 |
| Meet the Author |
Adding this in after all the questions and John’s answers…dang, I want to ask more and continue talking. Even knowing this story and John, there’s so much more I’ve just learned. Yes, John…write more of Turtan’s universe and all the characters!
ChrisChat:What drove you to write Inspector of the Cross? Where and how did this story originate?
John:A good part of the genesis of Inspector of the Cross lies in Joe Haldeman’s classic work of science fiction, The Forever War. Its protagonist fights in a war that lasts over a thousand years. I wanted to explore that premise, only I took it further and focused almost solely on one person, an agent or Inspector who so far has fought in a war for nearly four thousand years. He travels across space in “freeze ships” in a state of suspended animation. The journeys or missions last decades and centuries, and he seeks weapons or devices that might turn the tide against the Cen, vicious, seemingly invincible aliens who have brought humans to the brink of ruin. I wanted to explore what it must be like to be such a man, to live outside of time and normal human contact, to love and leave women and dozens of children he has fathered and will never see again. What terrible price must he pay in order to serve and attempt to save the human race, and what will be the effect upon him to have made such a prolonged sacrifice? Turtan is the best by far, and because of him, the human race has survived, though ultimately it seems even his transcendent gifts cannot save us. It is not just that the enemy is relentless and remorseless, but that like Christ, Turtan has not only been betrayed, but betrayed by his own leaders. While I am not a Christian, the concept of a cosmic savior who will give his all to save humanity has proved too potent for me to resist. Yet Turtan, a nonbeliever, would be the first to scoff at such a comparison, and he would turn from such praise in disgust even as the parallels between him and Christ continue to mount. Despite Turtan’s flaws, he remains what the enemy emperor himself called humanity’s “greatest knight,” its most courageous and magnificent hero.
One other thing I was trying to explore was what happens to the human race if we venture into space and spread out amid the stars. If that happens, how can we possibly govern or communicate when we will be many light-years apart? Won’t we scatter and lose all touch with each other forever?
ChrisChat:For those reading, I know your books at MuseItUp Publishing quite well simply because I’m one of your editors. We’ve talked, agreed and disagreed, about Turtan from book one to now…and hopefully more to come. With all the stories you’ve written, is Turtan your favourite character? Has the story moved in any direction where you’ve argued with yourself about putting Turtan in some position you never intended…didn’t want for him?
John:A good question – or questions. I’d have to say Turtan is my favorite largely because he’s the only character I’ve continued on in more than one book (he’s now getting into real trouble in Book 4.) There’s just one other character I tried to write a sequel for, and that’s Stella McMasters, the cyborg space captain of Beyond Those Distant Stars, published by Mundania Press. In some ways she’s like Turtan, but I ran into difficulties. The big thing about Turtan is that he has continued to grow and to become more complex. I keep discovering new facets in his character. Plus, Turtan and his universe keep spawning new characters, and they bring out new dimensions in him which constantly surprise me.
As for the story moving in a direction I argued with myself about, etc. Well, I’ve wondered about those darn Radiants. I liked having Turtan alone, a solitary galactic hero fighting for justice. Why did I have to cram eleven billion sub-micro critters into his head? Is it wise to have him run loose with all those bees in his bonnet for the next two or three novels? Sometimes the guy can’t even sleep or kiss a girl without . . . well, never mind. And then I kept promoting that little gal Sky till bam!, ’fore I know it, the whole universe has itself another champion. I have indeed asked myself if it is wise to make my hero share the glory and limelight so much and second-guessed some of the positions I’ve put Turtan in.
ChrisChat:Who are the Cen? What influenced you to create them and their world?
John:Every ying needs its yang, and good and evil need each other to play against and define each other by. Human beings feel, love, have emotions, and create art, literature, and music. The Cen feel nothing except a rapacious desire to conquer and acquire. They are cold, logical, and brutal. All the more significant, therefore, that Turtan comes to love two of them, a man and a woman, and they come to love him in return.
I have wondered if the Cen and their world are different and interesting enough. They’re heartless – so what? That’s hardly a new concept. We’ve all heard of the Pod People. I did give them gold, multifaceted eyes and gold or silver hair that writhes in the air when they become excited, and their women do give birth to tiny babies from their brains. One question I did want to explore was whether or not greater scientific and analytical intelligence and greater physical beauty and ability makes a species and its civilization superior. Or put another way, are we superior or inferior because we like to write poetry and create music? It’s an old question but still a valid one. I also wanted to show the process of Cen changing when they begin to feel and experience human emotions such as love, as happens to Turois and Turtan’s wife Yaneta.
Finally, watch out for that signpost up ahead. I’m building up to an ultimate revelation about the Cen and who and what they are!
