Interviews With The Fantastic
InterGalactic Interview With Max Gladstone
by Lawrence M. Schoen
Max Gladstone studied Chinese at Yale University, graduated, and went on to work in China as a
teacher and translator. His short fiction once earned him a finalist spot in the Writers of the
Future competition and he's been twice nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best
New Writer. Max's novel, Three Parts Dead, the first volume in the Craft Sequence, was
published by Tor Books in 2012, with subsequent books, Two Serpents Rise and Full Fathom
Five, coming out in each of the following years. That sequence of his Craft Sequence continues
this month, with the release of Last First Snow, the fourth book.
SCHOEN: Let's start with your background, because while few enough people graduate Yale,
fewer still take that degree and go off to China with it. That strikes me as an obvious crossroads
for you. What brought you to that point, and where did it subsequently take you on the road to
where you now find yourself?
GLADSTONE: When I was a kid I took from my parents' bookshelf a retelling of the Chinese
classic A Journey to the West -- a picaresque fantasy story about a Buddhist monk and four
monstrous, magical martial artist disciples traveling from China to India. Journey to the West
was one of my gateways into fantastical literature, and as I grew up, my love of that book grew
into a fascination with Chinese martial arts and philosophy, and then with the Chinese language.
At the same time I started studying international relations and diplomacy, with an eye toward a
possible career -- so when I graduated from college I took a fellowship that would bring me to
China, where I could polish my language skills. I learned so much living abroad -- I met people I
never would have met otherwise, I saw and did things which I'd have never seen or done if I
hadn't been where I was, when I was.
But setting aside all the vital and invaluable personal development stuff, my stay in Anhui
province was vital woodshedding time. I'd been writing all my life -- fantasy and science fiction,
mostly, but mysteries too -- but while I lived in Xiuning, I could make time to write. I wrote
three novels in those two years, started thinking about querying, and learned a great deal about
the craft.
SCHOEN: You've described your Craft Sequence as a "post-industrial fantasy land where you
have gods with shareholders' committees and wizards with pinstriped suits and corporate magic
being played out on an intercontinental scale." And I want to come back to that in a moment
because I find that an exceedingly compelling metaphor for a fantasy. But before we do I'd like
you to say a few words about a related perspective that it makes possible, particularly in view of
the requirement that a good fantasy should include a coherent and balanced magic system. I'm
referring of course to what you've called the "Magical One Percent." Explain what you mean by
that, and further, why we don't see an Occupy Alt Coulumb in your first book, or is that what's
happening in Dresediel Lex in the second book?
GLADSTONE: Oh, certainly! I'm fascinated by the question of how a recognizable fantasy
world looks for people who aren't the destined heroes or magic users or whatever. Say there's
actual magical power in your world. If it's not evenly distributed, how does that change society?
(If it is evenly distributed, how does that change society?) How do people without access to
magic feel about people who do have access to it? If magic's a facet of your subcreation, what
does it feel like to know that there's a whole realm of experience which you're denied? A whole
form of power you'll never have?
Building my world, I asked -- what is magic? It's a way of viewing the world, and a way of
changing the world. It's fungible, basically -- we talk about magical power as being equally
applicable to solving one problem as another. It flows, it moves. It obeys certain rules, and if you
know these rules, you can control magic, within limits, though if you're careless, magic will start
to control you. In sufficient quantities, it can act on its own, or seem to. We've developed
languages for relating to this sort of entity -- the languages of law and finance. The more I
thought about the issue, the more convinced I grew that I could use magic to shine a light on law
and finance, and vice versa.
As for Occupy -- each book has focused on a different facet of the issues surrounding law,
capital, and society. Three Parts Dead, my first book, turns on loyalty and faith -- and on
interdependence between people and organizations, while the fourth book, Last First Snow,
shows what happens when the will of the citizens and the will of the Deathless Kings who rule
Dresediel Lex collide. There's your Occupy, if you're looking for one.
SCHOEN: Okay, returning to that metaphor, unless I completely missed it in my review of your
background, you're not a "corporate business guy." How then did you choose to take that as the
lens through which to view this universe? And why? And while you're answering those related
questions, feel free to reveal what you are drawing on to pull it off so well?
GLADSTONE: I'm not that guy -- or, I've only ever been that guy briefly -- but I have friends
and relatives who are or have been that guy (or gal). I've spent a lot of time trying to understand
what they do, who they are, and how they think. Because I'm an enormous nerd, when I reach for
analogies to help put into context the stories my friends tell me, I come up with analogies from
fantasy and science fiction -- and then I cackle madly, because those analogies feel like excellent
story fodder.
So: some of the authenticity, such as it is, comes from the horse's mouth. Some of it comes from
tons of research. Some of it comes from imagining people very like my friends as wizards. And
some of it's just that I love people in suits.
SCHOEN: Let's go back to a very basic question: When did you realize you wanted to be a
writer? Can you recall a proximal event, a specific book, or a particular author that awakened this
desire in you?
GLADSTONE: A writer? No. I was writing before I had words to put on the page -- before I
knew what words were, my parents found me making little vertical and horizontal marks within
the lines of their notebooks. I wrote my first story when I could barely hold a pencil. We have
photocopies. The story was about a boy kidnapped by pirates. I think I spelled Pirates "PRTS"
But there was one moment -- I wrote a book in high school, the longest thing I'd ever written up
till that point -- heck, still the longest thing I've ever written. It was intended as a huge crossover
event for what amounts to a forum roleplaying community I was involved in at the time. I wrote
this mammoth thing, about 260,000 words, in a year, and finished on the same day I started, after
an all-night pizza and Sun Drop binge. And then -- well. I felt amazing. I thought: I'll never be
able to publish this. There were too many characters other people had invented, there was too
much of the game setting present. But I'd done it, and I'd done it well. Everyone in the game was
hanging on each new installment. Well, I thought, damn. I did it once. I can do it again. I could
make a career out of this!
