Interviews
by Mark Sieber

A FEW WORDS WITH F. PAUL WILSON

HW: The Keep was published nearly 25 years ago. Have you re-read it recently and are you still happy with it?

FPW: I never reread my own work post publication unless it's for a new edition. So I reread THE KEEP for the Borderlands Press limited and was pleased with how well the story holds up. All the things I wanted to do-explore levels of evil, examine the ways a good man can be corrupted, take horror out of small towns and go epic, go widescreen, go international, pull the reader into a cosmic struggle between good and monstrous evil-are still there and still work.

The fact that it takes place at a specific moment in history keeps it from aging.

The prose, however, though the right style for that kind of story, is miles from the way I write now. I was a little disturbed by all the passive voice and clunky sentence structure-much of which I cleaned up for Borderlands-but the prose in THE KEEP was better than that in my the book that followed. THE TOMB was embarrassingly overwritten and I did a lot of work to clean it up.
And now I'm reading it yet again as I script it for a graphic miniseries for IDW.

HW: You published some science fiction and seemed to switch gears to supernatural horror with The Keep. Was this a commercial or artistic decision?

FPW: Hmmm. I know it wasn't commercial (because I had no idea if I could fly in that genre), and I tend to be suspicious of the word "art" and its permutations, especially of people without paintbrushes who refer to themselves as "artists."

A number of factors played into it, chief of which was my lifelong love of horror fiction. My early efforts (this was late 60s, early 70s) were all horror, but I had no place to sell it. Yeah, R.A. W. Lowndes was publishing some, but only one new story per month per title. So I sneaked it into my second love, science fiction. My first sale, "Ratman," climaxes with a man being eaten alive by rats (well, space rats). I sold it to Analog, of all places. I remember Jim Frenkel grumbling about the amount of horror in my last piece of overt SF in the 70s, "The Tery."

Another reason was my increasing identification with libertarianism. I weltanshauung was libertarian then and it's libertarian now, but after WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS won the first Prometheus Award, followed by AN ENEMY OF THE STATE (a libertarian manifesto if ever there was one), I became known as "that libertarian sci-fi guy." That sounded like a pigeonhole. It was 1979. The K-man's success had made publishers receptive to horror fiction, so I decided to return to that first love and let it all hang out in something called THE KEEP.

HW: I've heard quite a few people name The Keep as their favorite of yours. Does it bother you that it's said of a novel written so long ago?

FPW: What's wrong with people remembering a novel written a quarter-century ago? But lots of people tell me THE TOMB is their favorite. SF readers have told me AN ENEMY OF THE STATE changed their lives. Since the youngest of these is over two decades old, I might be worried, except that so many people have told me they think last year's CRISSCROSS is the best thing I've ever done. And the response to MIDNIGHT MASS has been overwhelming.

HW: Is the Repairman Jack movie still in development?

FPW: Yep. It recently passed its tenth year in development hell. Just had an email from one of the producers who said that the studio head and the latest writer (the seventh? eighth?) have been meeting with a star-who-must-not-be-named about the latest script treatment.

HW: Unless I'm missing anything, two of your pieces have been produced for the screen, Midnight Mass and The Keep. How did you feel about these productions?

Well, I've had a short story or two appear on TV, and my original teleplay "Glim-Glim" was produced for Monsters.
FPW: Midnight Mass was based on the original novella, not the novel. It's an indie job with a half-million budget-and it shows. With just a couple of hundred thou more Tony could have hired decent actors.

And The Keep . . . I've gone on ad nauseam about that. People have to be sick of hearing me whine about Michael Mann's mangling of my novel. The film should be out on DVD eventually. In prep for that momentous occasion I sat down with Doug Winter and Dave Schow one afternoon last summer and we recorded a commentary track. It wasn't flattering. We'll market it independently when the official DVD is released.

HW: Midnight Mass, the novel, just screams for a sequel. Are you planning to write one?

FPW: I don't have a sequel in my head, but I've learned to leave the doors open for when inspiration strikes. I had no intention of bring back Repairman Jack and now I'm writing his tenth novel. Never say never.

HW: I really loved your recent novel, The Fifth Harmonic, yet it stands out a bit from the rest of your books. It's more of a spiritual story, rather than an action/adventure/horror/thriller. How did it come about?

FPW: Boy, you've done your homework. T5H is my most personal novel. And it stands out a lot more than a bit-it's so far out of what I usually write that I couldn't find a New York publisher to take it.

The protagonist is, in many ways, me. He's a primary care doc who's an incorrigible skeptic. (My wife Mary says I'm the most skeptical man on Earth. But I doubt that.) The story started perking when an acquaintance developed cancer of the tongue. He was lucky. They caught it early enough and he's only minimally deformed. But it could have been so much worse. He could have wound up with a radical neck dissection, part if his jaw removed, a laryngectomy (requiring him to burp his words), dead salivary glands after radiation treatment (therefore a perpetually dry mouth), and maybe even a feeding tube.

I asked myself what I'd do in that situation, and I decided I'd rather die. I don't believe in life at any cost. Without certain minimum levels of quality, what's the point of living? But I wouldn't take it lying down. I'd search out alternative cures.
Which brought my protagonist to Maya country in Mesoamerica. It's a journey of mind, body, and spirit.
And it's the only novel in which I don't kill anyone.

HW: : After editing the HWA Freak Show anthology, you said you'd never do another one. However, you did indeed edit another anthology, the excellent Diagnosis: Terminal. Is there any chance of lightning striking thrice and it happening again?

FPW: I made that statement because Freak Show took a year out of my life and devoured my writing time. Marty Greenberg said his staff would do some screening to save me time, so I said yes. But I don't like saying no to fellow writers.

HW: We know that there are more entries in the Repairman Jack/Adversary Cycle series. Are there any other stand-alone novels coming up that we can look forward to?

FPW: Nothing in the hopper at this point, but you never know. Something could pop up at any minute.

HW: Thanks very much and on behalf of Horror World, I wish you continued success.