David Weber

(continued)

Interview by Alyce Wilson

Yesterday [in the Philcon keynote address], you spoke about fandom and how it's helped your writing. I was wondering if you could share an example of maybe something, some interaction with a fan that led to something in your work.

When I talk to a fan, and a fan says, "I really liked it when you did thus and so in one of your books," and I didn't do thus and so in one of my books, and I'm like, "Whoa, what?" I realize, "Ooh, wait. He didn't understand what actually happened there." It tells me I have a problem that needs to be fixed, because if one person didn't understand it, it's almost certain that other people didn't understand it, either.

By the same perspective, sometimes a fan will come and tell me, "I really liked thus and such aspect of the character." And because I don't deliberately set out to [define] the characters, well, he's going to have this trait, that trait or the other, it's sort of developing as an organic whole, I may not realize that character had that trait until a fan brings it to my attention.

And then I realize that that's just part of what the character's motivations had been all along. I didn't recognize this character trait that he has, because I'm visualizing him: "OK, how would he react?" He's reacting in accordance with that character trait, even though I didn't consciously realize I'd given it to him.

Sometimes, looking at your work through the eyes of a fan causes you to recognize aspects of it you didn't previously see.

And I liked what you said yesterday, that everybody reads his own book, because he brings his our own experiences to it.

Yes. I was debating last night with a couple of people whose political views are quite different from my own, and the nature of the books that they read is colored by the difference in their political perspective from mine. Interestingly enough, they draw almost exactly the same conclusions about the character, even though they interpret the social situation completely differently, in some respects, from the way that I would. But that's because they are bringing to the book their own perspectives, their own views, their own life experiences.

Well, so am I when I write it. But they don't have the same experiences that I do, just as I don't have the same experiences that they had. And so the book that I write is going to be read through the prism of their lives when they read it, and that makes it an interactive exercise.

Are you also a student of human nature?

I would say probably. I've always been a little leery of phrases like "students of human nature".

The reason I ask is that one of the remarkable things about your work is that you've got this highly detailed universe that you've created, and then you also have these emotional moments.

Bottom line is even the wire-heads are not going to read a book or a series long term if they don't care about the people in the book. And I write about human beings experiencing the things human beings experience. Part of it is being a student of human nature.

Part of it is what I was talking about earlier, that if you are a storyteller, you learn to be a better one, but if you're not a storyteller you can't learn to be one. I think that part of the natural aptitude towards storytelling is how to arrange the scenes and the events and the characters so that they communicate the emotional impact, the growth impact that you were after when you began. And that is clearly a factor of both conscious and unconscious, deliberate and non-deliberate arrangement, on your part.

I would say that, yes, I am a student of human nature. I think that even when I profoundly disagree with someone, I can usually wrap my mind around how he got to where he is. And I've said this repeatedly, that one of the things that distresses me about the political/philosophical climate in the United States today is that I believe that no matter how profoundly I differ with someone else, if that someone else is a sincere individual and a rational human being, he is willing to extend me the courtesy of listening to what I have to say. And I am willing to extend him the courtesy of listening to what he has to say.

We may come apart, each of us convinced the other one is a blooming idiot, but there's a difference between being a blooming idiot and being evil because I don't agree with you. That's not how it is presented on either side of the political aisle.

And we were discussing, for example, the abortion issue. And one of the people I was talking to was female. And she was saying once you accept that you're talking about a woman's body, then all the political issues become irrelevant. It's her body.

And I said, "OK, suppose that you have a married couple and the wife becomes pregnant." In many states, it's her decision solely as to whether or not to terminate that pregnancy. But I can tell you as a father that the father is also invested in that child. Is it not appropriate for the father to have some say in the fate of that embryo?

But I think that it is an issue that men have a legitimate right and responsibility to express themselves on. And be cautious about hurting feelings or anything else, but ultimately, you have a moral responsibility to say the things you believe to be true. And if you don't say them, you are shirking your responsibility.

Having said them, that doesn't mean that you have a right to dictate to someone else, unless a majority of your fellow citizens and the courts agree with you. But you have a responsibility to say it. That's different from saying, "OK, I know that's what the law says. I know that's what the court says, but I'm going to blow up your abortion clinic. Or I'm going to blow up your animal research lab."

Then, you see, you get to the issue of, let's say, that you believe that life does, indeed, begin at the moment of conception. Then everything being done in an abortion clinic is murder. Do you not have a moral responsibility to prevent murder?

And that's where I tried to get to where the thought processes originate, as [I do with my characters]. No matter how unreasonable you may think their final conclusion is, if I can show you how their mind works for them to have reached that point, you know this is not a monster who simply decided to murder doctors one day, who's blowing up abortion clinics. This is someone who believes that they, as a moral human being, have a responsibility to prevent murders, just as somebody had a moral responsibility to blow up the guard shack at a Nazi death camp.

I think anyone who takes human life to make a political statement is evil. That's my view. But when you get into trying to understand the motivations of people, I can understand a lot of the motivations of the Islamic fundamentalists who flew into the Trade Towers. I really can. That doesn't mean that I condone for a moment what they did and that I wouldn't have shot any one of them out of the air with a Stinger missile myself to prevent what happened. But that doesn't mean that I don't understand how the thought processes that produce the monsters work.

I think we do ourselves, as a society, an enormous disservice when we don't try to understand how the monsters' minds work.