Frequently Asked Questions
The answers to these
questions come from various sources, such as speeches, interviews in print and
on-line, and so on. "[slw]" and "[sd]" indicate direct quotes from
SLW and Shane Dix. (Note: as elsewhere
on this site, "Sean Williams" is abbreviated to "SLW" to
avoid confusion with the usual abbreviation for "Star Wars".)
This
is the #1 FAQ at the moment, so it gets special treatment:
Why can’t I find The Devoured Earth in US bookshops?
The reason you can't
find The Devoured Earth yet is
because Pyr has gone back to The Crooked
Letter and reprinted it in a trade paperback format, and will do the same
with the next two books to build up to the finale. It's a long process, but
it will come to an end eventually. It's
worth the wait.
What does Sean Williams write?
Is any of it available
on-line?
"Where do you get your ideas from?"
"What advice do you have for new writers?"
What do the symbols in The Books of the Cataclysm mean?
How do the Books of the Cataclysm relate to the Books
of the Change?
Will there be more stories set
in this universe?
Are there any other sequels
planned for any other novels?
Why doesn't SLW write short
stories any more?
Do the Evergence, Orphans,
Geodesica and Astropolis series form a continuous timeline?
What's the history behind The Unknown Soldier?
What happened to the rest of the Books of the Cogal?
Will there be more Evergence
Novels?
How does the Williams/Dix
collaboration work?
How did SLW and Shane Dix get
involved in the writing Star Wars novels?
What is the relationship
between with Williams/Dix Star Wars novels and the existing movies?
Will they be made into movies?
Are any of SLW's novels or
short stories being made into movies?
When will Metal Fatigue be reprinted in Australia?
What does Sean Williams write?
(taken
from SLW's Big Book Club speech, 2003)
Everyone
who's read The Stone Mage & the Sea will know that what I write
isn't realist fiction. I write science
fiction, fantasy and horror--the genre I (and others) call "speculative
fiction" overall. A lot of people
read speculative fiction when they were younger but stopped as they grew
older. Some never tried it at all. Others may have seen "The Lord of the
Rings" or "Star Wars" and figured it was all pretty much like
that. From the inside looking out, that
seems to me as odd as someone reading one Janet Ivanovich
novel and deciding that all crime fiction isn't for them. Or reading one crime novel in the 70s and
assuming that nothing has changed in the genre since then. Additionally, SF is judged on the evidence of
the inane tripe usually served up by
I've lost count of the number of times I've heard the phrase "Now,
I don't like fantasy, but..." This
is extraordinarily pleasing, because it means that the Big Book Club is meeting
one of its prime objectives: to expose people to genres or styles that they
might not ordinarily read. Hopefully the
people who have said this to me in the last few weeks will remember this
experience the next time they're stuck for something to read, browsing a bookshop
or library and finding themselves uninspired by the vast swathes of realist
titles confronting them. Just think of
the whole new genre out there, full of books they might like! You never know what they'll find.
Is any of it available on-line?
Absolutely. This site has a directory to sample chapters,
here. Also, specific stories can be traced via
links in the detailed bibliography.
(taken
from SLW's Big Book Club speech, 2003)
(see here for an LJ
entry on this topic)
Well,
some writers deal with their personal problems by fictionalizing them,
externalizing them. I'd contest that
this is exactly what speculative fiction writers do, only with the world around
them as well, not just the worlds within.
How better to solve the planet's ills than by swapping all the names and
changing things for the better? It's an
attractive fantasy, and sometimes an informative one. As a species, we have thrived by planning
ahead, by anticipating problems and solving them before or as they occur. This is what separates us from the apes. Speculative fiction seems to me to be the
only genre that allows us to truly explore what might have been or what might
yet come. Many of the events waiting for
us--longevity, environmental collapse, cloning, water wars, artificial
intelligence, global disease and more--have been explored by science fiction already,
so the territory is not entirely unfamiliar.
Just as science fiction paved the way for the space and race and the IT
industry, so too will it help ease our way into whatever future awaits us
today. SF can't show us everything that's
to come, but it can at least ask the questions.
All
fiction, when you strip away the conventions of genre, is as much about the
author's world as what the blurb claims it's actually about. Not all spec fic is about space ships and
aliens, or wizards and elves--but even that which is is
inevitably shaped by the author's experiences.
Inner space is as much a concern as outer space. The common thing uniting all the stories in
my genre is people like you and I, with similar thoughts, emotions, drives, and
problems.
Stories are written by people, about people, and for people.
