David Weber

(continued)

Interview by Alyce Wilson

Do you think that that's part of what science fiction can do, to help us reach an understanding of our society, now and in the future?

I think science fiction functions as teaching tales, as cautionary tales, as inspirational tales. I think that science fiction gives you an opportunity to change parameters in a situation and hypothesize how that might change the societies that are produced.

Almost like an experiment?

Well, except that, unlike an experiment, you are in control of the result as well as the test.

What I think science fiction can do, more than converting you to a specific viewpoint, I think the valid function of science fiction, is to help inspire you to consider other viewpoints. Science fiction generally, in my opinion, ought to be a door-opening experience, not a door-closing experience. It shouldn't pat you on the back over the rectitude of your own views and beliefs. It should expose you to other views and beliefs and force you to engage your forebrain in an effort to understand what's going on.

And hopefully, if I want to get really weighty and philosophical, having done that in science fiction, you'll apply it to real life.

What you believe becomes an integral part of what you write. And therefore, whether you're deliberately producing a piece of polemical writing to support a given view or not, is almost immaterial, in a sense, because just by writing the stories you write...

Suppose that I take a political view that you don't agree with, but I put it into the mind and the belief structure of a character you like and respect, even love, in one of my books. All of a sudden, I've just inserted that political concept, from the perspective of someone who you respect, into your thinking. In a way, I can sneak it up on you. I can trick you into considering it more openly as something to look at.

Another way is you stop and say, "Wait, I don't agree with that." But then you realize the person that you're following, who you're following their thought processes and how they got there, that maybe you still don't agree, but now you understand how somebody who could feel that way got there. That's inherent in every book that someone writes.

And you've often been lauded for your kind of evenhanded handling of issues like women's issues and things like that.

I think that's part of what I say when I say I can wrap my mind around where people are coming from on both sides. And I try to explain both sides of it in that side's own terms to the other.

The thing is that even if you have somebody who is a flaming chauvinist, he's very seldom a flaming chauvinist because he hates women. It may be things that he simply has never questioned. It may be things he was taught as a child. It may be that he's not a chauvinist, and you just think he is. It may be that he makes a remark, and you take it one way, and he meant it a totally different way. But until he has an opportunity to sit down like Bernard Yanakov sits down with Raoul Courvosier to explain the soul of Grayson in The Honor of the Queen, what you do is you pile misunderstanding on top of misunderstanding. You pile your preconceptions on top of his preconceptions.

And so, one of the functions I see that a writer has is to provide that opportunity to stop and say, "Wait, you know, this is why I believe what I believe."

Now one thing that I think probably I am guilty of, and it represents my experience in my own life, is that, on the one hand, I am absolutely cold-blooded, pragmatic in terms of things like the right of self-defense and so forth.

But, by the same token, I have a fundamental high degree of optimism about the ability of human beings to live and grow.

If you look, there are a lot of characters in my books like Oskar Dieter in Insurrection (1990), the first book that [Steve White and I] did, who work their passage to redemption by grappling with their mistakes, assuming responsibility for those mistakes, and then trying to correct them.

I had a friend who, when he started reading Insurrection, he told me, "I would not have believed for a minute if you told me when I started that book that Oskar Dieter was going to be one of the heroes at the end of it, one of the all-around good guys."

From where he begins, with the drugging and the insults that lead to the assassination of Fionna MacTaggart and all the rest of it. And yet, here he comes at the end of it, because he's grown. He's learned. And he has set out to do his best to make amends for the mistakes that he's acknowledged responsibility for.

And you'll see that a lot, actually, in my books. You'll see it in Crusade (1992) with First Admiral Lantu. You'll see it in some of the characters in the Honor books. You'll see it in Grayson, generally, in the Honor books.

I've seen many cases, historically, of that happening in politics. I grew up in the South. I began life raised as a Democrat. I am much closer to being Republican these days.

