| |
|
|
|
|
| | Interview with Age of Conan author J. Steven York
 The second series of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is being released this fall. Set in Stygia we will encounter ancient cults, sinister priests and plenty of dark magic, making the books a suitable read as we go into the darker months of the year. J. Steven York talks to conan.com about himself and the books.
How did you get into writing?
I’ve been writing since before I could write. As a child, I had this big collection of little toy soldiers, astronauts, cowboys, Indians, and so on, that I loved to play with. I plotted epic adventures for them, and created a science fictional world that they shared. Many of those little plastic figures had names, characters, and long involved histories. I learned to read early as well, loved novels and stories, and one day, I remember it very distinctly, I made the mental connection. “If I wrote these adventures down, they’d be stories, just like in books!”
Interestingly, one of my first heroes was a barbarian of sorts, though in a science fiction context. He was a humanoid alien, one of the last survivors of a race that had once been technologically advanced, fell back into savagery, and was ultimately wiped out. When humans colonized his planet, he was awakened from suspended animation and lived among them as a champion of justice. It was one part Batman, one part Tarzan, and two parts Buck Rogers. His story went on for years.
From there, I was always writing stories in some fashion or another. I wrote short stories. I drew comic books. By high-school I was making movies and writing screenplays as well. I was a long time before I started writing professionally though. That was more a matter of self-confidence than anything I think.
Since then I’ve written several very boring non-fiction books, lots of short sf/fantasy/horror, written for several computer games, dabbled in some unproduced Hollywood stuff, and done a lot of what are known at media tie-in novels, stuff based on games like MechWarrior and Mage Knight, toy lines like Transformers, comic books like X-Men, and TV shows like Star Trek. I’m at heart a sci-fi comic geek, so getting to play in a lot of these universes is just great fun for me.
My wife, Christina F. York is also a part-time writer. We’ve collaborated on a few things, like our Star Trek S.C.E. work, and a Mage Knight short-story. Her first romance novel, “Dream House,” is out in trade paperback from 5-Star this fall, and she just turned in a novel based on the ALIAS TV show that will be out next year.
I’m hoping my next project will be finishing a young-adult contemporary fantasy that I’ve had in the works for a while. Working title is “The Accursed” (not to be confused with the recent horror movie, damn them), and it’s about teenage street kids in Portland, Oregon, afflicted with supernatural curses. One of my heroes is a girl with a magic sword. You just can’t get too many girls with swords, in my option.
How did you discover Conan?
I think my first encounter with Conan was probably the Marvel comics. I remember very vividly the adaptation of Howard’s “Tower of the Elephant.” It made a big impression on me, and that’s still my favorite Conan story in a lot of ways.
But while I was familiar with the books and looked at them in the stores, I didn’t read any of them until much later. I was a very literal-minded hard-sf reader as a kid, and didn’t much go for that fantasy stuff. Now, as an adult, I’ve swung much the other way.
And I loved the movies. No, they aren’t very true to Howard, and yeah, they’re kind of cheesy, but they’re great fun, especially the first one. And while it’s greatly diluted, there’s a bit of true Conan that still shines through here and there. I loved the soundtracks. I own both albums, and listen to them often when I’m writing (Conan, and just about anything with action or war in it).
I still hope we’ll see a faithful, definitive Conan movie of these days though.
What where your thoughts when you were offered to write this trilogy? What was it like to go into Hyboria and write your own stories?
I was just blown away to have this opportunity. At first, I wasn’t clear on what the assignment was, and I was just terrified at the responsibility of writing such an iconic character as Conan. He’s just one of the great pop-culture figures of all time, up there with Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes. How do you do a character like justice? How do you make them your own without changing or diminishing what they are?
Then when I figured out that I wasn’t actually writing Conan, only writing in his world, I was greatly relieved. But I was also disappointed as well. If I ever get the chance to do more in Howard’s universe, I hope I get the opportunity to bring him on stage at some point, at least for a scene or two. That would be fantastic.
But I consider myself incredibly lucky, not just to be writing in this wonderful fantasy world, but to have been lucky enough to be given Stygia. What could be more fun that writing the heart of all that is evil and wicked in Conan’s world?