"Where do you get your ideas from?"
(see here for an LJ
entry on this topic)
(taken
from SLW's Big Book Club speech, 2003)
This
question is extraordinarily difficult to answer, not because the answer isn't
immediately obvious, but because it never quite satisfies. My answer is this: I get my ideas from the
same place any writer does: the world around me. This sounds strange because some of my
stories are set half a million years from now in a society that doesn't
remember Earth at all. Some of them are
set in that notorious "galaxy far, far away". Some, like the Books of the Change, are set
in a world that knows us and our lifestyle only through legend. But it's true. My stories come from my experiences in this
world, no other. These
stories spring from the place in which I live, sometimes more obviously than
others.
It
surprises me, I guess, because, to me, there are places on Earth that are as
alien to me as that back of the moon.
I've read stories set in Italy, but I've never been to Italy myself; I
don't speak Italian; I don't know anything about Italian history or culture,
apart from that which I absorb from the people around me. In many ways, I know less about
What do the symbols in The
Books of the Cataclysm mean?
See
the "Glossary of
Symbols" on this site.
How do the Books of the Cataclysm relate to the Books of the Change?
The
exact sequence of novels depends on which way you look at them. Readers of the Books of the Change, first
published by HarperCollins
(The Books of the
Cataclysm) (The Books of the
Change)
1. The Crooked Letter
1.
The Stone Mage & the Sea
2.
The Sky Warden & the Sun
3.
The Storm Weaver & the Sand
2. The Blood Debt
3. The
4. The Changeling God
Will there be more stories set in this universe?
Yes. The
Are there any other sequels planned for any other novels?
SLW
has been talking about a sequel to Metal Fatigue (called Motor Reflex)
for years but nothing has come of it yet.
A sequel to The Resurrected Man was bandied about for a while
(see "The Resurrected Plot"). Apart from these and The Roche Limit,
none are currently planned.
Do the Evergence, Orphans, Geodesica and Astropolis series form a
continuous timeline?
The
short answer is "no", although they do depict different stages of a
possible human history, with Orphans closest to now and Astropolis (apart from
some moments in Geodesica) at the furthest extreme. Each series presents a different end- or
through-point of human evolution and reveals a very different vision for the
future of Earth and its neighbouring planets.
Why doesn't SLW write short stories any more?
No
time! Writing two (or more) books a year
has effectively shut down SLW's short story output. Anything smaller than a
novel tends to be no longer than a haiku or two. There is, however, the occasional flutter,
including a Doctor Who story and a piece for a major literary market in
What's the history behind The Unknown Soldier?
[slw] Way back in the early 90s, a small Australian gaming
company, Ascendancy, struck a deal with Aphelion to publish a series of novels
set in a gaming world they had developed, called the COGAL. The game was intended to be a role-playing
game as well as a video game, although neither had been released by the time
the deal was struck. Unfortunately,
Ascendancy underestimated the difficulty of developing and producing an RPG
from scratch; not only was there no game to support the book when it went to
press, but the chances of there being one soon seemed slim. (TUS was published in 1995. The game still hasn't come out.) Aphelion, therefore, became a little edgy,
since its projected sales were dependant on cross-promotion. Shane and I, too, were soon feeling
constrained by an RPG world that was constantly under development and likely to
shift under our feet as we developed the novels. Basic matters like which characters were 'unkillable' and which weren't, which scenarios fitted in
with the COGAL and which didn't, were likely to change from week to week. We found it increasingly difficult to work
under those conditions, and stopped work until a final decision was made. Ascendancy pushed harder for the second book,
hoping to gain backers on the strength of the series. Aphelion was caught in the middle, with a
book that had built up a readership keen for both the sequel and the game and
no clear date when either might appear.
Luckily,
Shane and I had had the foresight to ensure that we were protected by our
contracts with the publisher. As soon as
lawyers were mentioned, we pulled out.
To this day, we remain friendly with both the publisher and the
Ascendancy people. That wouldn't have
happened if we'd all ended up in court.
What happened to the rest of the Books of the Cogal?
[slw] It is now Evergence: The Prodigal Sun (=The
Unknown Solider), The Dying Light, (=Galine Four), and The
Dark Imbalance (called A Dark Imbalance in the
The
shift away from Ascendancy's world to our own freed us to take the series in
exactly the direction we want. The
scales are now much larger, occupying an entire galaxy and hundreds of
thousands of years. We now have
highly-evolved human intelligences as well as artificial intelligences. We have speciated
humans rather than aliens and a whole caste-system of cultures spanning from
Stone Age to very high tech. Finally,
the conclusion to the trilogy is now closer to the one we envisioned when we
started. After six years and lots of
uncertainty, it was great to finally make it to that ending.