If you look at someone like Strom Thurmond, who was a Democrat, a Dixiecrat, voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act and so forth, and if you look at the way that Thurmond approached his responsibilities with his constituents, bear in mind he is from down state, where the majority population is black, and that he easily won reelection again and again and again. You see a man who recognized change and changed.

And so yes, I believe in the fundamental possibility of individual improvement. And I believe in the fundamental improvement of a society's civility and shared interest in the well-being of its members. I also believe that we will never be free of the dark side of humanity, that it will always be there. And that is, Edmund Burke said, all that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.

And so it's how I can strongly support the right to concealed carry, at the same time believing that even someone who starts out way far on the wrong side of the law can wind up as a decent human being down the road.

I think that what we've been talking about in the last few minutes gets to the essence of what your work is all about and why people love it and why you do have the fans.

I think it does. And I think it's one reason why I get upset when people sometimes talk about [science fiction being] mind candy, [that] it's not intellectually challenging.

What can you tell readers about In Fury Born (2006)?

In Fury Born is basically all of the back story from the original Path of the Fury (1992). It takes Alicia from — I think she's either 13 to 14 in the prologue — all the way through the Shallingsport raid and then through the end of the original book.

I can say this: I had serious qualms about approaching this entire project to begin with, because I wrote the original Path of the Fury in about two and a half weeks. And it is the only time I've ever had a book come together that way, and I knew it wasn't going to happen again. And I was afraid of tinkering with [it.] And the prequel that I wrote is not written the way I would have written it at the time I wrote Path of the Fury, because I wrote Path of the Fury 15 years ago. But I think that I can safely say that the prequel has the same energy, moves with the same velocity, as the original novel did. And I think people will recognize it.

Basically, we take Alicia from a 14-year-old all the way through the young Marine recruit, through the experienced Marine sergeant who's joining the Cadre. One thing that happens is you meet everybody who dies at Shallingsport. And so the emotional impact, I think, of the Path of the Fury is considerably heightened by having been through the new material in In Fury Born.

Path of the Fury always hit the reader hard. I think it will hit the reader harder now. You meet the grandfather who, in Path of the Fury, we meet only his body in the snow. We meet him as her grandfather, as the most highly decorated living Marine on active service when she joins. We meet her father, who we never meet at all in the original book, who is a remarkable fellow in his own way.

But there are some changes in the original Path of the Fury, but they're all made, pretty much, to accommodate things that I added in the new material. Alicia is a little bit older. When the raiders hit the homestead, her father and her grandfather kill several of them before she gets there, before they're killed themselves.

And you see the scene in which Alicia decides why she can no longer serve the emperor because of the betrayal of her dad. So I think that the old book is strengthened. I've always had a great weakness for Path of the Fury. I've always loved the book.

And I also have a sequel planned in which Alicia is actually separated from Megaira. She's not out of communication, but she's lost. They don't even know what star system she's in, and they're trying to find her. And she and Tisiphone are at one end of the telepathic link, and Megaira is at the other while they're trying to find each other. And meanwhile, she's organizing a resistance movement on a lost planet.

Someday I've got planned out what I call the Terran Empire novels. We can start with founding the Terran Empire and move all the way up to join Path of the Fury. All I need to do is to find the time. But they're there; they're planned out.

Also, I had a complete historical novel stories planned out. It would run to at least 12 books. That is real-life, naval dynasty in the United States that would start with the Revolution all the way through the Gulf War.

The problem is, again, finding the time to do it.

Also, you know, I'm categorized in people's minds as a military science-fiction writer. OK? Well, what I am is a writer. I've got the three fantasy novels out, and I'm eventually planning to write a total of at least seven more in that universe. The problem is finding time when the publishers and the distributors don't want more Honor Harringtons to put on the shelves.

Oh, yes. A slave to the popularity. But a slave to success, which is always a good thing, I suppose.

Well, it's better to be a slave to success than a victim of failure, you know?

David Weber's newest projects include Off Armageddon Reef, released in January 2007, and the collaborations 1634: The Baltic War with Eric Flint and Hell Hath No Fury with Linda Evans, both released in 2007.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.