Another interview with Timothy Zahn post by: nudnik@camelot.bradley.edu

From Waldenbooks' free premiere issue of HAILING FREQUENCIES, News and
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The Star Wars Saga Continues... An Interview With Timothy Zahn

It may be symbolic that after spending nearly his entire life in
Illinois, Timothy Zahn is finally picking up roots and moving to the
Oregon coast.  Not so coincidentally, his writing career has gone into
high gear recently, with the publication of the first two of his
novels set in the universe of Star Wars.

Zahn began selling SF stories to Analog magazine while a grad student
in physics at the University of Illinois.  When his thesis advisor
died, he realized he was having so much fun writing, he wanted to turn
to it full time.  At first, Zahn made a reputation for himself in hard
SF, with the Cobra series of military SF novels.  In 1984, he won a
Hugo for his novella _Cascade Point._

Zahn has always been as interested in characters as in hardware--
Theodore Sturgeon was an early influence.  So it seemed appropriate
that he was the author chosen to create a new series of _Star Wars_
novels, featuring some of the best-known characters in all of SF.

Dark Force Rising, the sequel to Heir to the Empire, is the second of
Zahn's three-book Star Wars set.  We began asking the author to place
the books in the context of the entire Star Wars saga.

TZ: The books start five years after the end of Return of the Jedi,
and deal with a new rise in imperial power.  The Empire has a new
leader, Grand Admiral Thrawn, at the beginning of Heir to the Empire.
He had been out on a mission to the outer rim of the system, and now
he has returned to take command of the Imperial Fleet.  The Grand
Admiral has a master plan for destroying what he still calls the
Republic's _Rebellion._

Thrawn is a brilliant tactician who is able to manipulate his
opponents by reading them very carefully and gaining an understanding
of them, then he forsees their plans.  He also has two bits of
information he has figured out how to use to the Empire's advantage.
The first is revealed in Book One, the second at the end of Book Two.
How they all fit together is revealed in Book Three.

HF: Part of the fun is that Thrawn meets up with another dark Jedi, a
sort of replacement for Darth Vader.

TZ: Right.  This new dark Jedi is actually a clone of the old Jedi
Master Joruus C'baoth.  He's insane, and being used by Grand Admiral
Thrawn to help enhance the fighting capabilities of his troops.

The problem Thrawn comes up against is that C'baoth has become better
at using his power because of all the work he has been doing for
Thrawn.  C'baoth isn't less insane, but he's more powerful and is able
to control the Force.  Therefore, he is becoming a serious threat to
the Grand Admiral.  Even while they're working together, Thrawn and
C'baoth will be, in some sense, at odds with each other.  What keeps
the situation from erupting into any kind of overt conflict is the
fact that they need each other.  Yet they both think, "once I don't
need him anymore, I'll get rid of him."

HF: This is a project half the membership of SFWA [Science Fiction
Writers of America] probably wanted to sink their teeth into.  How
were you chosen?

TZ: Well, I understand that Lou Aronica, the publisher of Bantam
Spectra, contacted Lucasfilm about three years ago to suggest a new
_Star Wars_ book.  He didn't hear back from them for about a year.
Then they said, "Yes, this sounds interesting; let's talk."  Aronica
and his editors assembled a list of potential writers and I guess I
was the first one they asked.  I took the job.

HF: Did Lucasfilm have suggestions about the storyline?

TZ: Mostly everybody gave me a free hand.  The rules were that I could
start three to five years after Return of the Jedi and use any
character who had not been killed off in the movies.  Of course, they
wanted veto power over anything I did, but aside from that, they just
let me go.

It took about five months for LucasArt and Bantam to work out the fine
details of their contract and until they had done that, LucasArt
didn't want to look at my outline.  So during that time, I sent things
to my editor, Betsy Mitchell, and we fine-tuned the series.  We had a
lot of it down pat by the time the contract was ready.

The first book was pretty well organized before I started writing. We
added a couple of scenes and made some major revisions to the end of
it before it went to LucasArt.  They looked at the outline and told me
a couple of things I couldn't do.  They cut out my favorite character.
And originally, Joruus C'baoth was going to be a clone of Obi-wan
Kenobi, but they said no.  They didn't want me to refer in detail to
the clone wars which took place before the movies began.  I guess by
that time Lucas had decided he was going to go back and make the
prequel movies, and they didn't want me treading on his turf.

But I got my way on most of it and conceded on the things they simply
didn't want me to do.  So, aside from relatively minor things, I had
pretty much of a free hand.  I was very grateful for that, because I
had ideas about what I wanted to do.  I wanted to tie the book in as
part of the grand scheme of the Star Wars universe.

HF: What kind of research did you do?

TZ: Well, I got the style sheets and outlines from the three movies
from Lucasfilm, which helped on spelling and things of that sort.  I
was a couple of months into writing when they suddenly decided they
wanted me to coordinate with the West End Games role-playing
materials, too.  They filled in a bunch of the gaps that I hadn't
gotten around to filling in.  They created a whole bunch of background
material--different types of ships, land vehicles, and alien
creatures--so I didn't have to reinvent the wheel each time.  As far
as the movies themselves, I have, of course, seen all three of them
several times.  One thing my wife and I discovered when our son was
about two or three was that if he had seen the movie enough times, we
could record the whole thing on audiotape and play it on the car
stereo during long trips.  He could visualize all of the action and be
happy as a clam sitting in the backseat of the car.  So, while I have
seen all the Star Wars movies "x" times each, I have heard them "x
plus 10" times each.  I have a lot of the little details, as well as
the way the characters speak, what they say, and how they interact
with each other, down pat--simply from the repetition.  I didn't
really have to do much in the way of research--I had done it already.

HF: How does working in the Star Wars universe compare to something
where you start from scratch?

TZ: Well, it has its tradeoffs.  I don't have a free hand with many of
the major characters, for example, Luke and Leia.  But as far as not
being able to invent my own hardware and such, the Star Wars universe
was thought out well enough, and is extensive and internally
consistent enough, that I've had no problems with that.  It's fun to
work with.

There are some movies I've seen where I would hate to write the book
in that universe because the whole thing just doesn't make any sense.
There have been numerous science fiction books and movies about
swordsmen fighting against guns or lasers.  It doesn't make any sense
to pit a short-range weapon against a long-range one until you add in
the Jedi ability to know where the shot is coming from.

HF: You just alluded to the Jedi abilities, which create a problem
that often arises when there is a fantasy hero with supernatural
powers.  How does one create suspense with a character who can work
miracles?

TZ: Yes, I think that was part of the reason why Luke mostly fought
Vader in the movies.  That was the easiest way to avoid the Superman
effect.  In fact, I know that after Heir to the Empire came out, there
was speculation on the computer nets that I'd invented the ysalamiri
solely to take away the Jedi powers because I couldn't figure out how
to write for the superpowerful Jedi.  That is not the case.  The
ysalamiri are a very important part of Thrawn's master plan.

Part of the way I get around the superpower problem is that Luke is
not invincible.  He does not have superspeed and if he has enough
people shooting at him, he will be overwhelmed, despite his Jedi
powers.  Another thing I tried for in Heir to the Empire was to have
Luke question what is the right and wrong use of the Force.

HF: That was the ethical dilemma built into the whole dark side/light
side of the Force from the very beginning, in the movies.

TZ: What is good use of the Force and what is bad use?  Does the ends
justify the means?  Apparently not.  There are all these ethical
questions that are more subtle than just black and white.  There's a
lot of gray shading and no obvious line between good & evil.  So
that's going to limit what Luke can do as well.