ChrisChat:On the same line, I have to ask how did the Radiants come about? I’m still baffled at their concept…in a good way.
John: Okay, in Kingdom of the Jax, Turtan is about to splash down in an alien sea. Boy oh boy do I love this type of situation. What is he going to find here? An alien version of Moby-Dick? Strange tasting Chicken of the Sea? It’s an alien world, so the sky is the limit. I wanted the life form our hero discovers to be really alien, really different, but still . . . understandable.
Years ago, I’d read both versions of Blood Music by Greg Bear. The novelette won the Nebula Award in 1983 and the Hugo Award in 1984. The novel version was nominated for the Nebula, the Hugo, the Campbell, and the British Science Fiction Awards. The story is about nanotechnology, the creation and evolution of tiny, artificial, intelligent machines within a human being. My Radiants, in contrast, are not machines. But once inside Turtan, they do evolve and change. Will they ultimately be good, evil, or a hybrid? Will they be synergistic or parasitical? I thought I could generate some drama that differs in many ways from Bear’s story. Is Turtan now one entity or billions? What will he change into, and what will the Radiants become because of Turtan’s influence? Stay tuned, folks.
ChrisChat:Taking a line for the back blurb of “Kingdom of the Jax,” “The Jax, Overseers of the universe…” Why do they exist?
John:I’m establishing the supernatural hierarchy of my universe, or rather, of my multiverse. At the top is God, the female spirit who pervades Everything. She is like a divine wind, and she has created the Jax, who are spiritual policeman who control each one of countless universes to make sure they don’t get out of hand. Each Jax is named Quon, and each Jax in some mystical way is every Jax. It all has to do with preserving order. The Jax aren’t supposed to meddle or interfere, only make sure that unacceptable violations of the natural order don’t occur—you know, like Mitt Romney running a third time for President in 2016. OTOH, the Jax in this universe can’t resist meddling or tampering with fate or destiny on occasion to benefit or even save Turtan’s life. He feels bad about doing it and goes mea culpa, but still he does it.
The Jax not only exist to give the multiverse and this particular universe order, but they comment on many things and as I’ve indicated, act at crucial points. For example, they advise Turtan, they comment on their own actions and the death of Turtan’s wife, and they comment on Sky Masterson’s heroic role. In Book 1 Quon tells Turtan, “There is something in you, Turtan, beyond even us. Something that transcends even our understanding.” This lets the reader know that even to the Jax, Turtan is one hell of a guy. Then Quon helps him escape! If he didn’t, I would have had to find another way to get to Book 2.
ChrisChat:During the editing process, I remember asking you how you kept everything…the emperors, the years, the timeline, the generations…straight. There were times when Turtan would be coming out of a freeze, and I couldn’t backtrack which emperor would be the right one in power. You told me you had it all mapped out and written down, mind giving us a little more detail on how the writing process for Turtan’s world went? Was his world a complete planned style or did a little by-the-seat-of-your-pants come into the telling?
John: Oh Chris, sometimes I didn’t even wear pants. If I said all mapped out and written down, I overstated it. All I did was keep checking my figures and hope I caught every error.
Do you remember that time in Inspector of the Cross when I purposely showed Turtan at a loss as to what emperor was in power? Yori Santez says, “You don’t even know who the Emperor is now, do you? Thanks to your missions, you’ve fallen behind and are out of touch.” Turtan thought the current emperor would be the twenty-something. Yori tells him it’s probably the thirty-seventh. In Kingdom of the Jax, which takes place 190 years later, Turtan meets the current emperor. I made him the forty-second. I think that’s about right. Anyway, I calculated what emperor would be in power.
In Book 2,Turtan spends thirty-one years traveling from Cross Imperial Station to Lauren, and in the Lauren mine he tells the Cen leader he killed their emperor nearly thirty-two years ago on Cen Imperial Station.. (Add four months traveling time from Cen Imperial Station to Cross Imperial Station plus time he spent on the latter.) In Book 3, He travels from Lauren through a black hole to a weird, uncharted region of space and then goes back through the black hole and later to the Space Academy he graduated from. He lands AFTER ABOUT SIX YEARS. We know emperor 42 died a month after Turtan left, and the next emperor isn’t named or given a number. On two occasions Turtan tells Admiral Walker, the CEO of the station, that he left Cross Imperial Station “about forty years ago.” That is correct. I throw in some wriggle room, because I’m not sure exactly how long he was in that strange, anomalous area of space. I backtracked the text, and I checked these figures again and again. I checked these and other figures. For example, the aliens are involved here. I don’t want to tip anything to the reader of this interview. In Book 3 how did they arrive so fast in just twenty-plus years? Well, they have those extra fast ships, much faster than humans’. That’s a major reason we’re losing the war and why we need a faster-than-light drive. I took this factor into consideration.
