Perspectives on Pandemonium
I thought I would use this blog to reflect a bit on some of my previous books, to give people a better idea of what I was thinking when I wrote them.
Pandemonium was obviously my first completed novel and the longest thing I had ever written up to that point. It was primarily an exercise to see if I could do it, and I am pleased with the result, although I think I've improved a lot as a writer since then.
I took my inspiration from Paradise Lost, which I believe to be the best poem in the English language. Like Philip Pullman (author of the His Dark Materials Trilogy, which is also based on Paradise Lost) I firmly believe that Milton was in the Devil's camp without realizing it.
Lucifer's assertions that the mind can transform a hell into a heaven and that it is preferable to live free in an unpleasant environment than to be a bird in a gilded cage resonate strongly with my personal philosophy, and saw this book as an opportunity to highlight that aspect of the story.
This is also when I learned the immense benefit of outlining. Having a predetermined structure based on the poem was a huge help. Paradise Lost has 12 parts, and so does Pandemonium, in relatively close correspondence. I had attempted a novel some years earlier with no outline, and I quickly got lost in my own narrative. Writing towards something you know has to happen makes life so much easier.
The novel shows the clear influence of dystopia novels like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Ayn Rand's Anthem, with a space opera setting. The setting required that I write fight scenes as well, which I had never done before, and which turned out to be surprisingly difficult. Action is much harder to convey in words than it is visually, but I think I did an okay job.
Despite its flaws, Pandemonium still contains one of my favorite things I've ever written: the scene in which the two humans awake for the first time in the analog to the Garden of Eden. I had a great time imagining the world through the eyes of a conscious being with no experiences to draw from whatsoever. It's a little like that scene in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the whale is suddenly created in mid air and has time to comment on its surroundings before plummeting to its death.
I like science fiction, but frankly am not enough of a scientist to live up to modern standards of hard sci-fi, so I don't know if I'll be revisiting the genre anytime soon. You can't get away with writing like Edgar Rice Burroughs these days. In any case, I get bored if I stay in the same genre too long. I have never understood how some authors can spend their entire career writing - for example - Westerns without running out of things to say, but I guess the kind of royalties those guys get is a good motivator.
Pandemonium was obviously my first completed novel and the longest thing I had ever written up to that point. It was primarily an exercise to see if I could do it, and I am pleased with the result, although I think I've improved a lot as a writer since then.
I took my inspiration from Paradise Lost, which I believe to be the best poem in the English language. Like Philip Pullman (author of the His Dark Materials Trilogy, which is also based on Paradise Lost) I firmly believe that Milton was in the Devil's camp without realizing it.
Lucifer's assertions that the mind can transform a hell into a heaven and that it is preferable to live free in an unpleasant environment than to be a bird in a gilded cage resonate strongly with my personal philosophy, and saw this book as an opportunity to highlight that aspect of the story.
This is also when I learned the immense benefit of outlining. Having a predetermined structure based on the poem was a huge help. Paradise Lost has 12 parts, and so does Pandemonium, in relatively close correspondence. I had attempted a novel some years earlier with no outline, and I quickly got lost in my own narrative. Writing towards something you know has to happen makes life so much easier.
The novel shows the clear influence of dystopia novels like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Ayn Rand's Anthem, with a space opera setting. The setting required that I write fight scenes as well, which I had never done before, and which turned out to be surprisingly difficult. Action is much harder to convey in words than it is visually, but I think I did an okay job.
Despite its flaws, Pandemonium still contains one of my favorite things I've ever written: the scene in which the two humans awake for the first time in the analog to the Garden of Eden. I had a great time imagining the world through the eyes of a conscious being with no experiences to draw from whatsoever. It's a little like that scene in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the whale is suddenly created in mid air and has time to comment on its surroundings before plummeting to its death.
I like science fiction, but frankly am not enough of a scientist to live up to modern standards of hard sci-fi, so I don't know if I'll be revisiting the genre anytime soon. You can't get away with writing like Edgar Rice Burroughs these days. In any case, I get bored if I stay in the same genre too long. I have never understood how some authors can spend their entire career writing - for example - Westerns without running out of things to say, but I guess the kind of royalties those guys get is a good motivator.
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