Fantastic Metropolis

GC: So, what’s on your writerly plate now? Anything that you can talk about?

Matthew Woodring Stover: Once I finish Traitor, it’ll be the first time since about 1995 that I won’t have a book contract—with its attendant deadline—hanging over my head. I’m not sure what I’ll do. Enjoy the feeling for a while, probably. Then start to panic.

I’ve always had a little wisp of a dream in the back of my head that I might one day throw open Overworld as a shared-world environment for anthologies. There are, after all, a lot of Studios, a lot of Actors, and a lot of history; the Studio operated on Overworld before Hari was even born. I’d like to anchor each volume with a novella from Caine’s early career, then see what some of the other asskicking fantasy writers out there can do with the concept. But those are far in the future, and won’t be happening at all unless that future turns out to be the Jordan-esque one we were talking about earlier.

Gabe Chouinard: You mentioned in another interview that I read (I believe it was on the Curled Up With A Good Book website…) that several writers had already expressed an interest in working on an anthology. Anyone in particular? Just in case an editor somewhere is reading this….

Matthew Woodring Stover: That was three years ago; I don’t want to put anybody on the spot. On the other hand, should the opportunity arise, I’m guessing I won’t have any trouble filling out a volume. You’d do a story, wouldn’t you?

Gabe Chouinard: What about the Flash Gordon novel you’ve written? Is it going to come out? Will we get to read it?

Matthew Woodring Stover: Your guess is as good as mine. My editor at HarperCollins Entertainment loved it. The marketing staff loved it. The Hearst Communications honchos loved it. In fact, everyone who’s ever read it—what’s the phrase I’m looking for? Oh, yeah—loved it… except for one yutz over at King Features (a Hearst subsidiary) who unfortunately is the actual rights manager for the Flash Gordon franchise. His official line is that the book’s “unwholesome.” I suspect the real problem is that the book’s good, and if he lets it see the light of day, it’ll make the rest of his Flash Gordon spinoff stuff look like the cynical, vapid, imagination-challenged fun-deprived pile of mastodon turds it is.

Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Gabe Chouinard: Hmmm…an unwholesome Flash Gordon, eh? I think that would be great to read!

Matthew Woodring Stover: It’s been done already, and not by me. You know which movie I’m talking about; I didn’t like it. In The Real Flash Gordon, there isn’t even any language stronger than the occasional goddamn. Anyone who knows me understands the profound respect I have for the classics in our genre. That’s why my book is named The Real Flash Gordon. My Flash is exactly the true-blue champion of the American Way that Alex Raymond dreamed up, and my novel works just like the original Flash Gordon strip: it goes like lightning from one incredible situation to the next, and every chapter ends with a cliffhanger. There is enough mind-bending super-science, rock-jawed heroism and plain old-fashioned adventure for five books; there is true love defying time, distance, even death; there is dark villainy of such depths as to beggar any power of description. There’s even some laughs. Not to mention gorgeous babes in scanty outfits.

Hey, like I said: it’s faithful to the source material.

Anybody out there who wants to read this thing, direct your calls and letters and emails to King Features Syndicate and Hearst Communications. All together now: FREE FLASH GORDON!