Transcript
[0:00] Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans
[0:05] and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and today it is my very great pleasure to be joined by a very well-known author from across the pond. I'm joined today by Tad Williams, who many of you will know from his huge, epic fantasy series, such as Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. And I mean, I could list them. There are a lot of them, The Dragonbone Chair. Also, he's dipped into urban fantasy series, such as the Bobby Dollar series. But today, we're actually celebrating and talking about The Navigator's Children, which I have here in a rather wonderful hardback, which is the last installment in the epic The Last King of Austin Ard series. So welcome to Tad. Thank you. Nice to be here. So before we talk about The Navigator's Children, Tad, I wanted to ask you to cast your mind back to little Tad when he was roving through the library at school or in your local library. What were the books that were the ones you took off the shelf? Which were the ones were your entry to writing fantasy?
[1:28] Well, I have to say my entry to writing fantasy almost undoubtedly started even before that.
[1:35] I give a lot of credit for this to my mother, who was a great reader herself and read to me starting at a very young age. And so I was already immersed in what I would call British children's fantasy from an early age.
[1:56] So we went through all of the normal stuff, the Wind in the Willows and the Winnie the Pooh books and various other things. I think the E. Nesbitt books, or at least some of them. Then when I was about 11, perhaps, my mom gave me the Fellowship of the Ring and said, you might want to try this. I know it looks long, but et cetera, et cetera. And of course, I fell in love with it. But I think it also influenced me toward Tolkien in a certain way because of reading that before reading The Hobbit. So I didn't have those kind of expectations of, oh, why is this different from The Hobbit, which was more my speed kind of thing. And in fact, I was more, oh, no, this is my kind of speed and was thrilled by it, thrilled by the depth of it and the perception of history beyond the worlds and beyond the present time in the story and et cetera. So that was one of the things that definitely got me going. And then various other writers, not confined just to fantasy, obviously, but a lot of my favorites kind of wandered back in and out of the fantasy genre. I'm thinking about nominal science fiction writers like Ray Bradbury and Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, Ursula Le Guin.
[3:19] So really all of those things kind of were in place even before I started going to the library much on my own. And from that point on, I was not just picking up things that looked interesting in terms of fantasy, but I was also picking up a lot of other things which informed me, like history. So you have a great map in your book. I'm just wondering if you were also responding to illustrations and books with maps as well. Of course. Of course. Yeah. No, it's very much part of what Tolkien referred to as secondary creation. I loved that. And I realized I've loved that for a long time, probably even before I started reading books. One of my profound revelations was that I realized that the whole idea that spawned the other land books, which are a near future science fiction fantasy VR epic I wrote was the Fantasyland boat ride at Disneyland when I was maybe six.
[4:24] And I didn't even know that for years. I had a whole other also true explanation for where I first started wanting to write those books. But then one day I was on a stage in Germany and it suddenly came to me like, wait, no, even before that, it was the Fantasyland boat ride and Snow White with a microphone saying, oh, look, and there's Toad Hall. But it was the compact size of everything and the fact that it can all fit together and all of that. And I realized that sort of thing feeds into my world building thing. I love the idea of of being able to not be in control because it's definitely at a certain point you give up control but i love being able to be involved in all aspects of making a world or a place and that also very definitely came from tolkien you know his internal consistency and all that set a very high bar for me and i i think it's a bar i still operate with yeah that that idea of being in control of your worlds.
[5:35] I've done school visits, you know, as authors, you go around doing the school visits, and I've described that as being a demigod. Because I've always felt there's a slight chance that the world is taken out of your control, but you are pretty powerful in it. So that's how I position myself in my world building. Yeah, no, it's absolutely true. But it's also, I have to say, it's a humbling experience because with these big, super complicated books, I have discovered that I am not always in control in the way that I would like to be or that seems attractive. But I realized that in a lot of cases, I have to allow the complexity to turn out its own answers and its own continuities.
