A&A The Official Matthew Woodring Stover Discussion Thread

Reading your first Caine book is like losing your virginity and getting punched in the face for the first time all at once. Ahh, the memories!

 

Very good news then because it turns out the book that my local Borders actually ordered for me was Heroes Die, so as soon as I finish one other book I will be diving headfirst into that instead of BOT.

 

Can I quote you on that?

 

Yes. Yes you can.

 

Yes, w_k certainly does have a way with words....

 

I recommend reading BOT first. Then HD. Then BOT again. Then HD again. That's the way I did it.

I enjoyed reading the 'backstory' of Berne and Tan elKoth and Caine's adventures in his glory days fleshed out in HD after brief allusions to 'For Love of Pallas Ril' and being first acquainted with Hari as the broken cripple he is in BOT.

They really can be enjoyed in any order. Chronological, if you choose. Or not. I hope CBK is the same way.

 

I finished Heroes Die yesterday, and wow, what a journey. At this point in time there's really not much I can say about the book, so raw, real, and at the same time so much fantasy and the stuff of dreams (or pehaps nightmares), it was simply riveting. Great work, now if only I could find the follow up BOT along with your two earlier novels I would be a very happy man.

 

How many people on a Star Wars message board are going to know about the former.

A month back I re-read Iron Dawn and Jericho Moon, both were just as good as the first time I read them. Not many books have that effect on me.

 

Well, I'm a very unhappy man, my local book store informed me that BOT is out of stock all over and will be out of print very soon so they can't track it down for me. Add this to the extreme difficulty, I've been trying for awhile now, of finding Iron Dawn and Jericho Moon and I'm a very sad panda.

 

Have you tried half.com, or zshops through Amazon ? I bet you'll find it at either site, and probably for half the price you'd pay in a store and most likely in just as good condition. In fact zshops is where I bought both Iron Dawn and Jericho Moon about five years ago after both were out of print. I think I payed $3 total for both books, which were in excellent condition.

 

I have yet to try either of those, but I'll give them a shot, thanks.

 

Not a problem. You'll probably have better luck at half.com, if only because there will probably be more people selling harder to find books there than at zshops.

 

Mr. Stover, I know how big of a philosophy nut you are, and I'm currently minoring in it, so I was just wondering what some of your favorite philosophers/philosophies are and why.

Thanks.

 

Hey Matt, long time.

I'm excited to hear about all the scintillating stuff we can expect to see from you soon, which got me wonderin'... you know how Heroes Die was the ressurected remains of an older work you'd done (or some such)? Any chance some Flash Gordon/space-romp can be scavanged for the new Luke Skywalker book? Great opportunity to get some snippets of your long lost work out there and fitting considering Lucas' inspiration for Skywalker and all.

be well, behave.

~PAd

 

Hey, PAddie. Long time indeed. Hope you've been well (better than me, anyway . . .)

Here's the thing: HEROES DIE was actually the final version of a story I had been working on (by the time it sold) for almost 20 years, during which I was trying to find a way to effectively write about dual Earths with a triangle of three dual-identity protagonists, Caine, Pallas, and Ma'elKoth. THE REAL FLASH GORDON was a different thing; it's about an aging, cynical loser who discovers, much to his surprise, that the preposterous four-color comic he worshipped as a kid was actually (mostly) true, and how he slowly, more or less against his will, makes himself into the hero he'd always dreamed he'd grow up into. More or less. It's not something that can be worked into STAR WARS material, at least not a story with Luke in the lead. Luke was born a hero; it just took him twenty years to figure it out. By the time we reach the time-frame I'm working in, Luke's not only a hero but an experienced one.

PA_P:
My favorite philosopher? You mean other than me?

Robert Pirsig. Who probably won't be covered in your studies, largely because you don't need a professor to tell you what he was going on about. He wrote only two books (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila), and in them he manages to explode the whole notion of philosophy itself -- which is most of why most philosophy professors can't stand him. Among his important contributions to the field are the distinction between philosophy (the practice of structured thought) and philosophology (the study of philosophers), a cogent and powerful explanation of the the selective perception imposed by existing mental structures, such as ideology or any kind of philosophical system (he calls it the Cleveland Harbor Effect, which you'll understand after you read Lila), and of course Phaedrus' Scalpel, which is (in my never humble opinion) the most important philosophical principle since Occam's Razor.

He was also one of the most quotable philosophers since Nieztsche. Hari Michaelson is an admirer of his, too, and pulls out my own personal favorite Pirsig quote at an opportune moment in Blade of Tyshalle:

"Metaphysics is a restaurant with a thirty thousand-page menu -- and no food."

 

Matt - is there any chance of you being involved in any way with the new Sci-Fi Flash Gordon series they're lining up at the moment?

If that were true, like Jayne, I'd need to be in my bunk.

 

...and re-reading HD now, believe you me, the world-building reads like something that's gestated for decades. take your vitamins, the literary world needs you tip top, Sir.

 

Matt,
you ever read Bruce Lee's"Tao of Jeet Kun Do"? I'm sure thats a stupid question, but its one of the few Philosophy books I could get into.

Love,
SC (frameshift forums)

 

Hey, Squallie!

