My first introduction to Stephen R. Donaldson came in the form of 'The Power That Preserves' the second book in the first of two Thomas Covenant trilogies. As a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, Donaldson's fantasy world immediately appealed to me. Greedy for more, I found 'Lord Foul's Bane', the first book in the series. After reading it, I was hooked. Over the next few years, I waited impatiently for each installment, and driving the people at 'A Change of Hobbit', my favorite bookstore, insane with my constant inquiries about upcoming books.

Finally came the last installment of the second trilogy, 'White Gold Wielder'. I was shocked and disturbed that Donaldson kills off the character of Thomas Covenant, the protagonist of the two trilogies, at the end of the book. Though I have been an avid reader all of my  life, for the first time I was inspired to take up a pen and write to an author. I thoroughly trounced poor Stephen, demanding to know why he had killed off the best hero to come down the pike since Aragorn and Frodo. Being the gentleman that he is, Stephen replied to my indignant letter, thanking me politely for the feedback. That started up a ten-year correspondence between us; in every letter I wrote, I asked the same question: Will there be a third Thomas Covenant trilogy. Stephen politely and unfailing avoided answering the question.

In 1999, I began editing and writing a little fantasy fanzine called 'The Fantasy Works'. When I discovered that Stephen was going to be in Los Angeles for a Dr. Who convention, I asked if I could interview him for the fanzine; he agreed.

I conducted the following interview with him on a very rainy Valentine's Day at the Airtel Plaza Hotel in Van Nuys. 

PN: Okay, you have to know what my first question is going to be-- I've been asking it since we started corresponding ten years ago. Is there going to be a third Chronicles of Thomas Covenant?

SD: It's possible that I will write the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant at some time in the future, but I spent ten years of my life writing the first two, and it was a major undertaking. I promised myself that I'd let a long time pass before I considered doing any more "Covenant". I'm probably closer to tackling that project now than I've ever been. But after seven years on the GAP books, I'm feeling a little burnt out, so it'll probably be some time before I'm up to making another major commitment like that.

PN: In an interview with Mark Jeffrey of The Palace, you are quoted as saying that Lord Foul's Bane was rejected 47 times, and when Ballantine wanted to make it a book, you were overjoyed. Did it start its life as a short story?

SD: No, I wrote it as a novel. It was just that every fiction publisher in the United States turned it down before Ballantine finally accepted it.

PN: How did being rejected that many times affect you? Obviously you didn't intend to give up, so what did you do to cope with the rejection?

SD: I wrote the second and third books. I already knew the ending and endings are the reason to write a story. This was an idea that I had that wouldn't go away, and it was something I had to write.

PN: Since the Lord of the Rings was your inspiration, do you count Tolkien as one of your favorite authors?

SD: The Lord of the Rings convinced me that fantasy was worth writing. I don't think I could have discovered myself as a writer if it hadn't been for Lord of the Rings. I didn't care for The Hobbitt, though. I thought it was a little too cute.

PN: You mention that Lord Foul's Bane makes you want to rewrite. If you could do a rewrite, what would you change?

SD: Looking back on it after I had finished "The Second Chronicles", the flow of the material seemed choppy. I would have liked it to flow a little more smoothly. Then there were technical problems in "The Second Chronicles" because I was trying to top myself as an author.

PN: There was a comment that there was an attempt to make a Covenant movie?

SD: Yes, but nothing ever came of it. There were some people who were shopping the concept around, but they couldn't raise the money for the project, so it was dropped.

PN: You've probably heard that Stephen King disliked the way the original version of The Shining came out so much that he went back and produced his own version, and that Dean Koontz did the same thing with Phantoms because he hated the adaptations of his other books. If someone came to you now and wanted to do a Covenant movie, would you want to produce it yourself, provided you had total creative control?

SD: First of all, in Hollywood, there is no such thing as total creative control; you always have to answer to someone, whether it's the producer or the director, or whoever. And, no, I wouldn't want to do it because it would mean writing the screenplay, and I'm not that kind of writer. Secondly, the Covenant books would require a nine-hour movie. Too much of the emotional content is internal. In an external medium like movies, internal content like emotion tends to disappear unless it's rendered into dialogue. And dialogue takes a lot of screen time.

PN: Both the Covenant trilogies and the Mordant's Need books are sort of swords and sorcery venues. What made you decide to make the huge leap from a medieval kind of world to the high tech world of the GAP series?

SD: I don't consider it that much of a leap. It's the job of every artist to serve his or her own talents. If I don't value my own abilities, they will go away. This was an idea that came looking for me, and I had to write it. I didn't want to learn 37 new skills in order to write the GAP series, but it was what I had to do to tell the story.

PN: You mentioned in the Palace interview that you've written three mysteries under a nom de plume. What was the name you wrote under, and what were the titles of the books?

SD: The name I wrote under was Reed Stephens, and the titles of the books are The Man Who Killed His Brother, The Man Who Risked His Partner, and The Man Who Tried to Get Away. Good luck in finding them... they're all out of print now. (*Note from interviewer: You can order these books through Amazon.com. If they don't have them in stock, they'll make every effort to find them for you.)

PN: You also mention that your love of Opera, especially the Ring Cycle, gave rise to the GAP books. If I'm not mistaken, I read a quote from you somewhere that you felt Siegfried is "too stupid to live". I got quite a laugh out of that. What makes you feel that way? After all, he is the hero of the Ring, and is supposed to be a role model for all aspiring knights in shining armor.

SD: Because that kind of purity isn't a part of the human psyche. It isn't real. So when creative artists try to dramatize it, it becomes a downward spiral. Purity leads to innocence, to naiveté, to stupidity. Inevitably, the "pure' character starts doing stupid things.

PN: What type of books do you like to read?

SD: I'm a slow reader, so I can't keep up with the field as well as I like. Still, there are several writers I follow faithfully. Patricia McKillip, for instance, writes books that are intended to be read slowly.

PN: How do you feel about horror fiction? Do you like Stephen King, or Dean Koontz? 

SD: I'm not that fond of it as a genre, but I think Stephen King is a good and important writer. 

 

 

Interview conducted February 14, 1999 at Van Nuys, California. Property of Penney J. Nile. No use of this interview in part or in its entirety without the express permission of the author  is permitted.

Music, "Imagine' by John Lennon, 1971

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