[6:20] And to be honest, that is one of the things that has kept me writing long books, that and an audience that seems to like them, but also just the surprises, the emergent order that pops up out of the chaos of a very big, very complicated situation with many characters and a history of the world and all that. And at a certain point, you realize, like, I can't make this happen by sort of decreeing it. I have to find organic ways that make sense to the world or to the characters. So, yeah, it can be a very humbling experience indeed when you realize that despite the fact that technically you are the creator or, again, sub-creator, as Tolkien had it, you're not really in charge. Something else is. And in my case, I'd like to think it's the subconscious, but who knows? Yeah, it's mysterious, isn't it? So because you are so brilliant at this creation of huge, complicated, epic fantasy worlds, a lot of what I'd love to talk to you about goes back to that. But let's just think about the kid who was reading or having read Wind in the Willows, read to them. Were you already writing at that stage? But no, actually, the one, I guess, slightly odd thing about my journey was that writing was never a primary thought, although I was always, I realized later, a storyteller.
[7:46] But when I was young, my main focus, if anything, was on art and illustration.
[7:53] I was very influenced by comic books, specifically the 1960s Marvel comic books, when they kind of had their great burst of creativity.
[8:03] And so that was kind of where I thought I would be going. And then I did a lot of other things as well as I've got out of high school and was in early young adulthood. I played music in a band and did theater and radio and various other things. So there was always an aspect of performance and, as I said, storytelling in what I did. But it wasn't until I actually lived in a fourplex apartment with four apartments with another writer who was actually the guy who had the Wallace Stegner Chair of Literature at Stanford. And I liked him very much. He was a very fine writer, a man named Ron Hanson.
[8:45] But I also said, I don't think Ron is that much more creative than I am. And I decided I could try writing something because it's something I could do in my free time, which was a bit of a misnomer because I was working two or three jobs at that time, trying to make one of the creative things take off. So I did. I wrote my first book, Tail Chaser Song, which was a fantasy novel about cats, which, by the way, has a few little kind of joking nods to Tolkien in it, and was lucky enough to sell it and suddenly went, well, I can either write more books that they're offering to pay me for, or I can keep busting my hump on these other things that I'm trying. And so it wasn't a natural thing, although I come from a family of readers and I come from a family of language users and language lovers. So in retrospect, it's not unusual. It's not surprising. But at the time, I was much more certain I would go in another direction. But as I said, stories and storytelling has always kind of been at the heart of who I am and what I like.
[9:54] Yeah, thank you for mentioning that fact about your roommate, because I actually think it's, I had something similar where I was, I was a diplomat. I was in the Britannic Majesty's Diplomatic Service, and it wasn't a friend of mine whose father was an author had decided also to give himself the 40th birthday present of some time out to write.
[10:15] And I thought, well, if John can do it, I can do it. And so you go from this track and you think, actually I'm going over there. And so that permission of seeing someone else do it in your circle is, is very inspiring. So people listening, we're giving you permission, have a try. Absolutely. And, and as long as you mentioned that, Julia, I would just add an addendum to that, which is, you know, getting published is not the only point of writing by any means. You know, that you're talking to people who that's, you know, we make our living in that arena, but there are many, many values to be had from writing, just one of which is learning how to formulate your own thoughts into something coherent. But there's also an element of self-inspection and learning and all kinds of things that come from writing, as well as just the discipline.
[11:10] Of trying to do anything creative regularly. So, you know, if you're interested in writing, don't set yourself only a goal of, you know, publish or perish kind of a thing. Be aware that there's a whole lot of really useful, lovely things that can come out of a regular writing habit, whether you ever become a full-time author or not.
[11:32] So let's turn to The Last King of Austin art now um i've joined you at the end of a series i feel as i only had a couple of weeks to read this and so i really have started um at the beginning of the series so i would strongly encourage those listening if they're going to start this series to start with the witchwood crown because i feel as though i've it's like coming in at the return of the king i've you know no i shouldn't have done that and and much like much like the lord of the rings in its original form.
[12:04] My big multi-volume stories are not intended really as separate books. It's just that the physical limits of binding technology prevent me from writing 4,000, 5,000-page books and publishing them in one volume. So I try to give a little bit of a separation between volumes, at least if only in the sense of some kind of meaning between what's going to happen next and what's already happened but generally no they're really one long story so it is i try to always put a synopsis in in my books but that's really more to catch people up who haven't read the previous volume for a while um it i i admire you for for waiting in at the at the end because they are i i did lots of so i tried reading the synopsis but realized that i should have I've read, so I also went to online summaries, which helped me.