Yes, of course I've read ToJKD; I keep my copy within arm's reach. It's a fundamental text for modern martial artists, and (like the martial arts themselves) it has broad application beyond the realm of personal combat. I've been known to summarize Mr. Lee's philosophy through my favorite Chinese proverb: "The fox is swift and knows many tricks, yet still he is taken by the hounds. The hedgehog is slow and knows only one trick -- but it is a very good trick."

PAd -- I'm taking my vitamins. They're just not doing me any good.

And no, dp4m, the Flash folks have nothing to do with me, nor me with them. I didn't even know this was happening.

Go figure.

 

Matt,

Due to the vagaries of modern-day perceptions of entertainment, from what I've seen it seems trendy to dismiss Star Wars and its related books as nothing but "pop culture," a brief dalliance that can't be considered real literature. Being an English major with a film concentration, I'm very aware of the power of narrative, and open to the idea of literature taking many shapes and forms. Movies are literature as much as books are, if you ask me. Just a different type. They tell their stories in a different manner (with varying levels of effectiveness, depending on who you ask) but the fact that they tell stories at all automatically gives them some level of literary substance. Some movies might not have much story to them, but something that the Lucas-bashers don't seem to understand is that SW is ALL ABOUT story. As GL himself once said, "Special effects are a tool. A means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing." Just look at your typical summer blockbusters.

An unfortunate truth, at least from what I've noticed, is that books aren't as appreciated as they used to be. People have come to expect instant gratification thanks to Tivo, fast food, microwaveable dinners, and video games. As a result, books seem to have taken a backseat to more "expedient" means of entertainment. Apart from my family and my professors, I could seriously count on one hand the number of people I know who actually take the time to sit down and read recreationally on even a semi-regular basis. And that's just tragic.

Reading is important, of course. As something of a budding writer myself, I often tell people that the best way to get better at writing is to read. A lot. I think Steven King once said that he spends 4 hours a day writing and 4 hours a day reading. Most people I talk to dismiss SW novels as not being "serious literature." Although it's my contention that any type of art form that tells a story can be considered "literature," there is something to be said for the quality of that literature--how efficiently it tells its story, how well it crafts its world and its characters, and how easily the audience is able to accept the truths that it presents.

I appreciate how vividly you color your action sequences. Consciously or unconsciously, authors always embed themselves within their work, whether it's in the subtext or on a more blatantly obvious level. The way that (I assume) you take your martial arts experience into consideration when writing action scenes is just one of many means through which you have set your novels a cut above the rest, and garnered some much-deserved acclaim. Matt, your SW novels transcend the status quo of mere "literature" and become what I would consider "epic storytelling." Traitor, Shatterpoint and the ROTS novelization remind me partly of Milton's Paradise Lost (in terms of the challenging introspection and character intersection so inherent in your marvelous writing) and partly of the great classics like Beowulf, The Iliad and The Odyssey in terms of thematic weight. The themes you deal with are so powerful that it truly mimics the manner in which Star Wars itself is so popular across the world and across cultures: because it deals with themes common to all cultures, united by the threads of the human condition itself. You, more than any other, have succeeded in transferring the brilliance of SW onto the written page.

To make a long story short, I want to thank you for having the skill and courage to produce work that is so different from, and so much better than, the more typical offerings of the genre. Give yourself a pat on the back, Matt, because you've found another appreciative follower in me.

I hope you don't mind my sharing this with you.

 

Matt,
For me, Bruce Lee's Tao goes much deeper than simply martial arts. If it wasn't for Mr. Lee's writings, I probably would not have made it through a very tough, very depressing period of my life that culminated about six months ago. (not to say I was suicidal, but I was going down the wrong path)

Anyways, My personal favorite Lee quote is his "Be like water" quote. Nothing epitomizes the necessity of being adaptable better than that single quote. I haven't taken Martial arts for years, and wish I hadn't gotten out of it (other than the US Army combatives system, which is basically jiu-jutsu...but without the discipline). I was a student of Chitose-Kai (aka Chito-ryu), which is an Okinawan Style.

And it really blows me away how much smarter people on the internet are than me

 

I was just wondering what your thoughts was on our poorly recently deceased Kurt Vonnegut?

 

Mr. Stover, you are renowned for favouring ambiguity in morality over stark absolutes. In your writing, do you believe this can apply to plot? For example, I just re-read Traitor twice consecutively, the first perceiving Vergere as a Sith (to the extent of calling her Darth Peregrina just to remove my previous notions of her from my consciousness) and the second perceiving her as a Knight of the Old Republic, a Jedi. Both readings make sense in the context of the novel. Can this type of unending interpretation be applied to all your work?

 

I noticed the following references to the Dune series:
In Shatterpoint, the ship called the Halleck ( okay, that one's obvious );
and in ROTS, the part where Grievous says he's going to "squeeze" Utapau. I can't help thinking this was inspired by Beast Rabban.

 

Um . . .

Yes.

Though that's not ambiguity in plot, it's ambiguity in motivation. And it reflects the actual situation of every one of us: we can judge others only by their actions, since we can't get inside their heads to find out what really drives them. The third-person omniscient viewpoint is a crutch, at best; it's often a flat lie, and a cheap one, at that. Half the time getting inside someone else's head wouldn't tell you anything useful, because most people aren't entirely sure why they do what they do. Even when they think they are.

Dunno if the "squeeze" reference was inspired by Rabban; it had been too long since I'd read Dune to be sure. Things stick in my head.

The ship's named the Halleck because it would have been a bit too far out of continuity to name it the Idaho.