Were you surprised to receive so much recognition in the States for The Witchwood Crown and your return to Osten Ard? This year, you’ll be the Writer Guest of Honor at the World Fantasy Convention in Los Angeles. Treacherous Paths: In 2017, The Witchwood Crown was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award in the category Best Fantasy Novel, and in 2018 it was nominated for a Gemmell Award. I admired the early Universal monster movies, and I was scared to death by Godzilla when I was super-young. Get Smart as a reflection of the spy genre probably activated some of my absurdist tendencies, as did Monty Python and other English comedy later. The Addams Family, New Yorker cartoons and then the television show, definitely had an effect on my lifestyle if not my writing. Tad Williams: Hard to say, because so many of my written influences began early, and I only remember them all because I still have the books. What other sources, such as film, television, or radio, have influenced the writing of your Osten Ard books? Treacherous Paths: Tad, you’ve cited several authors (Tolkien, Zelazny, Peake, Moorcock, Baum, and many others) as well as world mythology and history as being influences on your writing. The answers we received were often quite surprising! In this interview, we asked Williams about details of Empire of Grass, how his work on The Navigator’s Children is going, and asked for details about The Lady of the Woods, The Shadow of Things to Come, Brothers of the Sky, and The Veils of Heaven. Tad’s publisher, DAW Books, has recently released Empire of Grass, volume two of “The Last King” series. (Nov.Legendary Fantasy and Science Fiction author Tad Williams talks about Empire of Grass and several additional Osten Ard novelsĮ at Treacherous Paths are proud to bring readers another exclusive interview with storyteller Tad Williams, bestselling author of the “Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn” and “The Last King of Osten Ard” series of books. Best of all, however, are Williams's well-drawn, sympathetic characters, including Renie and her family, her student !Xabbu, the mysterious invalid Mister Sellars and a host of other folk, all of whom hope to solve the mystery of the terrifying VR environment called Otherland. His version of the Net, although obviously indebted to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and other novels, is detailed and fascinating. His 21st-century South Africa, where blacks run the government and pursue careers but where whites control most economic power, rings true. In the first book in what is projected to be, in effect, a single, enormous four-volume novel, Williams (Memory, Sorrow and Thorn) proves himself as adept at writing science fiction as he is at writing fantasy. It's clear that Renie has angered someone with almost unlimited power, but she remains determined to save her brother. Then her apartment is fire-bombed, she loses her job and another professor whom she has recruited to help her decipher the mystery is murdered. After her adventure, she discovers that someone has downloaded into her computer the impossibly complex image of a fantastic golden city. A professor of computer science and an adept user of the Net, Renie retraces Stephen's trail and enters Mister J's but barely escapes with her own mind intact. Soon she discovers evidence that other children have lapsed into comas under similar circumstances. When his next Net trip leaves him in a coma, Renie is terrified and angry. When Renie Sulaweyo's younger brother, Stephen, returns from the Net after visiting Mister J's, a virtual reality equivalent of the Hellfire Club, she's worried about him.
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