But that was also my greatest challenge. Stygia couldn’t just be wall-to-wall villains and monsters. I had to find a way to turn it into a functioning, believable society filled with people both good and bad. Yeah, evil abounds, and the ruling Stygian society is rotten to the core. But the lower classes are this fascinating melting pot of freed slaves, living in fear of the Cult of Set, and who are just trying to get by. Stygia is also a magnet for magicians, priest, and wizards from across the world, drawn to its places of power, its stores of forbidden knowledge, and its troves of ancient artifacts. It was a lot of work, but I could write a dozen books in Stygia, and still not scratch the surface.
When I got the assignment, the first thing I did was purge all the movies and comics from my mind, and to read a lot of Howard’s Conan work. I skipped around a lot, mainly interested in getting feel for the world, the tone, and most importantly, Howard’s world-view, which is very distinctive. I never tried to ape Howard’s style. I think that would have been a mistake. The voice is my own, though there were times when I felt I might be channeling him a bit. As I’ll get into in a bit, he and I have some things in common. In some ways, we come from the same place. But I also recognized that Howard in many ways a product of his time and place, and the world has changed. I tried to do things as I think Howard might, if he were alive today.
As I said, he and I have things in common. We’re both big, colorful, southerners, who were always outsiders, even in our own little home-town. I was born and spent most of my childhood in south Alabama, though I also spent a lot of time in Howard’s Texas. For both of us, our mother’s were an important influence in our lives. My dad worked for Bell Helicopter, and he was away, sometimes for years at a time, in Vietnam, in Iran, all over the world. When he was home, we moved a lot. I went to five or six different schools between fifth grade and graduation. Like Howard, I was something of a loner, with a vivid inner-life. I lived in my own head, and didn’t care that much what other people thought.
Howard was probably a good deal more cynical about civilization and human nature than I am. I’m kind of a cynical optimist. But I didn’t try to temper Howard’s world-view when I was writing. I think that’s key to the Conan universe. Civilizations are bound to fall, governments and religions are bound to be eaten away by corruption and decadence. I don’t agree with that, but I could put my head in that space for the duration of these books. Where we’re much more in agreement is on the concept of the lone hero. The idea that one man (or woman) can, though courage, determination, and force of will, rise above all the chaos around them and achieve greatness. It’s the idea that before such a man, if they are worthy, mountains will move, and empires will crumble. That’s just a wonderful notion. That’s why we love Conan. He’s just a guy with a sword, but because of who he is, he changes his entire world, and becomes a legend.
One other interesting Howard connection before I move: When my mother heard about the books, she looked up the web site for Robert E. Howard’s home in Cross Plains. The house still stands, and is being restored as a museum. Anyway, she said to me, “Steve, did you know that house looks exactly like the first house you lived in as a baby?” I only lived there as an infant, and while I saw the house many times as a child, it was half a mile from my home, I never knew I’d lived there once. Anyway, the house and the floor-plan are almost identical, and the place where Howard had his writing office, that was my nursery. Very strange.
You wrote in your blog that this was the most monumentally huge project you'd ever worked on, but you've written a lot of books, and several series before. What made this project special?
Your novels are mostly SF (Star Trek, MechWarrior, Generation X). Was this your first venture into "fantasy proper" with fireball-throwing wizards instead of laser guns?
I’ve written some fantasy before, but its true that most of my work is science fiction, or close to it, and most of my fantasy is set in contemporary times. I’ve never written this kind of big sword-and-sorcery before at novel length, and it was a learning experience. Listen, if anybody ever says to me again that writing fantasy is easy, I’m going to sock them. I thought I knew a lot about history, about lots of ancient cultures, but I have never had a book that required so much research, and so much detailed world-building. In a lot of science fiction there just so much that you can take as a given, so much work that’s essentially been done for you, so many shortcuts you can take.
But so much of Conan’s world is inspired by real cultures and history, and so much of it is verifiable in one way or another. You can take some liberties when it comes to magic, but when it comes to fighting with swords, or desert survival, or how people would dress, or what they would eat and drink, or how their buildings would be constructed, it’s a very complex and fact-based world.
I had to spend days, for instance, researching the basics of camel riding. Reading books, watching videos, cruising web sites. I really wish I’d had time to track down a camel owner to talk to, and maybe even give riding it a try, but there just wasn’t time. There were a million other details, just as important or more so. So you research and research and it’s never enough. It was very, very, hard.
