Brian Parsons
asked
James Islington:
James - huge fan of all your work. The Licanius Triology really got me back into reading and truly opened me up to the sci-fi & fantasy genres. What are the biggest influences to your work and the worlds you create (authors, video games, movies, etc)?
James Islington
Thank you, that’s awesome to hear.
I tend to think of authors as my biggest influences – for Licanius I’d say it was Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time was the series when I was a teenager) and Brandon Sanderson, and for the first-person storytelling of Hierarchy, probably Patrick Rothfuss and Pierce Brown (with a bit of David Farland’s Runelords series thrown in, on the magic system side of things).
I definitely draw from a wide range of inspirations, though, and I think plenty of movies / TV shows / video games have triggered a somewhat unconscious love of certain types of story or well-executed tropes. For example, off the top of my head, I’ve always been a big fan of the movie 12 Monkeys (time travel), and the Bourne trilogy (amnesiac gradually remembering his cool abilities / terrible past) – but I never really thought of those, specifically, while I was writing Licanius. And I’ve always loved stories in all forms, not just books – so my work’s an amalgam of all those influences, for sure!
I tend to think of authors as my biggest influences – for Licanius I’d say it was Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time was the series when I was a teenager) and Brandon Sanderson, and for the first-person storytelling of Hierarchy, probably Patrick Rothfuss and Pierce Brown (with a bit of David Farland’s Runelords series thrown in, on the magic system side of things).
I definitely draw from a wide range of inspirations, though, and I think plenty of movies / TV shows / video games have triggered a somewhat unconscious love of certain types of story or well-executed tropes. For example, off the top of my head, I’ve always been a big fan of the movie 12 Monkeys (time travel), and the Bourne trilogy (amnesiac gradually remembering his cool abilities / terrible past) – but I never really thought of those, specifically, while I was writing Licanius. And I’ve always loved stories in all forms, not just books – so my work’s an amalgam of all those influences, for sure!
More Answered Questions
James Lambariello
asked
James Islington:
Hey James, while reading WOTM I couldn't help but get a video game feeling from the Will-sharing system, with higher ups in society basically becoming Bosses with the strength of hundreds of men behind them. If Hierarchy were adapted into a video game, what games would you want it to draw inspiration from?
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