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By Andrew (2007-11-18)
A lot of writers believe there is an advantage to writing book series, that they just seem to resonate more with the reader. Why do you think that is?
Well they're certainly popular. But they can become unpopular too. I mean Wild Cards in its original go-round was popular for a long time, but then we did begin to lose a little steam, and there's no doubt our sales were going down by the time we hit books nine and ten. Then when we switched publishers from Bantam to Baen our sales went down precipitously. And that's why the series went away for seven years. Like anything else it's a question of the characters and the world. We've created, I think, a very interesting world. A world that I like a lot. And I like coming back and visiting it from time to time, and hopefully the readers do too.
You spent a bit of time in the 80's and early 90's writing for television. What are the differences between writing novels and writing for TV?
Writing for television and film is a collaborative process. You have to please a lot more masters. There's a studio involved, a network involved, directors and actors. There are other writers sometimes if you're on the staff of a television show, and they all have their opinions of what you're doing. Collaboration by nature is a series of compromises, either you compromise or you have some sort of power struggle. You can get some great work if you have a good partnership there and people kind of feeding off each other, but a lot of times you don't have that. You have people who are kind of fighting with each other about the creative direction or something or you wind up with a compromise watering something down. It can be frustrating. Prose was my first love and I'm glad that I'm back to it. There's an excitement working in television or film, and I may get back into it someday, but I don't miss it all that much I must say. I like being able to do my stuff without having to worry about what the network or the studio is going to think about it
HBO has optioned Song of Fire and Ice for a mini-series, have you ever been approached about doing something similar with Wild Cards? Superheroes are kind of the 'in' thing now in Hollywood.
Wild Cards has been optioned. Melinda Snodgrass and I wrote several drafts of a screen play together for Disney back in the 80's, but ultimately as they often do in Hollywood they decided not to continue.
You worked with Disney on a couple of projects one of them being that Wild Cards screenplay that never came to light, what were some of the others?
I had deals with the Hollywood pictures division of Disney so it wasn't the cartoon stuff it was live action. I worked on Princess of Mars and I worked on Fevre Dream, but ultimately nothing came to pass.
It's too bad the Fevre Dream screenplay never got picked up-it's an excellent novel. What inspired you to write that novel? Was it something where you said 'I want to write a book about vampires?' Or were you researching steamboats or that particular point in history?
It was actually while I lived in Dubuque, Iowa . It's is an historic steamboat manufacturing town on the Mississippi and I got interested living there with that era. I wanted to write a steamboat book, but because I was a science fiction writer I never really considered writing a straight historical the way John Brunner did. Instead I said 'how can I use the steamboats for a background of a fantasy or science fiction story.' The vampire thing just seemed to go with steamboats. There's something very nineteenth century about both of them. Sort of the dark romanticism.
You began flirting with an idea during your television days that would become your popular Song of Fire and Ice series. Has that success lead new readers to you other works, like the Wild Card series?
I hope so. I do a lot of different things and one thing I've found over the course of my career is that people who like one thing that I do don't necessarily like everything that I do. They may just be fans of the Tuf Series or Fire and Ice or Wild Cards. But I hope some people who enjoy the Fire and Ice Series come over and give Wild Cards a chance. If they're open to other types of fiction then I think they might like it. I think we've got some good stories some good characters.
Does that ever frustrate you? Do you ever ask yourself why certain works of yours garner more attention?
Every writer does, but my career has been pretty good. Those are all older works and for the most part my newer projects have been the most popular. I've got more readers today than I've ever had before. The question is will that continue when I finish Fire and Ice and do something completely different. How many Fire and Ice fans will follow me? I don't know. I'll find out, but not for a few years because I've still got three gigantic Fire and Ice books to write.
Do you think the genre thing traps you sometimes as a writer?
I think it can only trap you if you want to be trapped. I've written many different things. I see writers who are just writing one thing over and over again, be it science fiction or fantasy, and maybe that's all that they're interested in. I could see how they would feel trapped but I certainly don't because I have been able to move from one to the other.
Is there an ultimate ending to the Wild Card series? Have you envisioned a kind of conclusion to the series? Not that any Wild Card fans want one!
(Laughs) I think the only one who's really envisioned that is Howard Waldrop. Howard of course wrote the Jetboy story that opened this series, and Howard has often said to me he wrote the first Wild Card series and he's ready to write the last one. And when we're finished with the series Howard will step in a write the last Wild Card book. We had to swear, in blood, that once he writes the story it will be the last one. That we'll then never write another one again. But that will be a long way coming.
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Interview by Andrew Brooks 
Andrew Brooks | 
