Interview with Steven Erikson
some good stuff and mention of Donaldson
Are any of your viewpoint characters particularly difficult to write or does it depend on the circumstances of their scenes?
Some viewpoint characters are not particularly nice or likeable. I have no trouble with those ones at all.
I work hard at stepping into the skin of every character I write, of seeing things from their eyes, feeling how they would feel. Even the completely helpless characters (like Udinaas and Seren Pedac) serve a purpose.
Curiously, those characters I felt I have been most successful with are the ones many readers despise. The Mhybe in Memories of Ice. Felisin in Deadhouse Gates. Seren Pedac. Karsa Orlong.
A subject that's been touched on in the fan-based site concerns the inspiration I may have had for certain characters.
Imagine my disbelief when someone asserted that the character of Icarium was based on the comic-book Hulk. Apparently, because both have green skin and a tendency towards rage. My jaw dropped. The things people believe!
I have never hesitated in giving the nod to the efforts of other writers living and dead who have inspired me ... but the Hulk!? I suppose it's a generational thing.
The Jaghut (whose blood Icarium shares) emerged from my love of the novels of E. R. Burroughs when I was very young, in this case his John Carter of Mars novels.
I suppose if, in addition to the green skin and tusks, I'd made Jaghut four-armed and egg-laying, this reader would point a finger and shout -- yeah! A four-armed egg-laying Hulk!
So I'll take this opportunity to respond to all those sniffing round for what inspired me.
The T'lan Imass did not derive from Donaldson's Bloodguard. While I loved the Covenant books, the T'lan Imass actually emerged from the very first fantasy novel I ever wrote, when I was about twenty, in the time when I was studying as an archaeologist and thinking often about those species of humans who didn't make it, like the neanderthals.
The T'lan Imass's vow of immortality was a way to tie in ice-ages as works of sorcery, an endless war, and the function of being able to move those undead armies around by unusual means (in our role-playing games). There, I suppose some of the mystery just washed off, huh?
Anomander Rake was a roleplayed character -- do I regret deciding that he had white hair? Do I ever. Rake is not Elric. I was not a reader of Moorcock and the only book I have of his is Mother London. Rake's sword was created by Ian Esslemont -- as for what inspired him, by all means ask him sometime.
Karsa Orlong is not Conan. He's the very opposite of Conan.
Glen Cook was a great inspiration -- for the tone I set out to find in the Malazan series; for the laconic feel of soldiers as characters; for the ambivalence of the world being portrayed.
I finally got a chance to meet Glen Cook last autumn, and I thanked him and did my best to convey my respect. In almost every way imaginable, he set the groundwork for this new kind of fantasy fiction, the kind without good vs evil, black vs white. Neorealist fantasy, to coin an oxymoron.