Anyway, if I missed anything or made any errors, it’s all on me.
ChrisChat: Would you want to be Turtan?
John:You know, I was interviewed on It Matters Radio recently, and I was asked if I WAS Turtan. Not even close! While I would like to have some of Turtan’s virtues, his magnanimity and greatness of soul would overwhelm and exhaust me, hold me up to too high a standard. Imagine dedicating yourself body and soul to humanity for four thousand years – who among us could do that? Turtan exists above all to help and serve others, to save us from extinction, and he does it better than anyone else possibly could. Yes, part of me would like to do it. However, I would not want to live four thousand years as a result of suspended animation in freeze ships and outlive my great-great-great, etc. grandchildren, and find myself forever out of the normal flow of other people’s lives. I don’t want to leap from generation to generation like they’re squares in hopscotch. Like Christ, Turtan simply makes too great a sacrifice for my taste. Indeed, he sometimes wishes he could just settle down like an ordinary Joe and raise a family. But he can’t, for his quest endlessly continues.
ChrisChat:Any out of page stories you’d like to tell us about Turtan and his world?
John:Well, I did publish a story about Turtan long ago called “Between Missions.” As a matter of fact, there were two versions and in one, he had a different name. It was about the pressures of his job and the effect they had on him as shown when he took a “rest” on a station between missions.
As you know, I took out 25,000 words from Defender of the Flame which dealt primarily with Sky Masterson. I’ve considered developing it into a shorter novel. She is hung up on Turtan, and I thought it would be interesting not only to follow her apprenticeship and development as she becomes an Inspector, but also to see Turtan through her eyes. Sky is a lethal fighter, a great, natural talent in so many ways. This would also be a girly novel about a teenager growing up with other teenagers on a space station. The relationship between Sky and Turtan is complicated, and I’d like to explore it a bit more than I did before. TENTATIVE TITLE: Sky-bird. That is what Turtan calls her in Defender of the Flame.
Out of page stories . . . I’ve thought of writing one about Turtan before he became Turtan. Turtan is Fred Duggs. What an unimposing name. He is about fourteen, short for his age, has no whiskers on his chin, and he’s on a flip ship flying up to First Station, the scene of most of the action of Defender of the Flame. On this flip ship you have candidates for the Inspector of the Cross Academy, and they can’t figure out what the hell this little punk kid is doing there. The bare minimum age for admittance to the Academy is seventeen. The sergeant in charge can’t make sense of it either. He whisks through his flick screen and discovers that YOUNG TURTAN (the title of this YA novel) achieved the highest scores ever on the aptitude tests for the Academy, just blew them out of the water. Readers of the series should know this already from reading Inspector of the Cross. In the meantime, young Fred is cow-eyed in love, for there’s a beautiful, sexy nineteen-year-old cadet onboard. Naturally, she doesn’t even notice him.
YOUNG TURTAN would explore his experiences as an underage cadet, the abuse and ostracism he faces, and what this future legend encounters. Some kids might relate to it. After all, middle school and high school can be a bitch.
ChrisChat:What’s in the works for John now?
John:Well, part of me would like to start writing short stories again, but presently I’m scribbling the fourth book in the series, Conqueror of the Stars. It looks like the Cen are toast, but Turtan’s mission goes awry almost from the start, and then really darker implications arise for humanity. Suffice it to say, the planet Mercontera doesn’t mean “Land of Surprises” for nothing. At the end of the novel, I hit the reset button, the current cycle ends, and a new and greater threat to the human race appears. If I continue the series with Turtan as our overtaxed hero, new readers can hop aboard his spaceship without knowing a blessed thing about the back story because I can quickly fill them in. OTOH, this could be my chance to say adios and vamoose from this universe forever.
Wow, John your world sounds amazing and I agree with Chris on its complexity to keep track of, but you've written it to read and follow easily. Congratulations!!
Thanks for dropping by Susan.
Thanks again for having me as a guest (and as one of your writers), Chris. I hope visitors enjoy this interview.
John
Any time, John, any time. I'm the lucky one 🙂
Great questions and incredible answers. What a wonderful interview.
It just shows the complexity and imagination an author must engage to write a compelling series.
Hi, Rosalie. Long time. Happy 2015. Thanks for dropping by…I love John's answers and info, I always learn something and I've edited the series 🙂
HELLO, Rosalie, exalted author of the Chronicles of Caleath. Thanks for dropping by. Rosalie knows quite well about writing a compelling series. For me, a pantser, it has taken off in unexpected directions. Maybe Sky will have her own series one day. Not!
NOT??! Oh No, I'll hound you till you write it 😉