Interview with Ian Cameron Esslemont

Q: In the same vein as the previous question: Were there any scenes that you both thought would make readers' jaw drop, and in the end the response was not what you guys expected?

Speaking partially for Steve here I can say that, yeah, that happens all the time. Writer’s expectations for various scenes, or characters, are rarely squarely met. Kruppe, for example. How can anyone not like Kruppe? What I can say for my own work so far is that I have been very gratified by the reactions to some scenes that worried me, Temper’s flashbacks, for example.

Q: Will the Malazan Enyclopedia be a joint project between yourself and Steven?

For a time Steve and I exchanged notes on an Encyclopedia Malazica. Now, I’m much more happy to be able to continue writing the fiction! The encyclopedia will have to wait. Who knows, perhaps one will be built on-line. It could be tackled as an on-going project. In fact, I’ve just found out about one now being assembled Wikipedia-style.

Q: Honestly, do you believe that the fantasy genre will ever come to be recognized as veritable literature? Truth be told, in my opinion there has never been this many good books/series as we have right now, and yet there is still very little respect (not to say none) associated with the genre.

No, never. (Just joking). Time, that’s all that’s needed. Once enough time has passed since a fantasy work’s début it suddenly becomes safe for critics and scholars to treat it "seriously". This is true for other genre work as well, such as detective or mystery. Thinking about it though, that is not absolute. J.K. Rowling’s work has met with immediate "serious" treatment - there are even conventions supporting "serious" panels and paper presentations. But it’s formally children’s literature so it possesses that extra layering of protection, or dissociation, for any critic or scholar who might dare to handle it professionally.

Q: Have the plotlines diverged much since Steven began writing the series, or did you two have the entire plot more or less figured out from the very beginning? Were any characters added or further fleshed out beyond your original intention? Have you made any changes to your initial plans during the course of the writing of the series?

It’s true that Steve and I sketched out roughly where everything went but that skeleton is nothing compared to the flesh and blood of what is being realized. Of course new characters and events appear in every book and of course neither he nor I foresaw any of how it would in fact "look." The "feel," I think, is what we had down pretty firm - I maintain again that Malaz is mostly about its feel -- it’s a mood, a tone, and an atmosphere … Malaz is fantasy noir.

Q: Are you surprised by what little support fantasy writers receive from the Canadian media? Steven Erikson and R. Scott Bakker rank among the best fantasy authors out there, yet both Canucks appear to get very little recognition in their own country.

I am not in the least surprised by the lack of support, or even recognition, that genre writers receive (or rather fail to receive) in Canada. To be brutally brief, the Canadian arts industry shares the national hang-up, that of a massive inferiority complex, which manifests itself as an equally massive superiority complex. To compensate, the arts industry (a crown corporation), embraces and supports only that which it perceives as the "high" art pursuits - Literature, capital L, in the case of writing. Thus anything that smacks of less than the highest artistic pursuit in writing, such as detective fiction, mystery writing, science fiction, in short, "genre" writing, is avoided like the proverbial plaugue of crass low-browism that has been traditional in literary criticism to dismiss it as. There is room for hope that eyes may be opened though; Dickens used to be dismissed as low-brow entertainment for the crude undiscerning masses.

Q: Is there any particular piece of worldbuilding that you are especially proud of?

That is tantamount to asking which element of Malaz am I the most proud. Well, of course I have to answer that I get a kick out of it all. If I had to answer with anything I would say that if Malaz were an artifact picked up from a field or found on a beach, it would have great patina - it’s the creation of that patina of which I am most proud.

Q: I think I read somewhere that you will be dealing more with the History of the Malazan Empire while Steven dealt with the present. I felt NIGHT OF KNIVES confirmed this, but now i understand RETURN OF THE CRIMSON GUARD will be set after THE BONEHUNTERS. Can you confirm what aspects of the Malazan world you will be dealing with.

Well, Knives does sit in the past in that it deals with Kellanved’s assassination. Technically, it doesn’t in that many of the novels deal with events that reach back tens of thousands of years, even hundreds. The projected novels all deal with post-Kellanved times so in this sense they extend the mapping out of Malazan empire events. Depending upon how things go, further novels could germinate and those could deal with events extending very far back into the past indeed.