http://www.computercrowsnest.com/features/arc/2008/nz12294.php
Sailing the wide fanta-sea: Robert V.S. Redick interviewed
01/03/2008 . Source: Chris Hyland
Chris Hyland, aka the Book Swede, sits down with fantasy author Robert V.S. Redick to chat about his début novel, The Chathrand Voyage. He's all at sea with this one! Six hundred sailors. One hundred Imperial marines. Sixty tarboys. Fifty passengers. Twenty languages. Eleven blood vendettas. Ten festering centuries of black magic. 429 years of global war. One enchanted ship. Three months to seal the peace or lose it forever to a madman’s conspiracy, in fact!
Buy The Red Wolf Conspiracy in the USA
- or Buy The Red Wolf Conspiracy in the UK 
Robert V.S. Redick débuted with Gollancz on February the 1st with his fantasy trilogy, The Chathrand Voyage, which is already attracting enormous praise - the U.K. Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club has chosen it as one of its "Cosmic Five" début titles for 2008; and it's been receiving some fabulous online reviews, too: from The Wertzone and Sandstorm Reviews.
Without any further ado: the interview!
The Red Wolf Conspiracy, your début, is due for release by Gollancz in February 2008 and, already the British Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Club has it on their "Cosmic Five" list – what can you tell us about your début that makes it so splendiferous?
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If you could co-write with one author, who would it be and why?
A: What a great question. Vladimir Nabokov. Because we’d fight, and I mean fight. Both formally and lyrically, he’s among the most gifted novelists who ever lived. But he’s also a monumental classist and a literary exhibitionist. Have you ever noticed how the very thing that makes a book truly remarkable is also, often, what makes it unbearable? I mean, what if Nabokov hadn’t showcased his ghastly snobbery and irritating cleverness on every page of Lolita? What if Humbert Humbert had simply liked young women, instead of little girls in knee-socks? If that were the case I’d no longer think of Lolita with a shudder of revulsion. I’d not think of it with a writer's envy, either. I’d not think of it at all, for it wouldn’t be a masterpiece any longer, just another accomplished book.
Nabokov hated some of my literary heroes, among them Dostoevsky. I expect he’d rather be shot than collaborate with me. But if somehow it happened, I’m sure he’d rip through my pages with a searing disdain, challenging me to do more, more, and I’d struggle to rise to that occasion.
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Chris's great fantasy and science fiction blog can be found at http://thebookswede.blogspot.com where he reviews, does give-aways and author interviews. Not just of the authors that everyone is going on about, but new ones too.