A Season for Slaughter

AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID GERROLD

• I suppose the first question to ask is the obvious one. Why do the books in the Chtorran cycle take so long to publish?

Because they take a hell of a long time to write. They're work. If I had known just how hard this series was going to be, I certainly would have thought twice about the investment of years it was going to demand.

On the other hand, it's a very exciting challenge to work on a canvas this large. I've always wanted to read an epic scale science fiction novel. This is the story I wanted to read, but no one eIse was writing.

• Do you have a clear ending in mind? Are you working toward a specific resolution?

Absolutely. It may take a while to get there though. There's a lot of story between the beginning and the end. And I keep discovering new things that I want to spend time with. The good news is that there is a definite end. I know exactly where the story has to go. The bad news is that we have to go through a lot of hell to get there.

Somebody asked me once why I had given my hero such a big problem, why was I making things so tough for him? Wasn't that unfair? And he was right. It is unfair-but so is life. Fairness is a concept invented by human beings. Nature doesn't believe in it.

And I'm not sure fairness is all that dramatic in a story. What's a fair problem? One that's just your size? How interesting is that? How heroic do you have to be to solve a little problem? What's interesting is when you tackle a problem that's bigger than you are, and then force yourself to grow big enough to handle it. The biggest heroes in life are the ones who take on the biggest challenges. In fact, it's the challenge that makes them so big. I think that's how you define how big a person you are-by how big a challenge you're willing to accept.

This is an important part of what the series is about. Where do heroes come from? Heroes aren't born. You have to grow them. What I'm doing here is following the process of on-the-job training for a hero. I don't think it happens easily. Jim McCarthy starts out just like anybody else; he's an angry, resentful, almost-untrainable young man who still hasn't recovered from his own adolescence; but as we follow him through the books, we can see what he's learning and how it's affecting him. You can't push a human being through these kind of events and have him come out the other side unchanged; so this story is really about the process of human transformation. It's a lifelong process.

• How many books will there be in the series?

All of them.

At this point it looks like there will be at least seven. This is the longest damned trilogy I've ever written.

• Do you know who the Chtorrans really are?

Actually, it's more accurate to ask, "Do you know what the Chtorr really is?" And, yes, the answer is yes. In fact, I've already said what it is in this book. The Chtorr is the invading ecology.

What you're really asking is, "Where's the intelligence in this invasion?" And the only answer I can give you is, "By now, it's everywhere."

However, I promise to explain it a lot more carefully in the next book, A Method For Madness.

• Will we have to wait another three years for A Method For Madness?

Oh, God, I hope not.

At this point, there's more than 50,000 words of book five written, but I have no idea how long it will be. It's going to be u very difficult book to write.

A Matter For Men was 155,550 words, A Day For Damnation was 144,500 words, A Rage For Revenge was 180,600 words, and this book, A Season For Slaughter, is 222,000 words, so it's almost a third longer than the longest previous book.

• Can you give us a little preview of A Method For Madness?

Um, sure. Okay. The chopper crashes, they get captured by worms and turned into worm slaves, everybody grows pink fur and goes crazy, we find out that the worms are really four-sexed insects with a shared consciousness, Jim gets brainwashed by the worms and kills Lizard and her baby, then he kills all the other babies in the camp, and then after he's rescued he's put in an insane asylum, but he breaks out and adopts a baby worm of his own and becomes a deranged renegade.

• You're not serious.

I guess you'll have to wait for the book, won't you?

• The sequence in this book about Daniel Goodman and Lester Barnstorm-is that based on a real experience? Did you have a specific producer in mind?

No, not at all. I suppose some people are going to imagine a specific producer, and I can't stop them from doing that, but Lester Barnstorm is not based on any real person, living or dead.

The anger in that sequence is real, of course. Lester Barnstorm represents every sleazeball producer who ever lied to, cheated, bullied, or abused a writer. If any producer who reads it recognizes himself, he should be ashamed.

I'll tell you what that sequence is really about. It's about revenge.

The only specialists in revenge in this world are writers. Everybody else is an amateur. Think about it; how many books have you read, or movies have you seen, where the essential motivation is revenge? Most of them, right? Revenge is almost always a key part of the story. This isn't an accident. Writers lay awake nights thinking of ways to get even. Nobody else spends as much time working on grudges as a writer. Anybody who bites a writer is asking for trouble-food poisoning at the very least.

• Which of the characters in the book are based on you?

All of them. None of them.

Every character I write represents some part of my experüce with people. Of course, it all gets filtered through my own objective world-view, but I've given parts of myself equally all of my major characters, so it's hard to point the finger and say, "Ahh, that's what the author really thinks."

It's a lot safer to point a finger at the whole book and say, "Oh, that's what the author is really thinking about."

• Are any of the characters based on real people?

Yes, and no. Some of the characters have the names of real people who paid big bucks for the privilege of having characters named after them. The money went to my charity, the Necessities of Life Program of the AIDS Project Los Angeles. But none of the characters are specifically based on the people they're named after.

As it worked out, almost every one of the namesake characters became more fully fleshed out than they would have been otherwise, because I spent much more time thinking about them as real people. I wanted the people who paid to have characters named after them satisfied that they got their numey's worth. Some of the characters had to do some very nasty stuff, but I tried to balance the nastiness with a human side too.

• How did you get started on this fund-raising project?

Almost by accident. I don't go to science fiction conventions very often, sometimes it just seems frivolous. And sometimes, I wonder if what we're doing-dealing in dreams-might ultimately be irrelevant to the real world. The thought troubled me. I wanted to do something more immediate, something that would make a difference now.

One day, I realized that I could go to a convention and use it to serve a larger purpose. So I put out a big jar and every time someone asked for an autograph, I asked them to put a dollar in the jar for the AIDS Project Los Angeles. And it worked. Must people have really liked the idea. It makes the autograph mean something. In the past four years, since I started doing this. I've raised nearly $I5,000 this way. I'll probably attend more conventions just to see how much more money I can raise for APLA.

I've been teaching Screenwriting at Pepperdine University In Malibu since 1982. For the past six years, I've also taught a weekend intensive course called Writing On Purpose. Eventually, I hope to tape the course, and extract a book on writing as well—-except that there are so many good books on writing already, that the world may not need another one. And secondly, I'd rather write than write about writing.

But I start with the premise that writing can't be taught; it can only be learned. You learn it when you sit down to write. So I don't even try to teach writing; I train writers. The course ih an inquiry into the nature of the craft of writing; we look at some definitions and distinctions about the way we work, and that lets each individual create a solid foundation for understanding what he/she is up to. I act as coach while each student develops his or her own skills. It's been very effective, and I've been very gratified that the course has been so useful to so many people.

• When will you be teaching the course again?

Anyone interested in the dates of the next course should write to me at 9420 Reseda Blvd., #804, Northridge, CA 9132A-2932. (Include a large self-addressed, stamped envelope.) I'll be happy to send out the course information.

• Do you teach your class like Dr. Foreman teaches the Mode Training?

Some people think so. Except I don't use blanks.