But it was also tremendous fun, and I’m very proud of my Stygia. I’m sure people will more knowledge than I of this or that will come along and pick nits in it. But I hope that it feels like a real place to the reader, that each the three major cities where the book is set his its own identity and feel, and that the readers will enjoy the trip as much as I did.
That was part of why this was so hard, but it was a combination of things. I’ve written ongoing series before, but I’d never written three full-length novels back to back, well over a thousand manuscript pages without a break. It went much slower than I anticipated, and so I found myself always behind the curve on work. I was writing all night, falling into bed at dawn, sleeping five or six hours, and going straight back to my office. That was pretty much my life, seven days a week, for months on end.
Do you get inspiration from somewhere special, from any other fantasy/scifi authors who you personally think are great? Reading tips for Conan fans?
Well, I grew up with all the standards: Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Bradbury that everyone mentions. The early Marvel comics, Steve Ditko, Stan Lee, and especially Jack Kirby. I don’t think Jack ever got to draw Conan, which is too bad. I think he would have kicked-ass. But a lot of my writing is more influenced by lesser known writers, guys who have slipped into relative obscurity, and deserve more attention.
One name that comes to mind is Clifford D. Simak. He could take the most mind blowing concepts and tell them like a folksy tale you overheard at a country barbershop. My sentimental favorite is “Cemetery World.” Here’s a book with giant cybernetic tanks, talking robot wolves, ghosts, the entire Earth turned into a literal cemetery (with crooked morticians), and then it goes and has a barn-dance in it (with dancing robots). So from him, I hope I learned something about creating fantastic worlds that feel like real people live there.
Another is Keith Laumer. I was lucky enough (in collaboration with my friend Dean Wesley Smith) to channel him for a couple of novellas that appeared in “Bolos, The Old Guard” and “Bolos, Cold Steel” from Baen books. Laumer just had so many virtues as a writer. He could drag you breathlessly through a plot like a good pulp writer. He created colorful, memorable characters, and his voice often took on a hard-boiled detective feel that was so unusual for science fiction. He was a master of epic, almost apocalyptic, action sequence. But he could be a very sentimental writer too. People remember him for his funny “Retief” space-diplomacy novels, but he did a whole range of stuff. Some wonderful time travel, and of course, his Bolo sentient tanks.
My favorite Laumer story is the often reprinted “The Last Command.” Here’s an almost Godzilla-like story, with a wounded Bolo cyber-tank moving unstoppably towards an innocent city, and a senile old man who finds a way to stop it. To be honest, it makes me cry every time I read it. (Are Conan writers supposed to cry? Sorry, I’m a softy some-time.) With more of the WWII vets dying every day, this story is more timely than ever. I need to go read it again.
As for modern writers, there are two who I think have influenced me strongly, though only one writes sf/fantasy.
That would be Tim Powers. Wonderful writer, whose stuff often straddles the line between fantasy, horror, sometimes with elements of science fiction thrown in. His books start slow, but they intricate and fascinating. He’ll pull out all sorts of historical and scientific details, weave them together in some impossible way, and take them into ingenious and dark place you never would have imagined. If you like my trilogy, you’d probably like “The Anubis Gates,” a book about time travel and the ancient power of Egypt, and I love “Last Call,” which is the secret magical history of Las Vegas and the dark power inherent in playing cards. But my favorite is “On Stranger Tides,” a book that anticipated the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie by about fifteen years. Same general idea, but darker and more fantastic.
Finally, there’s Carl Hiaasen, who I guess they categorize as a mystery/horror writer, but I don’t think you can categorize. His books about stupid crooks, crooked politicians, and strange goings on in South Florida are wonderful. I think Robert E. Howard would have liked this guy. He’s laugh-out-loud funny, but he has a dark pessimism about civilization and humanity, plus a sense of grim cosmic justice that I think Howard would have liked. His reoccurring character, the eccentric hermit, “Skink,” is one of the classics of literature. He’s an insane Conan of the Everglades.
Anyway, Hiaasen is who I’d most like to be when I grow up.
Assuming that ever happens.
Anok, Heretic of Stygia is being published one book a month, Sept-Nov 2005.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
