DR: How did you get the opportunity to write a Star Wars novel, and what attracted you to the idea? Are you a long-time fan of the series?

WALTER JON WILLIAMS: I got the job because, well, they asked me. I'd like to think it was because they'd read my other books and liked them.

I was a fan of the films, but had never read any of the books. Imagine my surprise to discover that Han and Leia had produced three children and that Luke had married a woman who wasn't in any of the movies!

DR: How much input and creative freedom did you have in writing DESTINY'S WAY?

WJW: There is a NJO series arc, and the arc demanded that certain things take place in DESTINY'S WAY. The rest of it was up to me. The demands of the story arc were fairly flexible, and I experienced little difficulty building a story around them.

DR: Was this the first time that you've worked in someone else's universe? What are some of the difficulties involved in this kind of corporate collaboration?

WJW: I've worked in the WILD CARDS shared-worlds universe-- some of those books are coming back into print--and I've also written for films and TV, which are collaborative media. I was used to the give-and-take, so I experienced few problems in working within the shared-worlds format.

DR: What can you tell us about DESTINY'S WAY? To what does the title refer? What is the destiny, and whose destiny is it?

WJW: Fate has a good deal in store for the Jedi twins! Jaina's destiny is revealed in the book, and we find out more about what the universe has in mind for Jacen.

DR: The character of Vergere is one of the most interesting to appear so far in the New Jedi Order series. A Jedi Knight who has lived with the Yuuzhan Vong for more than fifty years, she seems to have shaped herself into a Jedi Master unlike any seen before, with new insights about the light and dark sides of the Force, as well as the mysterious absence of the Vong from the Force. Are we seeing an evolution in the official definition of what constitutes the Force? Does Vergere's understanding of the Force go beyond Luke's?

WJW: Vergere was an enormously fun character to write, because she's so extreme. She tortured Jacen Solo for eons in hopes of turning him into an enlightened being! She lets absolutely nothing stand in her way. In DESTINY'S WAY, I was able to reveal a good deal of her personal philosophy and the rationale behind her actions.

Luke's understanding of the Force was shaped by the Galactic Civil War, which was in large measure a struggle between the light and dark aspects of the Force. In contrast, Vergere's understanding was shaped by fifty years spent with the Yuuzhan Vong, beings who were apparently outside the Force altogether.

This forced her to engage with fundamental questions regarding the nature of the Force itself, and her solution was to develop a theory of the Force that was so all-embracing that it included even the Vong.

There is an evolution in the conception of the Force going on. That doesn't mean that Luke's understanding is obsolete, just that it's incomplete. As Vergere's understanding, for all its subtlety, is also incomplete. Vergere has obviously been aiming Jacen at producing a more comprehensive understanding of the Force and its meaning. Whether this is his true destiny will be revealed as the series progresses.

DR: Jacen has been trained by both Luke and Vergere. What are some of the challenges he faces in DESTINY'S WAY in balancing their often-very-different teachings and in charting his own path?

WJW: One particular problem that Jacen faces is that Luke, his master, has no reason to trust Vergere. Her treatment of Jacen in TRAITOR is a complete refutation of Luke's understanding of compassion. She obviously has her own agenda that may not be compatible with Luke's.

Luke wants to get Jacen as far away from Vergere as he can. For Luke, compassion is the highest virtue. For Vergere, the greatest virtue is the attainment of knowledge. Can Jacen balance the quest for knowledge with the need for compassion? At the end of DESTINY'S WAY, he's forced to choose between one path and another.

DR: At one point in the novel, Luke calls Jaina the Sword of the Jedi and predicts a life in which she will know very little peace or happiness. I know some fans are going to be thinking, "Hasn't the Solo family suffered enough?"

WJW: When I sat down to write that scene, I had no idea that those words were going to escape Luke's lips. I think it was the Force that spoke through me in that scene. Who am I to contradict the Force?

When you get right down to it, I don't think that the Force cares whether you're happy or not. And as long as you're at peace with the Force, I don't think it cares whether you're peaceful in any other way. The Force never asks your opinion.

The Force doesn't take polls on whether or not you get a happy ending. The Force just presents you with a destiny, and makes you take a choice. In DESTINY'S WAY, Jaina makes her choice.

DR: Both your novel and Traitor, the mass market paperback by Matt Stover that takes place directly before it, hint that the Vong may not be outside of the Force after all. Vergere postulates that the Vong simply register in Force frequencies outside the range of Jedi perceptions. I'm sure you've been sworn to secrecy on this point, but can you give us an idea of whether or not she's on the right track?

WJW: In DESTINY'S WAY, Vergere asks Luke, "If the Force is life, and the Yuuzhan Vong are alive, and you cannot see them in the Force--then is the problem with the Vong, or is it with your perceptions?" Vergere clearly believes that the perceptions of the Jedi are at fault. Whether she is correct in this belief will be revealed later in the series.

DR: Jacen makes the point that the Vong aren't inherently evil: they've just got bad leaders, who have molded them into religious fanatics. Two questions. First, isn't that a little bit like absolving Nazi soldiers for their actions because they were "just following orders"?

