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The Lightsabre Interview Aaron Allston
Welcome to
Lightsabre. Our next guest was among
our very first interviews back in 2000, a man who has since gone on to write
such epics as Rebel Dream and Rebel Stand as well as his first Legacy novel,
Betrayal. Please welcome back Aaron
Allston. Q -Aaron, welcome back
to Lightsabre. A -
i'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me
back Q – It’s been a busy
six years since we last had the pleasure of chatting, so what have you been
up to? A - Lots. Lots and lots. Several novels, including Sidhe-Devil, the
two New Jedi Order novels, two Terminator 3 novels, and now two novels in the
Legacy of the Force series, and I've recently started on my third for the
series. Plus I scripted and directed a very low-budget movie in 2005 - it's
still in post-production, a common fate for independent low-budgeters. It's
called Deadbacks, and we've been describing it with the line "Romeo and
Juliet meets Night of the Living Dead." I'm
also working on a gaming project or two, I had a
brief stint as a columnist for Amazing Stories magazine... I guess that's
most of it. Q – Since our last
conversation we’ve seen the release of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of
the Sith. How did you enjoy the final
two Star Wars movies? A -
Oh, with mixed feelings.
I don't think I was the target audience for them the way people born a
generation or a generation and a half later were.
But I really enjoyed the immersiveness of the environments, Ewan MacGregor's
performances, the choreography, and lots more besides. Still, I'm clearly
more an original trilogy sort of guy. Q – Six years ago you
were about to embark on what would become the Rebel Dream/Stand duology. Did you anticipate the New Jedi Order
becoming such a huge success when you helped plot it out? A -
I was brought into the
NJO series after it had launched, so I really wasn't responsible for much
series plotting -- just my two novels' worth. And it was clear by the time I
was brought on that the series was going to be a success. But even before
that, knowing that most of the publishing line's attention was going to be
concentrated on the series made it very likely that it would be a tremendous
success. So, really, it wasn't much of a surprise. Q – Now, a number of
years removed from the last book, would you enjoy the challenge of returning
to the X-Wing novels, or are they ‘done’? A- The
farther we get from them, the more it feels like they're done. I mean, to return to them, to pick up where they left off, would
mean turning the calendar back nearly thirty years. If there were a call to
do more X-Wing novels, it might be better to start with a whole new
generation of X-wing pilots somewhere near the Legacy of the Force era, maybe
after the main conflicts described in that series, and let Wedge Antilles
enjoy retirement. However, it wouldn't take much arm-twisting to induce me to
write for the series again - the original series or a heavily re-tooled one.
I enjoyed it a lot.
Q – You are still
very much hands-on with your website.
Given the huge upturn in the net, do you still feel it is a vital tool
for a writer such as yourself, the ability to directly interact with fans and
readers? A -
Clearly, that varies from
writer to writer. With me, I come out of fandom, so it's not an alien set of
behaviors for me, there's nothing weird or alarming about it. And on those
occasions when I'm swamped with work, the fans tend to be very understanding
when I have to take a break of a few weeks or even a couple of months from
answering e-mail. So the easy access is a good thing. Q – We asked you a
question last time regarding the future of the Star Wars novels. You said “I'd prefer to see the Star Wars universe go in different
directions. I'd like to see more novels invoke a sense of wonder through the
exploration of the galaxy and the workings of the Force. I'd also like to see
later-era characters patching up the gaps in their historical knowledge --
the Empire years serve as sort of a firebreak between the NJO era and the
prequel trilogy era, and it would be interesting to see the post-NJO
characters rediscovering the past, digging up mysteries buried since
Palpatine came to power.” Is that
still how you feel today? A - To a
certain extent. Some of that is happening, of course, particularly in Tatooine
Ghost and the Dark Nest trilogy, with Luke and his generation learning more
about the previous generation. There still isn't as much Star Wars fiction as
I'd like to see about less galaxy-spanning events, but perhaps the time for
that will still come one day. Q – You’ve become
involved in another one of the great movie series, the Terminator. What research was required for the two
