Tad Williams

An Interview With Tad Williams

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By Michael Martinez
April 7, 2010

Mention Tad Williams' name in casual conversation with most science fiction fans and you're likely to hear back, "Isn't that the guy with the cats?" Tailchaser's Song has adorned many a bookstore's shelves for more than two decades. A journey into the mythologies cats and other animals might create for themselves, Tailchaser's Song could have kicked off an epic series of cat adventures but instead gave Williams the freedom to explore other avenues of the imagination.

Perhaps almost as notable as Tailchaser's Song for its unusual treatment of a well-known topic, The War of the Flowers delves into fairy politics. Williams' fairies live in their own world, which can connect with ours, and their various factions' ambitions threaten both Fairie and Earth. Unlike Tailchaser's Song, humans play an important role in The War of the Flowers but the majority of characters are non-human.

Since the late 1960s it seems like many once standalone-novels morphed into trilogies or series, especially as each new series piled up success after success. Marion Zimmer Bradley gave us the Darkover books, Anne McCaffrey wrote about Pern, Roger Zelazny took us on mesmerizing journeys through Amber and other parallel worlds -- the list goes on and on. Tad Williams, too, has written multi-book tales, but he has carefully sidestepped branding himself for just one imaginary world.

Xenite.Org was recently invited to interview Williams, and we could not help but wonder how he decides whether to create a standalone tale or embark upon a longer stroll through the imagination. Do you envision the series first, we asked him, or do you get into a story and realize that maybe there are other related stories waiting to be told?

"It's closer to the second [option]," he told us. "What really happens is that ideas start out more or less equal, but some of them metastasize to the point where it becomes clear that it's a very large story."

It's tough to say which (multi-book) story is the largest in Williams' imagination. Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn may seem like a classic epic fantasy (if there is such a thing as "classic" epic fantasy) that strikes Arthurian tones. Otherland is a science fiction arc set in the near future in which people spend part of their lives in an online environment that people use to influence offline politics. Shadowmarch is another fantasy series that combines humans and fairy-folk. The latest book in the Shadowmarch series, Shadowrise, has just been published.

Shadowmarch stands out from other fantasy works because its colorful history has been as experimental as Williams' fiction. Originally conceived as an idea for a movie or television show, the storyline was adapted to online serial format in 2001 -- a bold approach to the Internet even among science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts. However, after three years Tad Williams migrated Shadowmarch into the traditional publishing world.

Citing the Shadowmarch experience, we asked Tad if he would tackle such a project again.

"I would guess that within the next decade people will be buying serial fiction for their phones and e-readers," he replied. "Whether I'm writing any of [that fiction] remains to be seen. I would enjoy another chance to write serial fiction."

And how would he want to write serial fiction for new technology? Today there are several emerging platforms such as the iPhone, Google's Android, and Amazon's Kindle. What would he want to do with the technology to enhance the reader's experience?

"I would want to play more with the intersection of my creative control and the audience's ability to interact," he says. "I think interactive-media are a big part of our future, but I don't think we have the right technology yet to do what I envision."

Interactive technologies have been explored in science fiction in several ways. We have the virtual reality world of "The Matrix" (which has been compared to Otherland) and Star Trek's holodecks. Today, however, we only have Internet-based games where several thousand players interact with each other and virtual characters through their online avatars. The obvious connection between Otherland and Internet gaming has not been ignored. A Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) based on Otherland is in development. Williams could only say that he thinks a release date will be announced "sooner rather than later".

When immersed in a large world like Otherland, we wondered if Williams finds himself wishing he could include some concept or object that just doesn't work its way into the tale? For a writer like Tad Williams, are there old chests of Things I Never Found Uses For In Stories somewhere in his thoughts or notes?

"Otherland is full to bursting with just those kinds of things," Williams notes. "Many of the worlds' situations and characters come from ideas and projects of mine that already existed but never got used. You've heard the joke, 'They threw in everything but the kitchen sink', well, I took that one step further and in Otherland: I *did* throw in the kitchen sink, and an entire kitchen world to go with it."

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