT, “Shed Skin”, you deal with the possibility of the existence of the soul inside an AI built over the mental pattern of a living human being. It seems that, as an author, you are deeply concerned with the existence of metaphysical entities that were always crucial to humankind, albeit invisible and only disputably real. What new metaphysical topics do you intend to grapple with in your next novels?

RJS – As a matter of fact, my next novel, ACTION POTENTIAL, is essentially an expansion to novel-length of the short story "Shed Skin." You're right that I am indeed truly fascinated by the metaphysical, by what constitutes reality, and what, if any, meaning there is to life. But I'm a scientist at heart: I want to answer these questions empirically, through experiment, and with replicable results. I'm firmly convinced that there's no question that can't be best answered by the scientific method.

These days, I'm particularly fascinated by consciousness. During much of the last century, "consciousness" was a dirty word in brain studies – we didn't know how to account for it, or even what it was, so we just ignored it and hoped it would go away. But attempts to explain it away – ranging from Daniel Dennett in CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED to Francis Crick in THE ASTONISHING HYPOTHESIS – simply are not satisfying. They'd don't account for the subjective reality we all experience. Much more interesting to me are the theories of people like Susan Pockett (THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS: A HYPOTHESIS) and Roger Penrose (SHADOWS OF THE MIND). I'm trying to come up with my own synthesis of what consciousness really is. I don't say I'll succeed – but I'm having a great time trying!

My novel after ACTION POTENTIAL is WEBMIND, about the world wide web itself gaining consciousness; it'll be a first-contact novel, but between us and an emergent intelligence that we never planned to create as such.

Other SF writers are interested in consciousness, too: Greg Egan of Australia is fascinating. But the difference between Greg and me is simple: he writes for those who already know the latest cutting edge notions, and I write for those who don't, but want to learn about them in an entertaining way.


GLR – Speaking of Calculating God, this novel echoes a concern Carl Sagan displayed at the end of his novel Contact (1985), in proposing the scientific proof of the existence of God. However, like your main human character, Jericho, Sagan was himself an agnostic who died of bone marrow disease. On the other hand, preeminent paleontologist Stephen J. Gould was suffering from cancer at the time you wrote Calculating God, just like Jericho. Presuming Sagan and Gould were your sources of inspiration to build Jericho, should we consider this character a homage to these two scientists?

RJS – You're absolutely right that Gould and Sagan were my inspirations for the character of Tom Jericho, and yet "homage" may be the wrong word. Both Gould and Sagan were extraordinarily arrogant men. Sagan's TV series COSMOS has nothing but him in it -- instead of bringing on Frank Drake to explain the Drake equation, Sagan explains it. It's almost unbelievably hubristic. And Gould had a habit of using cheap rhetoric to push arguments, rather than thoughtful reflection. I was lucky enough to get to see them both lecture in person -- Sagan once, Gould several times. There's no doubt that they're fascinating people, and, of course, their arrogance probably provided much of the strength that helped them to face their terminal diseases. But would a lesser mortal -- someone like you or me -- remain so devoutly agnostic, if that's not an oxymoron, in the face of one's own impending death? I don't know -- but that's what I wanted to explore. So Tom Jericho isn't an amalgam of Sagan and Gould; rather, he's a more humble, less arrogant -- and, I think, more typically human -- person struggling with the same tragic fate that Gould and Sagan faced.


GLR – By the way, in his review to Skeptical Inquirer, Barry Seidman rose a controversy, when he claimed that Calculating God's intelligent design theme would be making an apology of Creationism. He even alleged you would support pseudoscientific ideas. As a skeptic and evolutionist yourself, how do you feel about that accusation and what's your viewpoint on the intelligent design thesis in the real life?

RJS – Barry Seidman did the skeptical movement an enormous disservice with that review, but it was typical of so much of what passes for skeptical thinking these days. Rather than report honestly, Seidman deliberately misrepresented me and my work -- solely so that he could demonize me and make himself look clever. The skeptics have become as bad as the religious fundamentalists, and they are using the same techniques. We need a protestantism of skepticism, a reborn movement that goes back to what skepticism is supposed to be: looking with a critical eye, not a closed mind, at astonishing results.