novels you’ve written so far, and how much latitude were you given to ‘run
with the ball’? A - Research chiefly involved reacquainting myself
with the three movies, plus I got to read the novelization of the third movie
well before that movie came out. Since the third movie pretty much wiped out
the timelines of the Terminator 2 spin-off novels, I didn't have to become
massively familiar with them -- though I did deal, to a certain extent, with
the fact that those branches of time had pretty much been snipped by the
events of the third movie. Beyond that, research mostly involved specific settings
that would be featured in the novels, specific weapons and gadgets that would
appear, and so on. As for how much freedom I had, I'd say I had considerable
freedom... once I hit on an approach that appealed to the holders of the
Terminator 3 license and Tor, the publisher. I think we started out with
everyone, me included, floundering around with a sort of "I have no idea
what I want, but I'll know it when I see it" outlook. The first story
proposal I sent them was darker and more fatalistic than the ones that were
eventually accepted, though it did have two elements that survived into the
later novels -- a concentration on the events of the future in which John
Connor led the human resistance, and a set of elite soldier characters called
the Hell-Hounds. The elements of making a child of John and Kate one of the
Hell-Hounds and beginning to focus on the human resistance leadership's
efforts to work toward a viable future instead of just survive their
oppressive present began to give the stories a bit more of an optimistic
feel, and once we had those elements in place the two books became much
easier to lock down and get approved.
Q – Other than the
remaining Legacy novels you are writing, alongside Karen Travis and Troy
Denning, do you have any other Star Wars work lined up? A - Not at the moment, no. Q – Explain to us, if
there is such a thing, an average day in the life of Aaron Allston? A -
Oh, sure. Average is
getting up in the morning, anytime between 7 and 10 depending on how late I
was up the night before. I'll spend the first few minutes of the day
caffeinating myself, then launch my word processor and look over the
manuscript I'm currently working on. I'll edit and polish the previous three
days' work, which brings me back into the story enough and gets my writing
mental machinery operating enough that I can begin writing for the day. I'll write for three or four hours, then get some
breakfast and take a break. Then I'll do another three or four hours' work,
probably on the same project, though on occasion it'll be a different project.
Most days, that'll be the end of the writing work for the day, so I'll get
some lunch, then turn to catching up with e-mail, doing chores, and so forth
for a while, though if I have a pressing deadline I may instead put in
another three- or four-hour shift. And once all that's done, I'll become
sociable with the other members of my household, maybe go out in the common
areas and put on a DVD, maybe do some reading, maybe have dinner with
housemates or friends. Pretty boring, actually. What I like to tell people is
that I'm an author fifteen or twenty days out of the year, and the rest of
the time I'm a writer... and the lives of writers are not particularly
interesting. Q – Lucas is planning
two new television series, set during the Clone Wars and the era between
episodes 3 and 4. What tone do you
think he will aim for, and what stories would you like to see told? A -
Those two time periods
are pretty bleak and uncertain times, and the new Battlestar Galactica series
has shown that there's an appetite in the U.S. today for TV science fiction
that's bleak and uncertain, so I'm wondering if those two series will
resemble BSG in atmosphere. But I'm not making any predictions. Q - It's been a great
interview, and thanks for being our guest on Lightsabre. Just one final question. Lord Vader, Doc Sidhe and the Terminator
are hired by WWE’s Vince McMahon and immediately thrown into a triple threat
for the WWE Championship. But before
they enter the ring, McMahon tells them they must have a new gimmick. The choices are:
1.
A clowns outfit
2.
A dress
3.
Play a ‘ladies man’
character But who chooses what
gimmick? A - Whatever you were imbibing when you
came up with that question is probably illegal, you know. Just sayin'. Clearly, Lord Vader would demand the ladies' man
character, since anything else would be inappropriate for his position and
stature. Doc Sidhe would take the dress, since it might cause opponents to
misjudge him and because, as an elf, he might look pretty good in it, and the
Terminator would take the clown outfit, because he doesn't care, and because
clowns are figures of terror for some people anyway. |