Will there be more Evergence Novels?
One
final novel, The Roche Limit, is a possibility, but only time will tell.
How does the Williams/Dix collaboration work?
(taken from an interview with Star Wars Insider)
[slw]
Shane and I met over ten years ago, after Shane read a story of mine in an
Australian fanzine.
[sd] Actually, he doesn't know what he's talking
about. We met through a mutual pen
friend from
[slw]
Natch. He contacted me out of the blue and suggested
we meet for a coffee. At that time,
there were very few people in our field working in
[sd] In all honesty, I would never have imagined in my
wildest dreams that the collaboration would have taken us where it has. I was just delighted to be asked to work on
the Cogal project (of which The Unknown Soldier was to be the first of
three books); it was an opportunity to get a foot in the publishing door, while
at the same time a chance to learn a few things about what was involved in
writing a novel.
[slw] As far as the nuts and bolts go, Shane and I brainstorm
ideas before we start working on the plot.
This process can take a while -- although sometimes ideas that have
eluded us for weeks can emerge in an afternoon (often over a pizza). Once we have the key details we want to
explore, a rough plot usually just falls into place. It's my job to write the first draft, since I
write considerably faster than Shane. If
I get stuck, we consult. The same if I
get a new idea along the way. Once we
have a first draft, Shane takes over.
He's responsible for weeding out the dead wood, tightening the
characters, strengthening key scenes, and so on. If he gets stuck then, again, we
consult. And when he's finished, I take
one last look over the ms, then submit it.
[sd] After so many years of doing this now, it seems a very
natural process, and one that I enjoy immensely. When it came time to actually writing my own
book recently, it was very strange indeed... Almost a "lonely"
experience! But regardless of what I'm
working on, whether it be solo or collaborative, I
know that if I ever get stuck on something that I can turn to Sean for some
help--as he would turn to me. We're only
a phone call away, after all.
[slw] We find this a productive way to work. It usually takes about the same time to write
a collaborative novel as it would for me to write a solo novel, but there is a
chunk of time in the middle when I can go off and do other things. Writing together like this has taught us a
lot about each other's methods and goals.
I think it's made us better writers overall, although I doubt either of
us alone could write the way we do when we collaborate. Two heads working together inevitably produce
something different to two heads apart.
That, mainly, is why the process is so rewarding.
How did SLW and Shane Dix get involved in the writing Star Wars novels?
(taken from an interview with Star Wars Insider)
[slw] From the beginning, Shane and I have been writing space
opera: stories featuring space ships and exotic aliens and galaxy-spanning time
scales; that's what our Evergence novels were all
about. We both loved the Star Wars
movies and I'd even read some of the spin-off novels when I was a
teenager. The thought of writing in the
expanded universe was, therefore, an attractive one, and when my agent, Richard
Curtis, mentioned that he was trying to get us a gig in that area, we jumped at
the idea.
[sd] "Jumped
at" being an understatement, of course.
It was the chance of a lifetime.
I like science fiction, enjoy writing, and have always loved Star
Wars--so to be paid to actually do something that incorporates all three...
Well, let's just say it put something of a smile on my face...
[slw] It took a year, but we got there. And when things started to move, they moved
very quickly indeed. It took less than a
month to get from a 4am phone call to a brainstorming meeting at Skywalker
Ranch--one of the most amazing and inspiring experiences of my life.
[sd] Yeah, if I recall, Sean got in touch with me one day to
say that it looked like Richard Curtis had managed to secure a deal to write a
Star wars novel. A week later we heard
it was to be a trilogy, which was fantastic--and just so right for us, as since
we'd been collaborating all we'd done is trilogies!
What is the relationship between with Williams/Dix Star Wars novels and
the existing movies?
The
Force Heretic trilogy takes place within the larger story arc of the New Jedi
Order series, set some 25-odd years after "Return of the Jedi".
Will they be made into movies?
Not
likely, unless the entire New Jedi Order series makes it to the big screen.
Are any of SLW's novels or short stories being made into movies?
There
have been discussions with various producers and studios down the years, plus
the occasional option here and there, but nothing is currently locked in stone.
When will Metal Fatigue be
reprinted in
HarperCollins
hasn't set a date, but the issue does come up regularly. Note that Swift's superb hardcover is still
available from the