My own take is simple. Do I believe that eventually we will be able to simulate reality so exactly that the simulation will be indistinguishable from the original? Of course; there's no scientific reason that we won't be able to do that. Do I believe that someday we might be able to create baby universes is the laboratory? Sure -- again, I believe in the great power of science. Given those two assumptions, can I categorically state that we don't live in a simulation created by some more advanced being than ourselves? Can I categorically state that we don't live in a baby universe created by some experimenter in a parent universe? No, I can't deny either of those possibilities. Do I think that we might be able to find proof that either of these is in fact the case? Yes, indeed, such proof might be uncovered via the tools of science. Intelligent design is the school of thought that most closely coincides with the above views: we might live in a designed universe, there are some scientific hints that this might be true, and they are worth exploring. What astonishes me is the vehemence -- the almost religious fervor -- with which the Barry Siedmans of the world feel compelled to assert that this cannot possibly be true.


GLR – North American editors use to state that nowadays is easier to sell a sf trilogy than a standalone novel. THE NEANDERTHAL PARALLAX you just concluded was your second trilogy (and the first one you wrote as a trilogy from the beginning). Any plans to write a new trilogy in the next few years? By the way, considering the huge success of this second trilogy, are you intending to write new fiction in that same fictional universe (that is, besides your short story "Black Reflection", already published in thematic anthology In the Shadow of the Wall, organized by Byron R. Tetrick)?

RJS – There's no doubt that I'll revisit the Neanderthals. With HOMINIDS winning the Hugo Award, it's clear there's an audience for these books. Just as Orson Scott Card finds himself drawn back to the universe of his Hugo-wining ENDER'S GAME, I'll be drawn back to the Neanderthal universe repeatedly over the rest of my career.

That said, I do want to take a break from the Neanderthals. I do think that, artistically, standalone novels are much more satisfying than series books, and I want to right several more before I go back to the world of Ponter Boddit and the rest of the Neanderthals. My publisher, Tor, has already asked me if I'd like to do more Neanderthal books, and my answer has been,
"Not right now."

Also, I'm sure I will develop another series or trilogy at some point. Although I take the art in what I do very seriously, I recognize that I am writing in a commercial-fiction category. Readers like series; I'd be a fool not to give my customers what they want.


GLR – In THE NEANDERTHAL PARALLAX, you propose a Barast technological civilization more sophisticated than ours, in spite of Barasts had never developed agriculture and lacked the very concept of God and they don't have any formal religious practices (lucky guys, indeed!). Of course, in your fine speculation Neanderthals are not exactly humans. According to your fictional hypothesis, Barast brains lack the very biological hardware that would allow us humans to feel religious experiences. However, considering that religion seems to be an universal in early human societies and that agriculture was already developed independently several times by humans, would you think that a real-life human technological civilization could rise to our level without any knowledge of religion or agriculture?

RJS – Actually, there's no good evidence for any Neanderthal religion. We started practicing religion 40,000 years ago; the Neanderthals went another 10,000 years at least, aware of us and our practices, without ever adopting religion of their own -- so I was simply extrapolating forward that archeological reality. That said, the job of science fiction isn't to write about the most likely thing; rather, it's to write about the most interesting thing that can't be disproved by contemporary science. Postulating a race without religion lets me comment on the effects religion has had on us; it's a thought experiment, and it lets us see ourselves in ways that would otherwise elude our perception. That's worth doing.

On agriculture, it's true that it may have been invented at least twice -- in the Fertile Crescent 10,500 years ago, and possibly in Meso-America, as well. But those are warm climates; Neanderthals were cold-adapted, Northern people. Today's northerners, including Canada's Inuit, have no agriculture, because it's impossible in their climate. But again, my goal is not to argue that agriculture wasn't likely to emerge; rather, it is to isolate and remove it from the thought experiment so that we can recognize what a decidedly mixed blessing it has been, giving rise to disease, class structures, slavery, the drug trade, and more. Again, it's an exercise worth doing -- and that's why I love being a science-fiction writer.



=====
ROBERT J. SAWYER, Science Fiction Writer

Best Novel HUGO AWARD winner for HOMINIDS
Best Novel NEBULA AWARD winner for THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT

http://www.sfwriter.com

Correio Devolvido: Utilizador Desconhecido - Poema intempoliano de Jorge Candeias

E eis que Jorge Candeias nos apresenta um tipo de produção inédita - até onde eu saiba saiba - a respeito da Intempol. Um pequeno poema, que, ao menos para mim, sugere uma estrofe com refrão poderoso para uma possível canção da Intempol.

******

"Correio devolvido
utilizador desconhecido"
assim fui impedido
de fazer um pedido
e assim fui coagido
a tornar-me bandido
Hoje estou escondido
num lugar subtraído
do universo expandido
num mundo perdido

Mas não faz mal
tenho comigo
um cartão cronal

Cosmic horror and some other tips - Interview with F. Paul Wilson

He writes books, games and comics. He also had his first commissioned work bought by John Campbell, the Godfather of American Science Fiction, and a movie was based on his first novel, The Keep.