[13:03] But anyway, the book itself does stand, because it starts at a dramatic point.
[13:09] It was more of the question of, I was aware that I could have got, so much more detail about the backstories by having done the other volumes, but it was still a very enjoyable, enjoyable is the wrong word, it's stirring, epic. I mean, there are such high stakes in this story. I very much enjoyed reading it, but it kept me gripped as to how you were going to tie up all these ends together. So for the benefit of those who perhaps haven't heard much about this series before. Can you just tell us a little bit about the kind of world you enter into for Navigator's Children? Okay. It's going to be tough.
[13:55] Well, first of all, it is going back to the world of the Dragonbone Chair series, which is Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, but about 30 years after the events of the first set of books. In one sense, anyway, it's not just tying up three volumes. It's actually tying up really almost 10 volumes because they, in paperback form, there's four volumes for the Dragonbone Chair books, and then two short volumes and four more long volumes. So be aware of that. It is a mountain to climb. But if you like this sort of thing, then maybe that will be a benefit. But anyway, the idea of the world itself, and really this does start in the first set of books but is very clear in the second set as well is that the the, The situation itself, at least where we begin, is much like, say, 13th century Europe. So it's pre-Renaissance, pre the first stirrings of industrialization, of course, as is common with a lot of fantasy novels. But it's also European in the sense that the main characters live with all of the kind of medieval ideas about the world.
[15:13] And then as Simon, who along with Miriam, are two of the characters who extend all the way through both series of books, as Simon goes out into the world, he begins to realize that he had a rather limited view. And he begins to meet not just other kinds of people, but other races, actually, other kinds of creatures and things of that sort, and discovers not just that the world is bigger and stranger than he knew, but that a lot of the sort of home truths on which he was raised are pretty dubious also. So it's really a book, a fantasy novel that focuses on the journey into adulthood that we all make. This is thematic stuff, obviously. I try not to whack people over the head with it. And the new set of books, the one that ends with The Navigator's Children, as I mentioned, is 30 years later. So Simon and Miriam L. are essentially teenagers, although that term obviously doesn't exist, but they are around that age, which is the beginning of adulthood in a pre-industrial society at the end of the first set of books. And then in the next set of books, they are not just adults, but they are older adults. They are middle-aged adults.
[16:31] But the troubles have returned and et cetera, et cetera. And I don't want to give too much away because of course, what the troubles are and what they actually signal is a big part of the series. But it is essentially, so it's a, it's a, It appears on the surface, I like to think, as a bog-standard post-Tolkien fantasy. But as a lifelong Tolkien fan and a critic of fantasy and science fiction, just in my own personal mind, there's a lot of discussion about the tenets of modern fantasy fiction. There's a lot of, and of Tolkien, and of the things not, as I hope is clear by now, I'm a huge lover of Tolkien and all of his work, not just The Lord of the Rings.
[17:25] But I'm a different person from a different time. And one of the things that I was least satisfied with in the fantasy novels that were being published before I started to write myself was that a lot of them seemed to be using Tolkien as a kind of holy writ in terms of all the tropes that he chose to bring in from folklore and history and things like that, which was his choice and therefore perfect for what Tolkien wanted to do. But that a lot of other writers had kind of said oh you know this is how it has to be so they had gone for his kind of nordic elves and various other things that that's fine but those were choices tolkien made and i knew that and i was a little annoyed with a lot of the post tolkien writers that they didn't seem to realize and it's like if every detective novel writer post conan.
[18:24] Doyle, all the detectives had to be acerbic bachelors who smoke pipes, shot cocaine, and played the violin. That's how it all has to be. So that was another thing that was going on for me, is I wanted to lance some of these tropes that I didn't necessarily personally agree with and which Tolkien had in his work because...
