One of the things I've always loved about genre, comic books, science fiction and fantasy is that there's a certain level of playfulness to them, and pure imagination and creativity.
When I write my books, actually, I'm known for very logical rule-based magic systems. I write with one foot in fantasy and one foot in science fiction.
When I was a teenager, what I most wanted to read were fantasy novels. Not Tolkien and Malory, but sword-and-sorcery pulp. I craved glowy blue magic, chainmail bikinis, dragons with unpronounceable names.
As a child I was really into fantasy books with elves and goblins and swords, and I went through a phase for a few years when I was reading endless series. But in the end I became totally fed-up with all these sub-Tolkien rip-offs because they all end up doing the same old things and there's no rigour to it.
I was someone who really loved fantasy novels and science fiction novels.
This is going to take a while. I'm a fantasy author. We have trouble with the concept of brevity.
Whenever you're writing a book or creating a movie or a game, your first task is to get the reader/audience/player to suspend disbelief, to buy into the logic and boundaries of your world, even though those boundaries might include things like dragons and magic. To do that, you need long threads - of history and culture.
In the field of fantastic fiction, the question of world-building is not uncontroversial. But I grew up with 'Dungeons and Dragons,' so that whole world-building thing is very close to my heart.
A lot of the strength of an RPG world lies in its foundation: its systems, lore, and when appropriate, its magic systems. While there are elements tied to 'Project: Eternity' that at first glance seem to be classic fantasy, that's intentional - we do want to recreate some elements of a High Fantasy experience.
So many people think that if you're writing fantasy, it means you can just make everything up as you go. Want to add a dragon? Add a dragon! Want some magic? Throw it in. But the thing is, regardless of whether you're dealing with realism or fantasy, every world has rules. Make sure to establish a natural order.
There are thousands of good reasons why magic doesn't rule the world. They're called Witches and Wizards.
The young adult category is particularly interesting to me in terms of science fiction and fantasy tropes.
I played everything, but the games that kept me up and night and tickled my fancy were the larger role-playing games like 'Ultima.'
You always try to do your own thing. One of the things I wanted to do was to write a book that combines some of the best traits of contemporary fantasy with some of the traits of the historical novel.
In fantasy and science fiction, world-building is an essential part of the story. But as a reader, I don't just want descriptions of food, clothing, and places. I want to understand the world to its core, through the eyes of those who live in it.
When you talk about fantasy, the usual problem is that whilst you've got the world of imagination, there are no controlling forces.
I've always been a sci-fi/fantasy guy. My book reports in school, whenever you didn't have to do it on Shakespeare, I did it on, like, Piers Anthony and Raymond Feist.
I'm particularly fond of sci-fi and fantasy genres.
What do I want in a good fantasy book? Court politics and social interactions based around houses and cities. Powerful women and devious men. Drama and action with emotional ramifications. Frocks. Kissing. Swords. An intense impression of history in the world-building.
My feeling is that writing Fantasy should be harder - not easier - than writing any other kind of fiction.
I'm a sci-fi guy. But I like fantasy too.
I love magic and playing with magic systems. But to me, good fantasy like all fiction comes down to good character and plotting.
For me, even in my first book, the pleasures of writing anything magical is that it has to be physical. It has to be grounded and very much in this world. Then, I get to play with all the consequences of this new thing.
Of the two, I would think of my work as closer to Science Fiction than Fantasy.
Soft fantasy worlds have a much looser cause-and-effect relationship. Alchemists can turn lead into gold and nobody wonders about how it will impact the currency system. Someone waves a wand and turns an elephant into a mouse and nobody worries about conservation of mass.