Today, alongside well-succeded writers like Dean Koontz and Stephen King, he is considered a master of SF, horror and fantasy, but in the begining things weren´t so easy at all.

Dear Intempol readers, here is F. Paul Wilson (the "F" is for Francis) in his first Interview for a Brazilian audience.

*************************************************

OCTAVIO ARAGÃO - You sold your first short story back in the 60's to no one other than the legendary John W. Campbell. How was this experience and how (if that happened) the greatest Golden Age SF editor contributed to your work?

F. PAUL WILSON - I'd been submitting SF stories through the late 60s, but made my first sale in 1970. For years I received those preprinted slips: "Thank you for your submission but unfortunately it does not suit our editorial needs at this time." I could paper a wall with them. I submitted a story called The Cleaning Machine to Analog; Campbell rejected it as he had all others before it, but this time he told me why. I was ecstatic. Not only had I heard from the Father of Modern Science Fiction, but he'd commented on my work (for which I will forever revere his memory.)

For the next year he continued to reject my stories, but always told me why. I'd never had a writing course - I was going by touch and instinct - and Campbell's letters gave me an education in storytelling.

Finally in the spring of 1970 he accepted "Ratman" and sent me a check for $365 - a nickel a word. I was a first-year medical student at the time. My wife Mary was pregnant. We had next to no money coming in. The check was a windfall. We danced around the apartment.

Oddly enough, the check arrived with no comment. That was typical of Campbell - if he agreed with you, he had little or nothing to say.


OA - Your very first novel, The Keep, was originally a stand alone. Later you decided that - alongside with three other novels - it was part of a bigger literary series that you named as The Adversary Cycle. Just like comics writer Marv Wolfman, when he wrote DC's New Teen Titans and Crisis On Infinite Earths, you claim that it was unintentional and that "maybe you'd been working on a link-up subconsciously all along". When was the point that you saw the possibility and decided to link all novels? Did this decision helped commercially all the books involved in the Cycle?

FPW - The connection point came when I was outlining Reborn.

Let me say that I like doing connected stories - future histories or separate stories sharing the same milieu, like the Village of Monroe on the Long Island Gold Coast - but I had no intention of doing a series. The first three novels of the cycle were intended as stand alones. Completely unrelated. Wm. Morrow rejected The Tomb because it was too unlike The Keep. And The Touch was like neither.

I then went to work on a novel called The Chadham Clone. It too was meant to be a stand-alone, with no relation to The Keep. I'd started it years before, right after The Keep, but it didn't gel. (That's why there's such a gap between The Keep and The Tomb.) I wanted it to look like a Rosemary's Baby or an Omen but actually be something different (just as The Keep looks like a vampire novel for a while, but it's not). I wanted to use an evil entity other than the tired old Antichrist, but who?

Then I realized I already had that entity in Rasalom from The Keep. I needed a suburban setting convenient to Manhattan, and realized I already had one in Monroe where The Touch took place. I became intrigued by the challenge of tying those two novels, and The Tomb as well, into Rasalom's reincarnation, bringing the books full circle.

It worked so well that I must have had something going on in my subconscious while I was writing the first three.

Things grew from there. The result was an outline for a 1,000-plus-page novel. Nobody was going to publish that, so I broke it down into a trilogy ( Reborn, Reprisal, and Nightworld) and sold it that way. I'm still amazed at how well everything fit in.

Commercially it wasn't a big deal. Four of the six novels are out of print (although Borderlands Press is bringing them back as a matched set of signed hardcovers).


OA - We can see your hands in every possible media, since novels to comic books, passing through TV scripts and even PC games. Do you believe that literary SF & Fantasy is doomed and, in time, will migrate to the new media? If not, how can the written version of the genre conquer a younger audience?

FPW - Other media have certainly stolen parts of the reading audience, but I think there will always be a place for the printed word, even if it's on an e-book screen.

Younger audience? Damned if I know. But I believe there'll always be a certain percentage of the population who'll prefer to do their own imagining rather that allowing a director or game designer to do it for them.


OA - The 1983's movie version of The Keep had little or nothing to do with your original novel. How would you do it (who would you choose to direct it, who would star it and who should write the script - if not yourself), if you had the opportunity to produce a new version?