[18:48] They were real and important for him, like the idea of a golden age, of a fallen world, all that kind of stuff. That's very Tolkien. That's less so me. So I wanted to approach some of these themes and tropes from a different perspective because I'm a different writer and I don't want to simply try to imitate what Tolkien had already done better than I could hope to. Yeah. And people will be reassured to know there is no Dark Lord. Um you know there's that famous terry pratchett uh quote about dark lord should be rationed you you've kept away from that you've kept them in your ration book well i i had used it in the first set of books but with a caveat which was that as somebody pointed out that basically it's it's the old saying one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter that you know for a certain group of people in the story he was a hero you know the the dark lord quote unquote and was also actually a tragic figure so whereas the the main antagonist in this book not quite so tragic no and not very um she's not very appealing but she has uh her grip on power which um is obviously one of the huge, well, I'm not going to say too much because you don't want to spoil people before they even get to this point, but there is a battle between relative.
[20:17] Relative good and evil in this, but it's not in one place. It's happening in different. So sometimes it's, I'm calling them human, but the Simon and his lot, they've got politics going on in their world. So there's a kind of evil element, breakaway faction within that. But you've also got other other races with other divisions and other, um, battles going on, including one very big one with a sort of high stakes element in it. So I don't know how many points of view you have in your story. It's possibly 10? At least. I think there's probably more, but yeah. Yeah. So lots of moving parts indeed. What is the writing process like for somebody? So if someone's listening and they've got a very ambitious fantasy world, which they're planning, what are the tips for keeping everything happening? Do you write one story all the way through or do you write sequentially or have you got a huge cork board of everybody's journey on? Well, I'm not sure how much help I can be because I have a rather idiosyncratic method of doing this stuff. But first of all, to kind of take those questions in order, the order in which you read the book is pretty much the order in which I wrote it. So the fact that there are many different storylines is a structural choice I made years ago back in the Dread and Bone Chair.
[21:46] And if you want to, we can talk about that at some point. But so the way you read the book, which is skipping from storyline to storyline is pretty much how I write it. So I'm moving everything forward one little bit at a time.
[22:00] I have found over, because as you noted, these are rather complicated stories with a ton of characters, all of whom have agency and viewpoint and all that because of that, I spend every day before writing, I usually spend a couple of hours just thinking about what I'm going to be working on. And that's a vital part of my process is before I hit a key on the story itself, I think about what I'm going to be working on. And one of the reasons is because I have found that material as complicated as this and as interlocking and the sort of butterfly effect everywhere. Where you change something in one part of the story, and it's going to have a knock-on effect in another part of the story. So because of that, I have found that actually I do best keeping it all in my head, which doesn't mean I don't make any outlines. For one thing, you have to make an outline before your publishers will get up off any money, especially for a multi-volume series. You have to let them know that, yeah, no, I actually know something about how it's going to end. I'm not just going to stop before the last book.
[23:09] But because of the need to, keep things open, and again, the complexity, I do tend to keep much of it in my head because it feels, and this is a weird way to talk about my own head, but it feels more fluid. It feels more as though I can try many different possibilities without impacting the kind of core that I've already agreed on with myself. So I'll get to a point and I'll say, okay, this set of characters could do this, they could do that, they could have an argument and fall out, they could do, how will all these different possibilities play out? How will they ramify along the larger story?
[23:52] And then I sort through them, try different thought experiments until I find something that feels satisfying, not just for what it does to the rational control I'm trying to assert, but also what feels good with the underlying story. Does this feel like it's in character? Does it feel as though it's happening at the right time to keep the audience informed and involved, et cetera, et cetera. So because of the need to literally weave together so many strands, I find that it works best for me to not make many outlines or anything. I will kind of have an abstract so I can go back later on when I want to quickly edit things and say, okay, which chapter is that in? And that sometimes acts kind of as a, not an abstract, but it shows me the pace and the order that things have happened in to that point.
[24:49] And occasionally, if I'm trying to think certain things through, I'll make little tentative notes and stuff. But generally, I find that for me personally, it works best to keep as much as possible in the brain until it proves to me that it's ready to be written. I'm presuming that whilst you're doing that, you do have a sense of your ending.
