He is an extremely busy author; in 1996 alone he released 14 novels. And so far this year, just back from a hectic 16-cities-in-16-days book tour promoting
Ignition (his new novel with Beason), he has three novels and two comic scripts due by the end of April.This July, Dark Horse is releasing Anderson's first Predator series, Predator: Primal. Tom Fassbender caught up with Anderson between deadlines to discuss this latest comic-book venture.
Tom Fassbender: Predator: Primal is a two-issue series; normally you write much longer stories -- 11 to 12 issues. How was it writing a shorter book?
Kevin J. Anderson: It felt very refreshing to do something that could be over and done with in two issues. It came to me, while I was hiking, as a straightforward story that could be told in two issues, which was quite a relief for me after my mega 12-issue-long Star Wars epics.
Fassbender: So you came up with the idea for the story while hiking?
Anderson: Right. I do a lot of my writing and creative brainstorming while I'm out hiking and camping. Last summer I was out in an area in Sequoia National Park called Mineral King that is at the end of a 30-mile, one-lane, windy dirt road. I took a long, long hike one day, and there I was, out in the absolute, utter wilderness, letting my mind ramble, thinking about how unpleasant it would be to encounter a large bear at that moment. And I don't know what connection went into my mind, but I started wondering why a Predator would come to earth and only hunt human beings. When you think of some of the other things Mother Nature has come up with, when you're dealing with hand-to-hand combat, even Arnold Schwarzenegger is pretty much a wimp compared to giant Kodiak bears. So I thought it would be cool if a Predator were to land in the Alaskan wilderness to fight a grizzly instead of a park ranger.
Fassbender: Then there's no human element in the story?
Anderson: Well, you don't have a whole lot of story unless you get something other than a monster and a bear, so I placed a park ranger -- who is a bear specialist -- in the midst of it. She has a tracer on some of the grizzlies to track their movement and she finds one that gets killed. She goes on a hunt to track down who's killed this grizzly bear and finds herself smack in the middle of this conflict between the predator and this grizzly bear -- and a forest fire.
Fassbender: As the solicitation says, a recipe for action. Was it a challenge for you to get a handle on a Predator story?
Anderson: Not really; I've seen the Predator movies and read many of the Predator comics. One of the things that I found to be a particular challenge, though, is that a lot of this story is told purely visually, either from the bear's point of view or the Predator's point of view. There isn't a lot of dialog. I've always been fascinated by comics that manage to tell their story completely with pictures; that's really bringing the comic medium to its peak.
Fassbender: You're known as a writer of words. Was it hard for you to make the transition to a more visual format?
Anderson: I'm a teller of stories, whether I use words or pictures -- or whatever I'm doing with it. I still tell the stories with the characters and set out the sequence of events. If I do that effectively with pictures -- like a slideshow -- or if I tell it with many pages in a novel, it's using different tools to accomplish the same purpose. When I'm telling a story that depends heavily on the visual aspect and not just the words, I simply use a different toolkit that I haven't used as often.
Fassbender: Do you work more closely with the artist when you're telling a visual story like this one?
Anderson: Not necessarily. When I turn in my scripts, I sketch out each one of the pages. I'm no artist; I use stick figures and draw circular grizzly bears with big fangs in the middle of them. It helps me layout the focus of things -- where the big panels are and where the startling images are. Then I write the script describing every panel and how big the panel is, where the perspective and point-of-view is. It's still me leading the artist -- and eventually the reader -- through the story as I want to tell it. I haven't seen the art for this series yet, though.
Fassbender: Have you ever had any plans to write a Predator story prior to this?
Anderson: Actually, I had a neat Predator idea that I passed off to them once about a pre-history encounter where a Predator fights a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It turned out they didn't want that, because they can't go back that far in time. But the idea of a Predator versus some other nasty animal has been in my head for awhile.
Fassbender: Do you have plans to do any other Predator tales?
Anderson: I have another very strong idea for a four-issue story. Bantam has done some novels based on the comic books that Dark Horse has published. They had different writers take some of the different storylines and turn them into novels. I'm waiting to see if Bantam gets their license to continue because it would be really nice if I could do a four- or five-issue Predator series and turn around and take my own story and turn it into a novel.
Fassbender: Most writers have qualms about re-doing their work in cross-formats. You don't subscribe to that school of thought?
Anderson: It's the story that I come up with, and to be crassly commercial, if I write the comics and someone else writes the novel based on my comics, I don't get anything out of it. I invented the characters, the situations, the chapters, and the pacing. It's sort of taking the work I've already done and running it through a different filter to come out with a different way of telling the same story.
Fassbender: You want to make sure that whatever form your stories are in, they're the best they can be.
Anderson: I want to ensure that the quality of my work is maintained. If I can do it, I should have first shot anyway. This way, if my name is attached as the person who came up with the novel that gets turned into a comic book, and I do the comic book, then I'm the only one to blame if someone doesn't like it. There's all kinds of room for passing the buck if all kinds of people work on it.
Fassbender: You've gone on record calling yourself a "maniac writer." Because of this, and since Dark Horse has quite a large stable of licenses, are there any that you'd like to take for a ride?
Anderson: I'm an avid watcher of science-fiction movies like Alien, Predator, Terminator, and RoboCop, and it's neat to be involved with these licenses. My problem most of the time is that I'm incredibly busy and there aren't enough hours in the day to be writing all these things that I want to be writing. But I do have an Aliens story that is hanging in the woodwork somewhere, but that continuity is all goofy right now with the fourth movie coming out. No one really knows how things are tying together. Other than that, I've signed up for two more extensive Star Wars stories and, as I mentioned, I do have another Predator tale in mind that I may get into.
Fassbender: Speaking Star Wars stories, Dark Horse is releasing your Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi - Golden Age of the Sith series as a trade paperback this August. Have you done any additional material for this book?
Anderson: Not this time. The trade paperback is really the enduring collection for the Star Wars fans who want to read the story from start to finish as opposed to those who buy the individual issues for purposes of collecting. They are a good way to get a piece of Star Wars history, in this case the fall of the Sith Empire 5,000 years before the movies took place, without having to scramble to the comic store every month. And very often the trade paperbacks are distributed in regular bookstores too, so they reach a wider audience.
Fassbender: You mentioned two new Star Wars series in the works. . .
Anderson: Yes, I am doing a series called The Jedi Academy which takes the new Jedi Knights that I introduced in my trilogy of novels, Jedi Search, Dark Apprentice, and Champions of the Force, and turns them loose on some of their own adventures. The other is a Tales of the Jedi story that takes place 10 years after The Sith War called The Redemption of Ulic. So we have something for the historical Star Wars lovers as well as something for those who like the newer adventures based on my novels.
Fassbender: With comics you've just expanded into Predator -- and less recently, The X-Files -- from being known as the "Star Wars guy." Will this be a continuing trend in your comic-writing career?
Anderson: I'm not going to say I'm not going to do anything else besides Star Wars, Predator, and X-Files. I want to balance things -- I don't want to do everything; there's a lot of work involved in getting up to speed in a certain license. The writer owes it to the fans to know everything they can about the background of whatever it is they're writing and give them something that fits into that milieu. I want to take the time to really get into something that I'm doing and I have no interest in doing the project unless I'm really into it.