FPW - Of course I would like to write the script myself, but in all honesty I doubt I'd do the best job. Craig Spector did an excellent script for The Tomb (still in development hell) and a fellow named Chris Morgan has done some excellent rewrites. I'd also like to see what David Schow could come up with.

Director? I think Ridley Scott could do a killer version. And I was impressed with Doug Liman's Bourne Identity.

As for stars, I haven't the faintest. How about a nightmare cast instead: Adam Sandler as Glaeken, Will Ferrell as Woermann, Queen Latifa as Magda, Ben Stiller as Kaempfer, and Danny Devito as Rasalom. (Someone call 9-1-1! I need CPR!)


OA - From Lovecraft to Carl Barks, your list of influences is a cast of superstars, but outside the SF&F genre, who do you like? Which mainstream authors are *quintessential* and why?

FPW - James Ellroy (American Tabloid is indescribably good). I will buy anything by Jeffrey Deaver because he never fails to surprise me. Steven Hunter because I like his guns and stoic characters. And Carl Hiaasen because he's always fun.


OA - Last question: Peter Straub, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and obviously, yourself. Which one could match the masters of old like Poe, Hawthorne, Bierce or Lovecraft, and why?

FPW - Although my style is nothing like his, the cosmic horror of my fictional universe is much like Lovecraft's. Straub's and Hawthorne's styles would seem a good fit. King and Poe share many qualities, especially in their short fiction. That leaves Koontz and Bierce, who aren't such a bad match when you take into account their senses of humor.


OA - Thank you very much, Mr Wilson, for this fantastic chat!

Review: Phillip Ellis Jackson’s Timeshift, by Octavio Aragão

We are in the year 2416, the United States are united no more (i.e.: splited in two) and, after a dark period of wars and plague, humanity are again back on the rails, rebuilding civilization.

Three big institutions - B.E.T.A., T.I.M.E. and P.A.S.T. - are responsible for the control and organization of the newest great technological treasure of Earth: the Beta Lights, a system that can scan a person (called a "jumper") and, after transforming him in "data with conscience", project the jumper through time, to the past, to record events that could help the world to rebuilt much of humanity's lost history.

Soon this recordings hits the public eye and people begin to pay to watch history as it really was. The past becomes a great theme park for those who looks for fun and research: a dinner with King Henry VIII; an evening with the last president of the old USA; the 1920's war gangs of Chicago... nothing is impossible, no place is forbidden, no secret is hidden.

And, of course, crime is no more profitable.

Yeah, because if you commits a killing or robbery, all the authorities have to do is to send a jumper to the past and record your image with the gun in your hands... that's an unquestionable proof.

But even yet an assassination takes place, the suspect is put behind bars and finally executed - the man is forced to "jump" through the Beta Lights, becoming some kind of 'ghost', watching the world until his atoms finally vanish.

The hero, a young researcher of B.E.T.A. named Paul Thorndyke, suspects of an alteration in the Beta Lights recordings of the crime and then, side by side with his girlfriend and three other fellow scientists, he begins to uncover a huge plot that threatens the structure of the upcoming society.

Well, now my point of view.

The concept of a "past recorder" is fantastic and all the 'science' around that is a masterpiece of Hard Science Fiction thanks to Jackson's detailled description. All the "Hard" aspects of the book are well built and really convincing. From the "jump suit" to the technology needed to record the past is all very well written.

The plot axis of a crime in a society where crime is virtually impossible reminds me of the great "Demolished Man", by Alfred Bester, but here is the basic problem of TimeShift, IMHO: the sociological side of the story is a little flat.

Let's see our world, for instance. When WWII ended, Jaques Bergier, who was hidden in a bunker in France, went back to Paris, a city he hasn't visited since the beginning of the war. The 'new' Paris he saw seemed to him like a science fiction scenario because of all the new technology that was everywhere. Even in the small things, like new neologisms, or little gadgets like cigarrette lighters, technological toys were all around, changing the world and the people forever.

So, the TimeShift people survived the greatest war ever saw and a hideous plague. They witnessed the most fantastic scientific revolution, the creation of the Time Machine, that changed their lives in a way never done before and - at last but not at least - they could uncover all the great mysteries of the world. With the Beta Lights tech we could see what killed the dinosaurs, what sank Atlantis, what happened to Adolf Hitler, who killed JFK, who Shakespeare really was... it is absolutelly astonishing that not even one of these questions pop up in the heads of the scientists and researchers of the three big companies which controls the Beta Lights. Ok, they have a great problem to solve, to find the cure to "The Ash", a lethal desease that killed most of the world's population, but if people have time to spend with historical movies and curiosity to make arqueologic expeditions to the ruins of old museums, why nobody even think about the "great mysteries"?