[25:10] I have to. Yeah. And Julia, that's one of the things that for those who are embarking into the world of possibly writing multi-volume stories, one of the problems that I have that many writers who write single volume stuff do not have is that by the time my last book is being published, you know, or no, let's put it this way. By the time I'm writing the final volume, usually one or two parts of the earlier story have actually been published. So I have no way to fix them if I realize I've made a tragic mistake. And I used to have a joke when I was doing readings and stuff about going door to door with a red pen and taking, you know, see that guy seat dead, crossing that out, putting breathing very shallowly and handing the book back to people, You can't do that, obviously. So as a result, I have to know something about how it's going to end. But they are also so long and complicated, these stories to write, that if I knew everything in advance, first of all, I don't think I could because you learn as you work. I'm sure you know.
[26:23] But also, I could not encompass that level of complexity before I start writing. So I kind of have to have, I don't know what you'd call them, touch points along the way that I figure out in advance because I can't fix it if I get it wrong. Now, that doesn't mean I always know what's going to happen three volumes later
[26:43] at the end of the story with every single touch point. But there are ways to be creatively vague where if I know something is important, I can give it to the reader, even if it's in volume one, in such a way that I can interpret it to fit in properly later on. So as I said, a certain creative vagueness with some of these key crossing points or action points or whatever. Well, sitting on the shelf behind me is a first edition and then a later edition of The Hobbit. And famously, Tolkien changed his mind about the whole of that Gollum scene. Yes. So if you read the first edition, it's different from the second edition. And then in Lord of the Rings, he has the chance to, at the Council of Elrond, Bilbo says, I'm sorry I told some of you a different story. Right then.
[27:33] I didn't want to come clean then. So he kind of does this elaborate excuse within the fiction world. I understand that. I did that several times in The Navigator's Children because, as I mentioned, some of these things are payoffs, not just of what's happened in the previous three volumes, but of stuff that happened back in the Dragonbone Chair series, which were never officially explained or there was never a need to explain them, but they actually have an underlying tie-in. But part of the reason that there's so much tying up of things is because those kind of dangling ends drive me mad. And I totally understand why Tolkien, with whatever freedom he then later had, said, the heck with it. I'm going to go back and fix that because I don't like the fact that I don't like my first take. So I don't do that necessarily by fixing something for another edition. I just try to explain it later on. And that's what I do in The Navigator's Children with a few things that had come up in the past that I had noticed. Oftentimes, it's continuity stuff that.
[28:41] Not even I, you know, noticed until rereading something or whatever, let alone any readers. So do you have some kind of what I would call Schrodinger cat characters who you may have possibly killed off, but maybe this is alive earlier on. And then you only decide what's in the box later on. I'm thinking particularly, I'm sorry, I've forgotten the name of the character who's the brother, the older, who has gone missing. Oh, Jocelyn. yes he's mentioned as missing for one i was thinking oh is he dead or is he alive like this for a long time and and obviously yeah i mean that's that's spoilery but it um i haven't said which he is he's the show not that you know you didn't say anything i'm not i'm not saying that i'm just saying i have to be careful about how much i say but um no absolutely that that is It's either Schrodinger's character or it's Schrodinger's plot point or it's Schrodinger's thematic bit. But yeah, no, absolutely. That's precisely what I have to do sometimes is, as I said, kind of a creative vagueness or what I sometimes think of as node points where I can explain them several different ways later on. Whence I myself am sure of the chain of logic.
[30:03] Because when you write big, complicated fantasy books, there is a certain amount of wiggle room, but only so much. And that is reinforced by the reader's willingness to suspend disbelief. So if you too obviously use that wiggle room to change things later on, I have very smart readers. I'm always impressed by how closely they are reading and rereading. It's actually part of the game is to write in such a way as to baffle and confuse and occasionally irritate those really smart readers. So yeah, no, you have to do it, but you have to deliver it when the time comes in such a way that the reader does not feel cheated, that you, you know, left this thing vague and then bam, it becomes important at the end. They have to have known that it would be important. And the solution when it arrives does not, should not look like something that you just pulled out of your back pocket at the last moment. So. Absolutely. Coincidences don't work. You have to earn them. You have to earn them.
[31:12] Coincidences, hot and cold running magic. There are all kinds of things that, that just, you know, Readers will get to that point and just go, oh, and especially after you've made them read 1,600 pages, 3,000 pages, whatever it is, that's the last thing you want is to get to one of those crucial bits and have them throw the book up in the air in frustration. So yeah, it's a constant thing.
