Ylesia

by Walter Jon Williams

  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 are 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 That doesn’t mean that Luke’s understanding is obsolete, just that it’s incomplete, as Vergere’s understanding, for all its subtlety, is also incomplete.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 Quaeda, 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 percent 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 on 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 site, 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 in 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 sites. There’s a lot of great advice for aspiring writers on the Science Fiction Writers of America Web site, www.sfwa.org.

  Read on for an excerpt from Star Wars: The New Jedi Order Destiny’s Way by Walter Jon Williams, available in hardcover from Del Rey in October, 2002. . . .

  I have a few minutes only,” Senator Fyor Rodan said. He sat—sank, rather—in an oversoft armchair while his aides bustled in and out of his hotel suite. All of them seemed to have comlinks permanently fixed to their mouths, and to be engaged in more than one conversation at the same time.

  “I appreciate your taking the time to see me, Councilor,” Luke Skywalker said. There was no place to sit—every chair and table was covered with holopads, datapads, storage units, and even piles of clothing. Luke stood before the Senator and made the best of the awkward situation.

  “At least I have managed to get the Calamarian government to give the Senate a place to meet,” Rodan said. “I was afraid we’d have to go on using hotel facilities.” As he spoke, he punched numbers into a datapad, scowled at the result, and then punched the numbers again.

  The Senate hadn’t quite shrunk to the size where it could comfortably meet in a hotel suite, but it was certainly a much slimmer body than it had been just a few months previously. Many Senators had managed to find reasons not to be on the capital when the Yuuzhan Vong attacked. Others had been sent away to establish a reserve of political leaders, so that they wouldn’t be caught all in one place. Yet others had commandeered military units in the middle of the action and fled. Still more had died in the fighting at Coruscant, been captured, or had gone missing.

  And then of course there was Viqi Shesh, who had gone over to the enemy.

  Fyor Rodan had done none of these things. He had remained at his post until the fall of Coruscant, then been evacuated by the military at the last moment. He’d joined the luckless Pwoe in his attempt to form a government, but then come to Mon Calamari when the Senate reconvened and summoned all Senators to their places.

  His behavior had been both courageous and principled. He had won the admiration of many, and was now spoken of as a candidate to replace Borsk Fey’lya as Chief of State.

  Unfortunately, Fyor Rodan was also a political opponent of Luke and the rest of the Jedi. Luke had asked for a meeting in the hope of swaying Rodan’s position, or at least of understanding the man better.

  Perhaps Rodan’s animosity toward Luke and his friends dated from the time that an impatient Chewbacca hung him from a coat hook just to get him out of the way. There were also rumors that Rodan was connected in some way to smugglers—that he spoke against the Jedi because Kyp Durron had once taken action against his smuggler associates.

  But those were rumors, not facts. Besides, if anyone was to be condemned for having friends who were smugglers, then Luke was damned a dozen times over . . .

  “How may I help you, Skywalker?” Rodan asked. His eyes flicked briefly to Luke, then returned to the datapad.

  “This morning,” Luke said, “you were quoted on broadcast media as saying that the Jedi were an impediment to the resolution of the war.”

  “I should say that is self-evidently true,” Rodan said. He kept his attention on the datapad screen as his fingers touched one button after another. “At times this war has been about the Jedi. The Yuuzhan Vong insist that you must all be handed over to them. That is an impediment to the war’s resolution—unless of course we do hand you over.”

  “Would you do that?”

  “If I thought that by doing so, I could save the lives of billions of the New Republic’s citizens, I would certainly consider such an action.” He frowned slightly. “But there are more serious impediments to peace now than the Jedi—such as the fact that the enemy are sitting in the ruins of our capital.” His face hardened. “That and the fact that the Yuuzhan Vong will not stop until they have enslaved or converted every being in our galaxy. I personally will not support even an attempt at peace with the Yuuzhan Vong until such time as they evacuate Coruscant and the other worlds they have seized.” His eyes flicked to Luke again. “Does that satisfy you that I’m not planning to sacrifice you and your cohorts, Skywalker?”

  Though the man’s words seemed reassuring, for some reason Luke didn’t find them comforting. “I’m pleased to know that you’re not in favor of peace at any price,” Luke said.

  Rodan’s eyes returned to his datapad. “Of course I’m only a Senator and a member of the late Chief of State’s Advisory Council,” he said. “Once we have a new Chief of State, I will inevitably be forced to support policies with which I personally disagree. That’s how our government works. So you should seek reassurances from our next Chief of State, not from myself.”

  “There is talk that you may be our next Chief of State.”

  For the first time, Rodan’s fingers hesitated on the keyboard of the datapad. “I would say that such talk is premature,” he said.

  Luke wondered why the man was being so consistently rude. Normally a politician canvassing for support wouldn’t close the door on someone who could potentially help him to power, but Rodan had always followed an anti-Jedi line even when there was no advantage to be gained, and that meant something else was going on. Perhaps the rumors about smuggling made more sense now.

  Luke queried again. “Whom do you support for the post?”

  Rodan’s fingers grew busy once more. “One question after another,” he said. “You sound like a political journalist. If you want to continue along this line, Skywalker, perhaps you could trouble yourself to acquire press credentials.”

  “I’m not planning to write any articles. I’m merely trying to understand the situation.”

  “Consult the Force,” Rodan said. “That’s what you people do, isn’t it?”

  Luke took a breath. This conversation was like a fencing bout, attack followed by parry as the two circled each other around a common center. And that center was . . . what?

  Fyor Rodan’s intentions toward the Jedi.

  “Senator Rodan,” Luke said. “May I ask what role you envision for the Jedi in this war?”

  “Two words, Skywalker,” Rodan said, his eyes never leaving the datapa
d. “None whatsoever.”

  Luke calmed the anger that rose at Rodan’s deliberate rudeness, at his provocative answers. “The Jedi,” he said, “are the guardians of the New Republic.”

  “Oh?” Rodan pursed his lips, glanced again at Luke. “I thought we had the New Republic Defense Force for that purpose.”

  “There was no military in the Old Republic,” Luke said. “There were only the Jedi.”

  A half smile twitched on Rodan’s face. “That proved unfortunate when Darth Vader turned up, didn’t it?” he said. “And in any case, the handful of Jedi you command can scarcely do the work of the thousands of Jedi Knights of the Old Republic.” Rodan’s glance grew sharper. “Or do you command the Jedi? And if not you, who? And to whom is that commander responsible?”

  “Each Jedi Knight is responsible to the Jedi Code. Never to act for personal power, but to seek justice and enlightenment.” Luke wondered whether to remind Rodan that the councilor had opposed Luke’s notion of refounding the Jedi Council in order to provide the Jedi with more direct guidance and authority in their actions. If the Jedi were disorganized, it was partly Rodan’s doing, and it hardly seemed just for Rodan to complain about it.

  “Noble words,” Rodan said. “But what does it mean in practice? For justice, we have police and the courts—but the Jedi take it upon themselves to deliver justice, and are constantly interfering in police matters, often employing violence. For diplomacy, we have the highly skilled ambassadors and consuls of the Ministry of State—but Jedi, some of them mere children I might add, take it upon themselves to conduct high-level negotiations that frequently seem to end in conflict and war. And though we have a highly skilled military, the Jedi take it upon themselves to commandeer military resources, to supplant our own officers in command of military units, to make strategic military decisions.”