And here we are.
SCHOEN: Many writers struggle with the question of "where to start their story," and the best
advice I've ever heard comes from writing westerns: start with having just shot the sheriff.
You've created this fresh and riveting world filled with ancient gods and powerful mages,
pinstripe suits and briefcases notwithstanding. But why did you start your stories at that point?
Will we ever see the Gods War, or the events that led up to them, or the centuries of existence
that preceded that? Or does even positing those kinds of questions ensure you wouldn't end up
with a contemporary world that's as close to ours as you've written?
GLADSTONE: I really like that advice -- lean into a moment of inflection in the world (which
is another way of saying "community" of course). That's very much what I've done with the
Craft Sequence, though it may not look that way at first glance: at the beginning of Three Parts
Dead we meet a world tenuously balanced between gods and the human Craftsmen who killed
deities to gain their power. The world's papered over the old battles with a new peace. People try
not to talk about the bad old days. But the bad old days are right there, if you go looking -- in
memories and beneath the surface of the modern age. And in the first few sentences of Three
Parts Dead, the paper rips. In each book following, that fragile world system's upset in its own
way -- and in each one, it could change drastically for the worse. Last First Snow shows an even
more tenuous moment, earlier in the peace, when too many people still bear the scars of war.
I'm not going to rule out our catching glimpses of the God Wars, or even returning to it. But I
also feel the God Wars are most impressively depicted in the effect they've had on the world, and
on our characters. We don't need to see the war that ended the Age of Legends, in the Wheel of
Time; we don't need to see the Time War, though once in a while the Doctor Who showrunners
have to show us something because of the limits of television. The God Wars were big, and
vicious. They almost broke everything. You want to see them? Look into any Craftswoman's
eyes. Walk glassed deserts at night and hear the ghosts of old gods wail.
As for pushing earlier -- who knows? Maybe. The Craft Sequence has the most to say about a
modern setting, I think, but I might come up with some crazy idea that works better four hundred
years ago!
SCHOEN: The books of the Craft Sequence provide a soapbox for you to inspire your readers to
reflect on philosophy and religion, what it means to have faith, to say nothing of the burden of
free will. How much of this are you willing to confess was deliberate and intentional, and how
much will you insist is just a projection on my part?
GLADSTONE: Hah! I'll confess that most of it's intentional. I'm a theology and religion nut
from way back; I grew up reading that work, and I think it's vital. Setting aside all questions of
whether one does or does not believe, in this very reductive sense, in a Supreme Being or a bunch
of Supreme Beings -- myth and faith are ancient, and advanced technologies developed to
support human communities, to make sense of ourselves, to celebrate life and defend against
death. They are enormous, powerful tools, and many of us, regardless of whether we define
ourselves as people of faith, have only the foggiest idea how to use them. Culturally, these days,
with religion, I think we're often at the level of Neanderthals taking shelter from the storm in a
crashed, fully functional, starship. Yes, it keeps the rain off, but it could do so much more! And
sometimes we're a lot worse -- sometimes we're those same Neanderthals warming our dinner
on a fuel rod.
And some people -- nowhere near enough -- can sail the stars.
But fiction is not a pulpit. I feel like giving the fiction a moral would be too simplistic, too easy.
Instead, I try to give my characters a complicated and detailed language for discussing religion,
theology, and faith. (Which isn't much of a reach, since gods and religions are lived, critical
issues for most of my characters!) Then, at least, they have interesting arguments.
SCHOEN: As a fantasist, what, if any, responsibility do you think you owe your readers? Are
you trying to just tell a good tale? Provide an engrossing escape? Inspire? Lecture? Or is all of
this just a means to expiate your own sins that we know nothing about? And, segueing off of
those questions, what do you think that writers of science fiction and fantasy should be writing
nowadays? Where would you, both as writer and reader, like to see the genre going?
GLADSTONE: I think we should be using the language of fantasy to write about the deeply
weird, beautiful, and terrifying world in which we live, without having to pretend this planet's
normal. We have death robots in our skies and palantírs in our pockets, and we use the palantírs
to look at pictures of other people's cats. Very, very few folks I know can explain to their parents
what they do for a living. Some new horror comes to light on the news and friends say, "Yeah, I
almost worked on that project." We're encoding data in photons, we're peering back to the
earliest billionth-seconds of the universe through a lens made out of explosions, and we're
strangling people on the street in broad daylight. What language do we have for this world, if not
the language of fantasy and horror?
SCHOEN: Despite the wishes of your editor and agent, I imagine you have an endgame in mind
for this series. Assuming you've thought beyond that point, what would you like to next turn
your efforts toward? Is there a standalone novel in the wings waiting for your attention, or
perhaps another series? Do you see yourself staying in Fantasy, or will you apply your talents to
Science Fiction novels as well?
GLADSTONE: Hah! I actually finished a first draft of a standalone novel just a couple weeks
ago, a book that I'm thinking of as kind of On the Road meets The Amber Chronicles. And then
I've signed on for a Pathfinder novel for next year. I'm trying to do all this without breaking
stride on the Craft Sequence, where I still have a lot of work to do -- but I am scheming about
the post-Sequence time, in the grim darkness of the far future. I haven't done proper SF in a long
while. It'd be neat to see what I could do there.
SCHOEN: I'll be looking forward to it! Thanks, Max.
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