[31:35] Struggle. I, I, you know, that makes it sound more dramatic than it really is, but yeah, it's, that's part of the craft of, of doing this kind of work. So I was picking up lots of, there's, I mean, it's a huge book, so there are lots of themes, but the, some of the things that were coming forward to me were relationships between generations is a huge theme amongst all the different races, um, and how that's negotiated and how people get on. And there was also relationships between the races, particularly in the case of one particular pairing. Lots to talk about there. But one theme I wanted to sort of pick up, which I kind of found most surprising, was the nature of the magic as represented by, now my pronunciation may be off.
[32:26] But Tinukedaya, a Tinukedaya group of people. I found that element really fascinating and sort of more unusual than we've read about generations before. We've read about relationship between the races, but I was fascinated by the kind of magic that was coming out of these people. Do you want to tell a little bit about your budget for your magic system?
[32:51] Okay. Well, and you did a lovely job. The only thing I would say is that when I pronounce them, and I'm just telling you this, so you do not see it as being some kind of a, you know, any whatever. It's not a comment, but is that I emphasize the last syllable. So they become tanuka da ya. But other than that, nicely done. The other thing very quickly that I always tell people is please do not worry about how you pronounce the words in my stories. Because oftentimes, and this is absolutely true, oftentimes I invented names and things before I had the language rules for various languages.
[33:27] Um, and as a result, there are many names that I pronounce incorrectly by my own canon. So the last thing I could ever do was be snobby about how to pronounce any of the names. So I just tell people whatever feels right to you. That's good for me. As far as the Tanuka Daiya, they are very definitely one of the things that is quite different about the new books over the old books. Now the old books, they were there. there's nothing about them that is dramatically different from what we knew it's just the depth of what we learn about them and their role in the scheme uh the larger scheme of things is bigger in this second series and in fact they are the navigators children referred to because the sort of uh their sort of most famous progenitor was um a character um named ruyan the navigator and it kind of hit him and his fate, he and his fate kind of ripple all through this book.
[34:26] And what you may have noticed in the story and you may be reacting to is I have always been not just cautious about magic because that was one of the lessons that I took from Tolkien, not because Tolkien did it, that's the way to do it, but because I could see the effectiveness of a very lean and budgeted use of magic in terms of the stakes of things, in terms of the reader's feeling of insecurity, which is vital. You have to make the reader believe, I don't know what's going to happen next. I may feel that since these are main characters, they will probably survive, but I don't want to feel like they are in no danger. And when a character can suddenly whip out a wand or a magical talisman and suddenly dismiss whatever the threat is, that, for me personally, doesn't work. There's also an element, without going into too much detail, there's also an element in the Tanuka Daya which verges on, some people might say, almost like science fiction, in the sense that it's a little weirder than some normal fantasy magic.
[35:42] But part of that is also because, as I said, I'm not Tolkien. I actually come from a background of having read science fiction all my life. When my wife and I, Deborah, my wife and I did the Ordinary Farm books, which is about a farm where there's actually a hole into the past and there are dragons and unicorns and all this stuff, which turned out to be actual real animals. I worked really hard to figure out how dragons and unicorns and all these other creatures actually could live in the world and what they would be like if they had actually evolved and then eventually disappeared.
[36:22] So, you know, I don't like the sort of wave of wand kind of magic. And even the magic, the big magic, when it shows up in my books, I try to make it feel as though it could happen in a real world, not necessarily the real world that we all share, but in a real world. So um and the tanuka daya are definitely that and and they are both of and not of the world of the story and as a result their effect on it is chaotic and often unexpected i guess if that's if that makes sense that's kind of the most i can say without giving anything it felt to me so um obviously it's such a huge area of influences or any of us writers sort of absorb but i felt as though there might be other traditions of myths and legends coming in informing them from what you expect to find in your usual epic fantasy yeah having lived in england i always say bog standard and i have no idea if that's yeah that's what works yeah i mean if that but yeah no absolutely and but yeah as i said i mean my influences were also people like ray bradbury and his Martian Chronicles and things like that. Um, and the otherness of those kinds of characters too.