After all, the Vong have killed tens of billions of intelligent creatures since their invasion! And second, was the ongoing war against Al Queda, whose members would certainly have to be counted as fanatical, in your thoughts as you were writing this novel?

WJW: Well, of course most Nazi soldiers were absolved, and the Allies prosecuted only the leaders and those footsoldiers who were guilty of the greatest brutality. The Yuuzhan Vong seem to have the same emotional and moral equipment as human beings, only warped by countless generations of brutal leadership and religious fanaticism. There's no indication that if you took a Vong child and raised it in a human
household, that it would have an innate tendency to slaughter billions of people.

The novel was about 95% finished on September 11, 2001, so the war on terror really was not much in my thoughts for the greater part of the book. But there was one scene at the end that was very difficult to write after September 11. I don't want to give away what happens in the scene, but it was gut-wrenching.

DR: One aspect of the Vong civilization, culture, and psychology that you elaborate in your novel is their use of biologically engineered lifeforms as equivalents to the machine-based technology of the Republic. In a way, the Vong revere life as much, if not more, than any Jedi . . . yet their reverence is twisted by its extremity.

WJW: The Vong believe that life originated from sacrifice--that Yun-Yuuzhan tore himself to bits and scattered himself through the universe in order to bring about the living world. So the Vong do revere life as much as the Jedi, but they believe that the way to honor life is through sacrifice and self-mutilation.

The Vong reverence for life, however twisted and perverse, might well be a starting point in bringing about some kind of understanding between the Vong and the people of the galaxy.

DR: You've written a novella, YLESIA, set during the events of DESTINY'S WAY, that is being released as an eBook by Del Rey. Is this your first experience with eBooks? How do you think eBooks will affect the future of publishing . . . or will they have much of an effect?

WJW: Ylesia is the second story I've written specifically for an online forum, the first being an 850-word short-short for the online magazine INFINITE MATRIX. (A number of my older stories, written originally for print, are available online at www.fictionwise.com, and my most popular novel, HARDWIRED, will soon be available online at www.scorpiusdigital.com.)

E-text will be important in the future, but the technology doesn't seem to be quite there yet. I want to be able to read my e-book in the bath without fear of it short-circuiting, and I want a lot more literature available in e-formats.

DR: What can you tell us about your forthcoming novel, THE PRAXIS? Will there be another eBook tie-in?

WJW: There won't be an e-book tie-in, but a sample chapter is available on my web page, www.walterjonwilliams.net. The Praxis is a far-future space adventure set thousands of years from now, after humans and other aliens have been conquered by a dictatorial species called the Shaa. It's the first book in a series called DREAD EMPIRE'S FALL, and I hope that Star Wars readers will find a lot in the series they can enjoy.

DR: I know I'm not the only reader eager for you to continue the series begun in METROPOLITAN and CITY ON FIRE. Do you have any plans to do so in the near future?

WJW: I'd love to continue that series, but my editor was fired and his whole line canceled. Obviously there will be a delay in writing the third book. But it will be written, I just have to find the right place in my busy schedule.

DR: When did you realize that you were a writer? Who are some of the writers that influenced you? And finally, what writers do you admire most today?

WJW: I probably left scribbles on my mother's womb. Quite seriously, I've wanted to be a writer from the earliest time I can remember. Before I knew how to write, I would dictate stories to my parents, who would write them down for me.

My literary influences are diverse. Thomas Pynchon, Vladimir Nabokov, Joseph Conrad, P.G. Wodehouse, and a lot of the New Wave SF writers of the Sixties, people like Samuel R. Delany and Roger Zelazny. I'm currently on a Dorothy Dunnett binge.

Contemporary writers I admire are those with a unique voice, who can bring something completely individual to the table. Writers like Gene Wolfe, Howard Waldrop, or Bruce Sterling. None of these writers have anything in common, and that's what I like about them.

DR: How is written science fiction changing due to the influence of movies like Star Wars and computer/video gaming?

WJW: Movies, television, and games can only skim the surface of the great body of SF. Most great science fiction can't really be turned into successful cinema--the ideas are too dense and complex for a mass audience and the backgrounds too strange and alienating.

Science fiction is like a little village of weird, cranky philosophers, where everyone knows everybody and where certain arguments have been going on for generations. And every so often barbarians from Media City, the community over the hill, come through and plunder everything they can carry off. Sometimes they leave big pots of money behind, but usually they don't.

So in answer to your question, movies and games haven't changed science fiction at all: they've just popularized certain ideas that were once the province of science fiction alone.

DR: Any advice for aspiring writers in the audience?

WJW: Network. Get together and share information and workshop each other's stories. Online forums are great for this. Also, you can save a lot of time by finding out what publishers actually want.

Usually they'll tell you on their own Web pages. There's a lot of great advice for aspiring writers on the Science Fiction Writers of America web site, www.sfwa.org.

The following material is being reprinted from the Del Rey Internet Newsletter. To subscribe to this free, monthly e-newsletter, visit http://www.delreybooks.com