In one of the great scenes of the book, when a jumper watches the presidential room in the past and witness the last President of the USA chatting with his daughter, what do we see? A great man and a perfect child. Great people taking big decisions but with heart, with a true feeling of "right". Well, nothing against a great leader and a perfect family but when we remember Clinton and the "Lewinsky affair", comes to mind that a President is a man with his qualities and bad days too. So, besides the fact that it's a great scene, with a believable setting, the characters seems fragile.

Another point that took my attention was the total absense of the notion of a world outside the rebuilt USA. The “world”, all the society, is just the North American world. Nobody seems interested in using the Beta Lights to see what happened to other countries.

But the last 50 pages are a real blast! Things happens so fast in such a glorious action/movie style that seems impossible not to take the next book to see where all that great ideas will end.

I will not tell you what happens in the end, but I must say: it's huge. And we have a great-great-great showdown scene with "tarantinean bullits" flying all over... the times (and my friends knows how I like those kind of scenes)!

A very good book. Not a masterpiece, but a great reading.

***

And now, Phillip Ellis Jackson's words about my review:

Octavio

Thanks for the very generous comments. I've always maintained you can't go wrong when GOD likes your work!

Book #2 is out, and is already ranked 15,000 out of 1.75 million on Barnesandnoble.com. [Anyone who wants an autographed copy please send it (with an IRC for return postage) to my brother's company below. Be sure to print clearly the proper spelling of your name, and tell me if you want anything special said].

Dan Jackson Economists.com
5500 Democracy Dr.
Plano, Texas USA 75024


Regarding some of the points you raised:

"With the Beta Lights tech we could see what killed the dinossaurs, what sank Atlantis (if it really existed), what happened to Adolf Hitler, who killed JFK, who Shakespeare really was... it is absolutelly astonishing that not even one of these questions pop up in the heads of the scientists and researchers of the three big companies whichcontrols the Beta Lights! Ok, they have a great problem to solve: to find the cure to "The Ash", the lethal desease that killed most of the world's population, but if people have time to spend with historical movies and curiosity to make arqueologic expeditions to the ruins of old museums, why nobody even think about the "great mysteries"? Or do I miss something?"

** The discovery of this process is relatively new. Some of these questions have presumably been answered before Book 1 begins (although I don't give any details). The "ash" which started out as a nuisance 300 years earlier, has mutated into a deadly killing machine within the last 50 years. [There is more on the ash in book 2, and we learn the true origin of it in book 3].

Therefore, I begin the story with the attempt to discover the origin of the ash, since now it is a serious problem. "Jumps" to look at other historical events still occur, but at a reduced level. As you read books 2 and 3 (book 2 is out now, book 3 is due out in 2003), you'll see the constant competition between science, history and entertainment for more "jump time".

"In one of the great scenes of the book, when a jumper watches the presidential room in the past and witness the last President of the USA chatting with his daughter, what do we see? A great man. A perfect child.
Great people taking great decisions but with heart, with a true feeling of "right". Well, nothing against a great leader and a perfect family but when we remember Clinton and the "Lewinsky affair", comes to our mind that a President is a man with his qualities and bad days too. So, besides the fact that it's a great scene, with a believable setting, the characters - IMHO - seemed fragile."

** You raise a good point about the one-dimensional character of President Haley you see in book 1, but keep in mind the scene was meant to do 4 things: Establish Haley as a president and good man (compared to Witherspoon, his successor); through his child show how the fragile world is as it is about to be changed; tell the "history" of the world following his assassination; and introduce the ash. [Haley is in 50% of book 3. There you'll learn all about him: his strengths and weaknesses.] As for the comment about Clinton (which, as a Republican, I very much agree with!), look at President Drees of the 24th century. He is willing to sell out the memory of Jim Robenalt for political advantage. As the other books proceed, you'll see a more balanced view of politicians. I used to work in Washington, and know how slimy they are!

"Another point that took my attention was the total absence of the notion of a world outside the rebuilt USA. The world, all the society, is just the North American world. Nobody seemed interested in using the Beta Lights to see what happened in other countries."

** Unfortunately, you got me here. One bad habit we Americans have is looking at the world as a subset of our country. I even made poor Canada --- the country of my mother's birth --- a U.S. colony.

Thanks again for the great review. (And your English was superb).

Phil

Phillip Ellis Jackson, Ph.D
Literary works: http://www.scifi-jackson.com