[37:45] No, I, I very much, I'm a strong believer that any writer is a better writer when they bring things into whatever they're writing that is of them. That is, you know, their own.
[38:01] Choices and interests. And, you know, for instance, you know, most, most visual artists begin going to museums and copying and, you know, are looking in books or nowadays online and copying the great masters. Well, it's not just copying the great masters that matter. It's which great masters you copy and, and, and what aspects of their work that you, when you take your first steps into creativity, which aspects of that creativity that you're trying to learn from are you going with? And, you know, it's very obvious from Tolkien what many of his sources were, where they came from, what he was moved by, what he loved in his academic life, et cetera, et cetera.
[38:42] And so I'm trying to do that also in my own way. I'm bringing in my love of history and science and science fiction and many kinds of fantasy and mainstream fiction, you know? And I mean, for God's sakes, Jane Austen. I'm sure there are bits and pieces of Jane Austen creeping into some of my dialogue, some places, and Dickens and other kind of things that influenced me. So I think that's the main thing is that for any writer is if you can bring in things that make you different or that inform you and that you love and get excited about, you have a much better chance of writing something that's going to make a difference because other people will recognize, oh, this is a kind of way of working that I haven't run across before, or here's an interest that I haven't run across before. So again, I hope that makes sense. It's a rather large... No, it definitely does make sense. So if people out there have been waiting for the last installment, because I know there are some people, look at you, my daughter, who won't start a series until it's finished. Yeah. I don't blame them, to be honest. They've been burned by some people who will remain nameless finish their series you can now read the entire series of the last king of osternard but you can of course go back and start right at the beginning of all of this.
[40:02] And have a wonderful i reckon it'll take you half a year probably to oh my god it's a serious commitment but that would be a great 2025 um so a couple of sort of um more light-hearted questions at the end here so tad um i've got my magic wand i know you don't like them but and i've dissolved the uh the barrier between you and your fictional world if you walked into your fictional world who do you think you'd be would you last long.
[40:32] Um, I would probably be one of the advisory characters. Um, you know, there's a character named Tiamak who originally came from the swamps in the South and has managed to become a Royal advisor. Um, despite being, you know, from an outcast culture, et cetera, et cetera. Um, I suspect that was one of the few things that I could, unless I had all my knowledge as writer, in which case I could cheat and be a fortune teller. But assuming I couldn't, yeah, I would probably be some kind of an advisor because that would be the only thing I could count on that I could do as well as most people. I certainly wouldn't be the greatest sword fighter or horse rider or whatever, since I have limited experience with both. So yeah, I'd be one of those people saying, actually, in these kinds of stories, that's going to be a bad decision. Don't do that. It's going to prove to be a poison chalice. And yeah, you know, the equivalent of saying, don't go upstairs to see what that noise is. You know, that would be my job. I quite fancy being a friend to Simon and Marie Amel.
[41:44] Some kind of little, you know, lady-in-waiting role. They sound like nice people to get on with. I really, that's one of the things about, and I wonder if sometimes I have a very, very nice, but fairly steady audience. And I'm wondering if part of it is that, I mean, I do, I am a sort of an optimist in life. I think that humans tend to rebound from bad times and that essentially most people are good. I guess that's my underlying thing. And Simon and Mary Mel are a good example of that as protagonists. I mean, they make mistakes, they lose their temper, they do all these things, but they're fundamentally good people. And I hope that's why we root for them and not simply because they're the designated protagonists. And when they make mistakes.
[42:35] I hope the reader recognizes that and says, okay, I'm not so pleased with them right now. Instead of just giving them the blanket, well, the ends justify the means kind of a thing. So yeah, I think they are nice people. And I think there are a lot of nice, interesting people in my work. And that's because as I look around the world, as I meet others and travel and all that, that's my feeling is that the world is full of kind people and good people. And um i don't yes i will put those kind and good people in my stories in terrible jeopardy no question about it yeah that's my job but but i also believe in reinforcing that idea that it's never hopeless that that that humans and the variants of humanity that i introduce have more to them than simply doing what is expeditious, that there are other things that we think about and consider as we make our decisions in life, whether we're deciding about fighting a dragon or simply is it time to move to a new apartment. We have complicated and oftentimes fairly optimistic approaches to these things.
[43:51] We didn't talk about the mythic background to your story because partly that will give away some of the key things that happen towards the end. So I don't want to go there, but there is a very satisfying.
[44:06] Creation story or a Genesis story, should I say to the, to this work, which is the main, see how carefully I'm choosing my work. No, you're doing very well. The journey of it informs the end to give it the big tie up. Right. So I wanted to ask you, we always end with where in all the fantasy worlds is the best place for something. And it can be from film or TV or books or an artwork. It really doesn't matter.
[44:39] And I was thinking, where is for you the best place, other than your own work, for a sort of creation or a foundation myth? It could be that you want to go into a world and write one for it. Like you want to go into Beatrix Potter and write a foundation, you know, Peter Rabbit or something. Have at.
[44:58] But you can go anywhere. where would you want to go and share the foundation creation myth well i i have to say this and this is this is not um meant to to suck up to oxford or anything like that but i i would definitely be leaning towards uh middle earth and the larger tolkienian universe for an odd reason Which is that it's one of those places where you know there is actually, again, that kind of optimism, that kind of idea. Now, don't get me wrong. I am not a religious person. Obviously, J.R. Tolkien was. But as I said, I am an optimist, which is, to some people, that may seem a paradox. It doesn't to me. But I like the certainty that you get in a fantasy world, and especially in The Lord of the Rings, that no matter what happens, that there is a fundamental purpose. Because, of course, I think that's one of the reasons that we read fantasy in the first place. And as I've often said, it's one of the few places where you know that somebody's actually in charge of the world.
[46:13] If you're not a religious person, that's one of the few places where you know you can go and you know somebody is actually paying attention. In this case, it's a writer. And in that same sense, but expanded slightly, in Tolkien's world, there is an Iluvatar. There are Valar and Maiar, and there are entities that are trying their best to keep creation on the right side of where it should be. So I find that very reassuring I'm not sure that I would enjoy all the dark ages aspects of the books you know like I do like things like indoor plumbing but I, genuinely like the fact that as with Tolkien himself there is a faith built into the world that allows the characters.
[47:07] At least from a reader's point of view to have something behind them, and interestingly it's paradoxically not something i make a point of in my own work so i'm kind of cheating here i'm saying my characters don't get to live in that world but i would if i had the choice yeah well this is the point of this is you're allowed to go anywhere you'd like and um just picking up like you said right at the beginning about your various careers you had the foundation myth in the silmarillion is music, So the whole theme is played and it's already played and already done and dusted. And the evil has been folded into the theme again by Lulitar. And then the Valar go into the world to live it out. It's similar to the, that, that dual thing is similar to what happens in Paradise Lost. It's told once, and then you go into the world to see it played out. Um, so as you were musical, you can come and join in the music. So give your own little theme. I think similar to you, that would probably be a top pick for me, but there is actually a version of this in C.S. Lewis.
[48:14] If you remember in The Magician's Nephew, because he was this magpie of a brain, I think he might have nicked this from Tolkien, possibly. But when Narnia's created, it's created by song. And it's the darkness and aslan is walking through and it's a beautiful description of through the point of view of polly i think that that character yeah she sees the notes of music which then corresponds to trees and flowers coming up so she sees it immediately realized so i think i would go there um just to watch that wonderful symphony reminds me of.
[48:55] Fantasia when they have the the world being created it's all that wonderful moment of watching it unfolding before you so thank you so much for joining us okay yeah yeah no i would do last thing i just want to say very quickly which is yeah that the the musical thing comes through in the books too because it would be a whole other discussion so i won't go into depth but But yeah, no,
[49:19] I feel storytelling very much as music. And the ideas that come to me about pacing, rhythm, tones, and timbres are very musical. And that's one of the reasons the metaphor of song is used for magic in these books. So I just wanted to get that off my chest. Well, that ties it up all nicely, actually. It brings back the theme of your book to complete Sarcoda for today's episode. Thank you very much, Tad, and all the best with the completion of this series. And to whatever happens next, which I'm sure will be epic. Thank you very much for having me, Julia.
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